GNSS

Navigation with Indian Constellation is down!

India’s indigenous satellite navigation system, Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), is facing scrutiny after reports that an atomic clock onboard one of its satellites has stopped functioning, raising concerns about the reliability of the country’s homegrown positioning network.

“IRNSS-1F satellite, launched in March 2016, has completed its design mission life of 10 years on March 10, 2026. On March 13 2026, the onboard Atomic clock stopped functioning. However, the satellite will continue to function in orbit for various societal applications to provide one-way broadcast messaging services,” Isro said in a statement. www.indiatoday.in

Efforts to detect attacks on navigation signals

BEACONSAT is the largest satellite ever developed in Austria and also the country’s f irst military satellite. The project is being led by the Lower Austrian start up GATE Space, based in Schwechat. The launch is planned for February 2027 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

BEACONSAT is designed to detect and analyze jamming and spoofing attacks on GNSS. This refers to targeted attempts to interfere with and manipulate navigation signals such as GPS or Galileo. Austria is thus responding to a security policy development that is no longer abstract, but has real implications for aviation, transport, energy supply, and military operations.

Satellite-based navigation is a key technology today. If the signal fails or is manipulated, system-critical processes are disrupted. Jamming creates interference by superimposing and blocking navigation signals. Spoofing involves feeding in false position data so that receivers calculate a manipulated position. Such incidents are particularly frequent in geopolitically tense regions. In aviation, repeated disruptions have been recorded in the recent past, which have also affected civilian aircraft. www.bmimi.gv.at

ESA’s HydroGNSS on track to scout for water

Just three months after launch, the European Space Agency’s twin HydroGNSS satellites are already proving their capabilities in orbit. By exploiting reflected signals from navigation satellites – the sophisticated technique they use to generate Delay Doppler Maps in order to ‘scout’ for water across Earth’s surface – these compact satellites are beginning to reveal the scientific potential they were built to unlock, even while still in their commissioning phase.

ESA’s first Scout mission has been developed under the Earth Observation FutureEO programme. At its heart lies an innovative method known as GNSS reflectometry. Navigation satellites such as GPS and Galileo continuously transmit L-band microwave signals that subtly change after reflecting off Earth’s surface. HydroGNSS compares these reflected signals with the direct GNSS signals to extract valuable information on geophysical parameters linked to the water cycle.

Key to this process involves producing Delay Doppler Maps, which show how a GNSS signal changes after bouncing off Earth’s surface. One axis represents delay (how long the signal takes to return), and the other shows Doppler frequency (how motion affects the signal).

When the signal reflects off a smooth, mirror-like surface – such as calm water or flat sea ice – it produces a strong, sharp peak. But over a rough ocean, the reflection spreads out into a weaker, curved ‘horseshoe’ shape. A helpful comparison is sunlight reflecting off the sea when viewed from an airplane: a perfectly smooth surface gives a bright point, while waves stretch the reflection into a wide glistening area. The strength and shape of this reflection depends on surface conditions. Roughness matters, but so do factors like soil moisture, whether the ground is frozen, and the presence of vegetation. www.esa.int

Spire GNSS-Reflectometry data enables Arctic-wide sea ice mapping

New research supported by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Third Party Missions programme has generated Arctic-wide sea ice freeboard maps using GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) data captured by Spire Global, Inc.’s GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) multipurpose listening constellation.

Led by the Technical University of Munich (DGFI-TUM) and the Norwegian Research Centre, the study leveraged Spire’s grazing angle GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) — a radio frequency (RF) sensing technique that analyzes reflected navigation signals — to retrieve sea ice freeboard measurements across an entire winter season. The results show strong alignment with established altimetry datasets, including ESA’s CryoSat mission, validating the complementary role of commercial satellite data alongside government missions. While GNSS signals have long been used for positioning, this research highlights how reflected signal analysis can extend their value into large scale Earth observation applications, delivering persistent coverage independent of sunlight or weather conditions. spire.com

Dubai Municipality joins International GNSS Services

Dubai Municipality has officially joined the International GNSS Services (IGS), marking a significant step in strengthening its geospatial infrastructure. The move aligns with the city’s commitment to enhancing urban development and infrastructure planning through cutting-edge technology and precision mapping. focus.hidubai.com

NASA’s Perseverance autonomously pinpoints its location on Mars

A new technology developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California enablesPerseverance to figure out its whereabouts without calling humans for help. Dubbed Mars Global Localization, the technology features an algorithm that rapidly compares panoramic images from the rover’s navigation cameras with onboard orbital terrain maps. Running on a powerful processor that Perseverance originally used to communicate with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, the algorithm takes about two minutes to pinpoint the rover’s location within some 10 inches (25 centimeters). Mars Global Localization was first used successfully in regular mission operations on Feb. 2, then again Feb. 16.

The upgrade is especially valuable given how well Perseverance’s auto navigation self-driving system has been working. Enabling the rover to re-plan its path around obstacles en route to a preestablished destination, AutoNav has proved so capable that the distance Perseverance can drive without instructions from Earth is largely limited by the rover’s uncertainty about its whereabouts. Now that it can stop and determine its exact location, Perseverance can be commanded to drive to potentially unlimited distances without calling home. www.nasa.gov

NVIDIA launches space computing

NVIDIA Space-1 Vera Rubin Module is the latest part of the NVIDIA accelerated platform for space. Compared with the NVIDIA H100 GPU, the Rubin GPU on the module delivers up to 25x more AI compute for space based inferencing, enabling next generation compute for ODCs, advanced geospatial intelligence processing and autonomous space operations.

The NVIDIA IGX Thor™ and NVIDIA Jetson Orin™ platforms deliver energy efficient, high-performance AI inference, image sensing and accelerated data processing to enable true edge computing on orbit in a compact module. NVIDIA data center platforms, including the NVIDIA RTX PRO™ 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPU, deliver high throughput, on-demand ground processing for geospatial intelligence.