July 12 2019: Galileo System Failure START DATE EVENT (UTC): 2019-07-11 01:00
It appears that the Galileo GNSS system has failed (the entire constellation). The official [ status page : https://www.gsc-europa.eu/system-status/Constellation-Information ] lists all SV’s as degraded.
The NAGU [ https://www.gsc-europa.eu/notice-advisory-to-galileo-users-nagu-2019025 ] has details.
All my test receivers are tracking but not using GAL, I have confirmed similar status in Europe.
This will be a good chance to appreciate the system going forward. Hopefully it gets fixed soon.
Mark
- 26 Replies
Well shucks, I recently added Galileo to my R8-3 ???®
Ronald W. Berry
Galileo must be back up as I am tracking 5 of 7 and only 4 of 4 glonass – whats up with glonass?
(I am writing this Sunday morning, 9:00 am 14July2019 Mountain Time, 15:00 UTC.)
Tracking / Using: Occasionally a few GAL SV’s are used, then a few seconds later they revert to unused. But there are lots of SV’s tracked.
My test stations here in Utah are currently tracking 6 but using 0. GLO is tracking 9 using 8, which seems about right.
The low GLONASS count you observed is probably just a function of constellation, elevation mask and obstructions.
Currently the NAGU has been changed to reflect a starting failure time of 2019-07-12 01:50 and a note “UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, THE SIGNALS ARE NOT TO BE USED.”
There are now a few articles online (but surprisingly few considering):
https://insidegnss.com/update-galileo-service-degraded-on-all-satellites-precise-timing-facility-problems-cited/
https://slashdot.org/story/19/07/14/022243/galileo-satellite-positioning-service-outage
https://www.gpsworld.com/galileo-down-over-weekend/
One article blames a precise timing facility in Italy.
The twitter account for Galileo ( https://twitter.com/galileognss?lang=en ) only mentions the upbeat celebration of ’10-years of activities’.
I don’t want to go too negative here, but this is an unbelievably bad reflection on the entire Galileo program. I don’t know anything about setting up a navigation satellite system, but I would think that if you build something that costs BILLIONS of dollars (and goes over estimate more than 50%) there would be a backup system in place.
That it has been down for over 48-hours means that there is not a backup system in place.
When I contacted industry friends in Europe to confirm that they are also seeing failures, to a person they all had something nasty to say about the Galileo program (very rude condemnations of the program.)
I suppose that it will take a long time build trust after this. And to get the up-time metrics back up. Assuming that the system is repaired today:
(10 years * 365 - 3) / (10 years * 365) = 3647 / 3650 = 0.9992
That is only three 9’s. And 10 years of service is being really generous. I don’t think it really became of much use until 2014 so that is more like 5-years of service:
(5 years * 365 - 3) / (5 years * 365 ) = 1822 / 1825 = 0.9984
I have hard drives in laptops that have run that long.
“Jak by asi vypadaly ty?i dny bez GPS?” => “How would four days without a GPS look like?”
The discussions during the scare about interference from LightSquared showed that it would be at least a small catastrophe, if not worse. The biggest civilian problem is so many non-navigation systems rely on it for timing and have no backup. At the time, that included cell towers, a lot of police, fire, and emt radio networks, and business systems.
People would also have to read maps, imagine that.
.
One more time in the News in a negatieve way.
No clue what??s going on and when Galileo will be up and running again.
From another perspective this is absoluters not a desastre many people suffer from.
No one here in Europe only relies on Galileo, we all use GPS+GLONAS.For surveyors the GNSS systems were updated in may to be able to use GAl+BEI, wonder how many already use them daily.
For smartphone navigation there??s only 1 Chinese Brand that uses a GPS chipset that??s able to use GAL.It,s another bad thing for the EU GSA but no one here is zware of the problem.
I see GAL as a backup system for when GPS and GLO fail, and that won??t probably happen.Thanks Mark. Just took another look at Galileo and my server shows tracking w decent snr but not being used in position calculations. I hope they find a solution and agree there should be redundancy even if they pointed to US clocks – if timing is the issue.
Wonder if this has anything to do with Brexit?looks like Galileo is back online as of sometime this morning.
Those are countries where folks are allowed to have beer with lunch…
You mean it’s not here?
I know a lot of people that are going to be in a lot of trouble…
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will!11:45 MT 17July2019: I can confirm that Galileo is back up, being used in solutions and the SV’s have excellent residuals here in Utah. Confirmations from Europe also.
However all SV’s are listed as ‘Not Usable’on the information page: https://www.gsc-europa.eu/system-status/Constellation-Information
Forget maps…without precise timing, your access to rplstoday.com would be in jeopardy, as well as your ATM transaction, and your cell phone call, etc etc etc
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong.
The information page now lists them as usable, with the cryptic note “SERVICE RESTORED (POTENTIAL INSTABILITY)”
puts Galileo in good company with long list of instabilities to include: John Nash, Issac Newton, Zelda Fitzgerald, Abraham Lincoln
Personally, I do not see the value in using non US military GPS satellites to augment US land surveying tasks. There’s 31 US GPS satellites coursing over CONUS with a rock solid record, and Galileo is only another 16 satellites, Glonass has 24 satellites currently operational but they are slotted to provide optimal coverage in Russia.
It appears use of non US GPS satellites is popular on multichannel receivers to augment marginal reception conditions, sky blockage from vegetation & urban multipath. Won’t they suffer from the same degradation? Will you get a tight position? Maybe no better than US GPS alone. Maybe a much worse validated position. OK, I’ve heard that a GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO combined receivers are faster, more accurate and reliable, yada-yada, but that’s been only from folks who own them. I’m skeptical.
Behold the US GPS military orbits:
I just spoke briefly with a colleague in Alaska, and he told me Glonass reception is a definite plus at high latitudes:
” In terms of positional accuracy GPS is slightly better than GLONASS overall, but due to the different positioning of the GLONASS satellites, GLONASS has better accuracy at high latitudes (far north or south).”
Wow.
GPS only you are typically going to receive 6-8 satellites at any given time and location. You will be very lucky to get a PDOP in the 2’s. Add GLONASS, GALILEO, etc. and you will routinely have 12 or more satellites, and a PDOP in the 1’s. It makes a big difference, especially in marginal conditions.
6-8 satellites is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you add 2 geostationary SBAS satellites. PDOPS under 2 only take more time, not more satellites. !0 satellites with 5 and 5 does not give you the same actual PDOP as 9-10 in one constellation. Figuring PDOP based on satellite count only is statistically fraudulent.
Paul in PA
I will be happy to put a fine point on this because I just got a call from a customer in So California at 1:30 Pacific Time who is still using GPS-Only RTK. His rover won’t fix. It is stuck in FLOAT. Here is mission planning for his approximate location:
GPS Only:
Do you think that a 7.5 PDOP is an issue?
With GLO added:
And finally with GAL (GPS + GLO + GAL):
If time has no value, then you can just wait 45 minutes for the constellation to improve and then get back to work. Probably too hot to work there at 1:30 pm anyway. However, customer cut bait and went home to call and complain to me–because I control the position of the SV’s in the sky and just like in the movies, I just log onto my laptop and send some more SV’s his way.
@mark-silver
I am sorry that some humans are not nice. I wish they were. I really do. Humans. Ugh.
Don’t tell anyone about my ability to move the SV’s around. It could turn into a full time job. But this also means that you want to stay on my good side: I can move all the SV’s away from you and make it so you can’t get any work done too.
Anyway, I should have also included the skyplot for that 45 minutes of high PDOP to show what occasionally happens:
5 satellites, almost one in every quadrant, all relatively high in the sky. But that makes for really hard difficult fixing.
I agree that with GPS only, when times are good it is like ‘cutting butter with a red hot knife’; but when times are bad they can be really-really-really-really bad.
With GPS+GLO+GAL(+BDS) times are always great and the red hot butter knife never runs out of propane.
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