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posted by janrinok on Monday July 15 2019, @03:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the out-of-time dept.

Galileo sat-nav system experiences service outage

Europe's satellite-navigation system, Galileo, has suffered a major outage. The network has been offline since Friday due to what has been described as a "technical incident related to its ground infrastructure". The problem means all receivers, such as the latest smartphone models, will not be picking up any useable timing or positional information.

These devices will be relying instead on the data coming from the American Global Positioning System (GPS). Depending on the sat-nav chip they have installed, cell phones and other devices might also be making connections with the Russian (Glonass) and Chinese (Beidou) networks.

[...] The specialist sat-nav publication Inside GNSS said sources were telling it that the problem lay with a fault at a Precise Timing Facility (PTF) in Italy. A PTF generates and curates the reference time against which all clocks in the Galileo system are checked and calibrated.

The function on Galileo satellites that picks up distress beacon messages for search and rescue is said to be unaffected by the outage.

[...] Europe's alternative to GPS went "live" with initial services in December 2016 after 17 years of development. The European Commission promotes Galileo as more than just a back-up service; it is touted also as being more accurate and more robust.

Related: Galileo Satellites Experiencing Multiple Clock Failures
UK May Have to Deploy its Own Satellite Navigation System Due to Brexit
GPS is Getting Competition


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Monday July 15 2019, @04:09PM (11 children)

    by Hyperturtle (2824) on Monday July 15 2019, @04:09PM (#867224)

    Where's the plan B?

    It isnt robust if it doesn't work when a single point of failure renders most of it useless.

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @04:38PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @04:38PM (#867236)

    Where's the plan B?

    The American Global Positioning System.
    No need to thank us, we stopped expecting that a long time ago.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @06:22PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @06:22PM (#867270)

      Where's the plan B?

      The American Global Positioning System.
      No need to thank us, we stopped expecting that a long time ago.

      No worries, you stopped deserving it a long time ago too.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 15 2019, @07:57PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 15 2019, @07:57PM (#867308) Journal

        2017 isn't that long ago.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Monday July 15 2019, @04:52PM (6 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 15 2019, @04:52PM (#867238) Journal

    Take a lesson from Microsoft.

    Microsoft does not build systems with a single point of failure.

    Failure is dispersed approximately evenly throughout the system because redundancy is good.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @05:04PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @05:04PM (#867241)

      Microsoft builds systems with multiple points of failure.

      • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 15 2019, @06:28PM (4 children)

        by RS3 (6367) on Monday July 15 2019, @06:28PM (#867274)

        Jobs created!

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 15 2019, @07:56PM (3 children)

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 15 2019, @07:56PM (#867307) Journal

          I suppose the more points of failure, the more assembly line workers it takes to attach each one. The higher the BOM cost.

          But maybe robots can replace assembly line workers and attach more points of failure in half the time. Jobs lost.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 15 2019, @08:36PM (2 children)

            by RS3 (6367) on Monday July 15 2019, @08:36PM (#867314)

            The plebeians must be kept occupied. With what matters not, as long as they're busy and think it's necessary. Idle minds are the devil's workshops. The $ will flow and none will be the wiser.

            • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:07PM (1 child)

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:07PM (#867555) Journal

              Idle 3D printers are the devil's plaything.

              --
              People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
              • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 16 2019, @04:31PM

                by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday July 16 2019, @04:31PM (#867599)

                Holy critical mass, Batman! We must keep the 3D printers away from the plebeians!

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday July 15 2019, @05:43PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 15 2019, @05:43PM (#867261)

    The project is super delayed and isn't supposed to be production ready for at least another year. So delayed that some of the first satellites have already been decommissioned LOL.

    In theory when its in production mode, there will be dual ground stations in Italy and Bavaria. Since its not in production, heck who knows maybe Bavaria isn't built yet.

    My gut level guess is some kind of disaster recovery test was attempted as part of production-rating the system, and it failed.

    The concept of having two and exactly only two standard time services sounds weird to me. Man with one clock knows the time. Man with three clocks can rub them up against each other to create a valid statistical model of long term drift so he REALLY knows what time it is. Man with only two clocks has no friggn idea what time it actually is.

    For a variety of fascinating political, military, and economic competition reasons, this testing failure is being heavily marketed as a production failure.