In an unprecedented disruption of an operational GNSS constellation, all 24 satellites in the Russian GLONASS broadcast corrupt information for 11 hours starting at 21 UTC on 2 April. This rendered the system completely unusable to all worldwide GLONASS receivers.
The Russian GLONASS monitoring center showed satellites in unhealthy statuses: “failure” and “illegal ephemeris.” Because the failure was systemwide and simultaneous, some have speculated that an incorrect uploading of corrections to satellite ephermerides (orbital positions) occurred. Read more…