Galileo Satellite Positioning Service Outage (insidegnss.com) 63
Long-time Slashdot reader hyperfine transition writes: The Galileo satellite positioning service is currently unavailable, with all satellites marked as in outage . Galileo is the European-built and operated alternative to GPS. The outage is being attributed to problems at the Precise Timing Facility in Italy. The availability of multiple Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and the relative newness of Galileo (the system is still under construction and only the newest GNSS receivers will track it) means that it is likely that few users will see an impact but the problem highlights our potential vulnerability to the loss of positioning and timing services available through GNSS.
Re: A big middle finger to America (Score:5, Insightful)
If they spend billions to not rely on an American defense system, they are ungrateful haters.
Re: (Score:2)
Here in Murika, we like to have out cake... And eat it too. Why do you think half our population is fat as fuck?
Re: A big middle finger to America (Score:2, Insightful)
This is actually such a funny view from someone who probably just celebrated their independence from a European at that time superpower. Beeing dmart and making yourself less dependent upon a superpower that is not a middle finger, that is simple common sense. And as the US has multiple times played with the precision of the GPS system during different engagements it becomes unreliable from a usage point of view. Also the precision even thinking down to centimeters was not something GPS was capable of
delive
Precise timing facility (Score:5, Funny)
Who thought it was a good idea to put a “precise timing facility” in Italy?!
Re: (Score:2)
Hired shills in the pay of a hostile foreign power sure do love anonymously accusing President Trump of treason.
Don't worry, there are also plenty of us American non-shills (under too little pay from any source) who will also accuse President Trump of treason, and we do so with mere pseudo-anonymity or even sign our names clearly sometimes. We don't need foreign shills to make our anti-Trump case, and he does half the work for us anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Hired shills in the pay of a hostile foreign power sure do love anonymously accusing President Trump of treason.
Oh darling, when most of the world hates someone you don't need to pay shills to spread that message.
Also fuck Trump.
This message sadly funded by my own boredom.
Re: Precise timing facility (Score:2)
You are comparing ad company tech to that of critical infrastructure. Apples and oranges. A better (though imperfect) example would be the cascade blackout that took out the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. about 15 years or so ago.
Re: Precise timing facility (Score:2)
Power outages happen. Being without power for a couple hours every once in a while is very common throughout much of the U.S. NYC is frankly spoiled when it comes to power reliability.
Re: Precise timing facility (Score:2)
The stock exchanges should have their own private networks and power backups. That's not at all relevant.
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Re:Precise timing facility -- answer to your query (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/axAtWjn3MfI?t... [youtu.be]
You're welcome.
THE SIGNALS ARE NOT TO BE USED (Score:2)
Oh god I have no idea where I am or what time it is.
Thought the data wasn't right today. (Score:1)
MTB race today and it seemed like elevation data (a 20m climb was marked as 1m) and track was a little off.
Not as good as usual (GPS + Galileo), but may have been my imagination.
Re: (Score:2)
GPS is usually appalling for altitude, especially if you are moving in three dimensions. It likes you to keep one axis steady so it can work out the other two.
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But usually it's much better. Could also have been the weather conditions.
Re:Thought the data wasn't right today. (Score:4, Informative)
It's simply wrong that GNSS systems, or GPS on particular, want one axis kept steady to work out the other two. Any receiver that works out position doesn't care about that.
Vertical dilution of precision is typically worse than horizontal because it's common to have satellites in several directions horizontally, but only on one side in the vertical direction. That geometric asymmetry causes increased uncertainty of position along that axis.
Sometimes a user can have "bad geometry" for the satellites they use, leading to a relatively high dilution of precision in the horizontal plane as well. Using multiple constellations reduces the likelihood of having bad geometry because each constellation use different orbital planes, in addition to providing more satellites in orbit.
Ublox ZED-F9P can use Galileo in solution (Score:5, Informative)
The amazing low-cost Ublox ZED-F9P RTK-capable GPS receiver can use Galileo satellites as well as GPS, Glonass, Beidou, and QZSS satellites. Don't need most of them of course, but they can all contribute to speed and accuracy of the solution.
For those that haven't played with them, a pair of ZED-F9P receivers can implement a L1/L2/L5 RTK system that is accurate to around a cm for around $600. The more satellites you have the faster you can resolve ambiguity and reach that resolution. We use one of them on the farm as a base station, sending observations over radio modem and also NTRIP to any roving unit that can use RTCMv3 messages, such as our Trimble units. Not bad for $250 compared to Trimble's $$$ for just the base station. There are folks using these units to implement precise DIY steering control on agricultural machines using open source software.
For agriculture use, mapping, UAVs, and other uses, this little receiver is quite the game changer.
Re: (Score:2)
that is accurate to around a cm
And you basically never have these ideal conditions in the real world. Atmospheric turbulences, trees, hills, high rises and electromagnetic interferences will reduce the accuracy significantly.
I'm not saying these devices aren't good, they are amazing, especially considering their price tag, but they can only be as good as the data they receive.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure that your point is. Rtk is widely used by surveyors. If you're saying the f9p isn't as good as a $10k Trimble unit you'd be mostly wrong. If course Trimble charges $10k for a turn key, guilt integrated unit. The f9p is just the receiver without any I'm. Emlid is soon to release their $1000 surveying units based on the f9p with an imu which will finally made cheap rtk useful for those that have been needing the expensive stuff.
From my experience resolutions between 1 and 2 cm horizontally is co
Re: Ublox ZED-F9P can use Galileo in solution (Score:2)
Thanks! Great info.
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"highlights our potential vulnerability"?? (Score:2)
In Italy, it's vacation time. (Score:1)
I'm italian and I can guarantee that most of the best engineers in this time of the year are on holiday and can't fix the system. Many leave on thursdays afternoons to come back on monday, so only the worst ones are left to keep the systems up and running. And if there's an hardware problem, it's even worse.