Europe scrambles to fix its GPS rival Galileo after mysterious system fail

Europe’s Galileo satellite position system, a future rival of the American GPS network, has been out of service since Friday.

The European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) said the outage was caused by a “technical incident related to its ground infrastructure”.

Galileo has been in a pilot phase since December 2016 and devices that use its signal should be able to switch to GPS services while it is fixed.

“The incident has led to a temporary interruption of the Galileo initial navigation and timing services,” the GSA said.

The network’s search and rescue function, which helps pinpoint boat crews or hikers in distress, is unaffected.