Galileo: the European version of the GPS in major breakdown

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Galileo, the European Union's Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), is designed to compete with the Global Positioning System (GPS) controlled by the United States and the Russian GLONASS system.

Over the weekend, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) said that Galileo was suffering from a total system failure due to a "technical incident related to its ground infrastructure".

"The experts are working to restore the situation as quickly as possible, and an anomaly review committee was immediately set up to analyze the root cause and implement remedial measures," the GSA said in a statement.

Problems with the system were reported for the first time on Thursday.

Galileo was designed to compete with the US-controlled global positioning system (GPS) and the Russian GLONASS system.

Galileo was launched in 2016 to provide Europeans with more accurate positioning information. It prides itself on being a satellite navigation technology program operating under civilian rather than military control.

As a result, according to the GSA, Galileo – which is run by the GSA, the European Commission and the European Space Agency – provides "Europe and the Europeans independence and sovereignty".

During the outage, smartphones using Galileo, including Apple (AAPL), Samsung (SSNLF) and Google (GOOGL) will instead use data from US and Russian GPS networks.
The 2012 Soyuz rocket takes off to place the second pair of Galileo satellites in orbit.

While Galileo's navigation and timing services are down, the GSA says its Galileo search and rescue service – which can accurately locate a distress beacon at sea or in the mountains – is unaffected .

Currently, 22 satellites are in orbit as part of the Galileo constellation, which is in an initial "pilot" phase. The system should be fully operational by 2020.

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