Galileo's first civil authenticated position fix under spoofing conditions
On the afternoon of Wednesday 16 September, for two hours, five operational Galileo satellites broadcasting over Europe transmitted a new encrypted signal for testing. Ground receivers in Andøya, Norway, and at ESA’s navigation laboratory at ESTEC in the Netherlands successfully established their location using these encrypted signals, marking the first real-world positioning with Galileo’s upcoming Signal Authentication Service (SAS).
Satellite navigation has become essential, making GNSS an increasingly attractive target. Interference such as jamming and spoofing is reported daily in many regions, including Europe, especially in or near conflict zones. Galileo is evolving to counter this, and one of its most significant innovations is SAS, which together with the already available Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA) is intended to unlock a new level of protection against interference.
ESA’s Galileo Head of Engineering Joerg Hahn said: “By combining signal authentication and navigation message authentication, users will know they can trust the position their device is showing.” The service resulted from close cooperation between Galileo programme partners: the European Commission defined the concept, while ESA and EUSPA designed the architecture and updated the satellites and ground infrastructure to enable the new service on behalf of the European Union, Galileo’s owner.
After extensive testing in laboratories and controlled environments, the new signal proved its performance in real-world conditions at Jammertest. Each September, hundreds of stakeholders from across the GNSS value chain—from system architects and receiver manufacturers to end-user application developers—meet to deliberately subject their technologies to interference. Norwegian authorities broadcast a wide variety of jamming and spoofing scenarios so participants can understand how their equipment performs under pressure and make it more resilient.
While jamming is usually countered through well-known signal power techniques, spoofing is significantly more complex, and mass-market equipment requires specific services such as OSNMA and SAS to ensure trust in the origin of navigation signals. ESA and the Commission’s Joint Research Centre took advantage of Jammertest to test SAS under realistic conditions, demonstrating that the encrypted signal remained reliable when it mattered most.