Satellite navigation systems are vulnerable, warns report

The report, by the Royal Academy of Engineering, focuses on our increasing reliance on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) and the current limited use of GNSS-independent back-ups. It also highlights the vulnerability of GNSS to interference — both artificial, through surreptitious ‘jamming’, and natural, from solar flares and space weather.

The report comes after the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) was certified for ‘safety-of-life’ operation in aviation — for the first time, space-based navigation signals have become officially usable for the critical task of vertically guiding aircraft during landing approaches.

EGNOS works through a network of 40 ground stations that gather positional data from the US-run Global Positioning System (GPS) and beams that up to transponders aboard three satellites in geostationary orbits over Europe (part of the planned Galileo system). The more precise, amalgamated data is then sent back down to receivers aboard aircraft or other vehicles.

The EGNOS Open Service was launched in October 2009, for navigation applications where the safety of human life is not at stake, such as personal navigation, goods tracking and precision farming.