EU satellite navigation system Galileo works again but is still unstable

Operation of the Galileo satellite navigation system has been restored. Users may still experience stability issues. The system has been down since last week due to a fault in equipment in two control centers on the ground.

The Supervisory Authority for the European Global Navigation Satellite System writes on its website on Thursday that Galileo is working again. According to the organization, customers can again use navigation and timing via the satellites, but fluctuations may still occur ‘until further notice’.

On Wednesday, the administrator of the system announced that it was working on repairs. The European satellite navigation system has been down since Friday due to a technical incident. There is now more clarity about the cause. The organization says there was an equipment failure at two control centers where time and trajectory predictions are calculated. The outage affected several elements in both control centers.

The organization will set up an independent commission of inquiry to find out the exact cause of the malfunction. The Galileo system has been operational in a pilot phase since December 2016. The administrator states that this test phase is intended for discovering technical problems such as there are now. Further planned infrastructure upgrades should increase redundancy to avoid such issues when the system becomes fully operational.