Europe's satellite navigation system Galileo returned to service on Thursday after days of outage.

 

欧盟的伽利略卫星导航系统在宕机几天之后于周四重新恢复服务。

 

The European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency said in a statement that Galileo Initial Services have now been restored; commercial users can already see signs of recovery of the Galileo navigation and timing¹ services, although some fluctuations² may be experienced until further notice.

 

The Prague-based agency explained that the outage originated by an equipment malfunction³ in the Galileo ground infrastructure⁴, affecting the calculation of time and orbit predictions -- which are used to compute⁵ the navigation message. The malfunction affected⁶ different elements on the ground facilities.

 

"We will set an Independent Inquiry⁷ Board to identify the root causes of the major incident", which will "draw lessons for the management of an operational system with several millions of users worldwide," said the agency.

 

It stressed that Galileo was in an "initial services" period since December 2016, and "during this initial 'pilot' phase, Galileo signals are used in combination with other satellite navigation systems, which allows for the detection of technical issues before the system becomes fully⁸ operational. In the full operational phase, Galileo should function independently of other satellite navigation systems."

 

Nevertheless, the outage, started since last week, has been widely seen as a major embarrassment⁹ for the European Union, which during the outage struggled to explain the cause.

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