Only a few months have passed since the European Union and the European Space Agency launched the new geolocation system Galileo, a project in which many years of effort, design and development have been invested and that these days is facing serious problems due to the atomic clocks that each of the satellites launched into space has inside it and that, apparently, are starting to fail one after another.
As you well know, or so we were promised, this alternative geolocation system to the well-known American GPS or Russian GLONASS should stand out above these thanks to being a lot more accurate in providing a location. Unfortunately this feature could not be tested in the end because the time of the atomic clocks of the satellites cannot be trusted, something that is vital for calculating locations.
The atomic clocks of 9 of Galileo's 18 orbiting satellites have started to fail.
For now, at least this is how it has been communicated by the European Space Agency, it is not known why the atomic clocks of 9 of the 18 satellites currently in orbit they have started to fail and are unable to provide accurate data. This is a very serious problem and it cannot be solved by means of a software update since, if the time is not exactly the same in all the satellites, it is unlikely that the positioning offered will be reliable.
Heeding the words of Jan Worner, Director General of the European Space Agency:
I can say that we have to wait until we find the solution, but that means that if more clocks fail they will reduce the capacity of Galileo. However, if we launch, maintain or increase its capacity, we must take the risk of thinking that it is not a synthetic problem. We are discussing what we should do from now on.
Currently the Galileo system is still active since there are still clocks that do work as they should. The problem with the clocks that are failing could be due to a unexpected reboot of the systems that would have introduced changes in their initial configuration.
Further information: ESA
It is not that they give a more or less "exact" result, something is exact or it is not (it is not said that a woman is more or less pregnant, or is or is not), what is failing generates that the results are more or less "precise", indeed, accuracy does not really exist.
A solution to this problem would be to check the software of all the satellites to see the problem and then reset all the satellites at the same time, this would probably solve the problem of accuracy. Another thing is how they can do that from 22.000km away.