Satellite navigation has become indispensable in our daily lives and is used in a myriad of applications, from guiding aircraft and driverless cars to monitoring water supplies and responding to emergencies. But satnav systems are potentially vulnerable to jamming and spoofing as their signal power on the ground is weak and most of their specifications are publicly available.

From 18 to 22 September, a team from ESA joined one of the world’s largest jamming testing campaigns, Norway’s Jammertest, together with dozens of participants from governmental agencies, industry and academia. An ESA telecommunications and navigation testbed vehicle usually based at ESTEC, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, was driven to Norway for its first mission beyond Dutch borders.

The jamming testing campaign was organised by the Norwegian Communications Authority, the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration and Norwegian Metrology Service and backed by the Norwegian Space Agency. The island of Andøya, a remote area in the north of Norway, was turned into a temporary outdoor laboratory where the organisers interfered with the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal in a controlled environment.