A navigation odyssey
Homer’s The Odyssey chronicles Odysseus’s journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. A distance of approximately 530 km as the crow flies, yet it takes Odysseus ten years and countless adventures to arrive—without his crew or his boat. What could Odysseus’s journey have looked like if he had modern-day satellite navigation systems, such as Galileo, at his disposal?
As Europe’s independent satellite navigation system, Galileo offers metre-level positioning around the world, with centimetre-level accuracy possible for equipped receivers. We use Galileo daily to navigate from point A to B, but it also provides high-accuracy positioning and navigation for ships, search and rescue operations and to optimise shipping routes.
Throughout The Odyssey, there are many instances where things could have gone differently with modern satellite navigation. Most obviously, if the journey had gone to plan, it would have been a matter of weeks to sail from Troy to Ithaca.
Resistant to spoofing
Odysseus and his crew must contend with the Sirens, who try to steer the ship off course with their alluring call. This is similar to modern-day spoofing of satellite navigation signals, where faked signals are used to mislead the receiver, leading ships—or anyone who trusts these signals—astray.
For Odysseus, the solution to the Sirens was wax in the ears of his crew and being bound to the mast so that he could hear the Sirens’ call without being steered off course.
To mitigate the risk of spoofing in Galileo, the Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA) adds a digital signature to the signal from Galileo satellites. This signature allows the receiver to determine whether the signal it receives truly comes from the Galileo system. In the future, the Signal Authentication Service will complement OSNMA to further increase the security of the positioning data and prevent the spoofing of Galileo signals.
Keeping time
After freeing his crew from their transformation into pigs, Odysseus spends a year on Circe’s island, losing track of time. Galileo’s timing service, which has nanosecond-level accuracy thanks to its quartet of atomic clocks, could have helped him keep time.
Galileo System Time, which is generated by the Galileo system, is not only used as a reference to synchronise the space, control and user segments of the Galileo system, it is also the standard for Europe’s time.
Rescue after shipwreck
On more than one occasion, Odysseus survives shipwreck on his journey home. In one instance, he is separated from his crew before washing up on Calypso’s island. Later, his raft is destroyed on the final stretch of his journey home, and he winds up on the shores of Phaeacia (or of Ithaca, depending on whether you are reading the poem or watching the movie).
If Odysseus had an emergency beacon, rather than being left to the mercy of the seas (and Poseidon), he could have tapped into Galileo’s Search and Rescue Service. As a part of an international rescue effort called COSPAS-SARSAT, Galileo’s search and rescue antennas pick-up distress signals from emergency beacons and relay them to rescue teams. With the support of a network of ground stations throughout Europe, these signals are passed to local search and rescue teams.
What would The Odyssey have looked like with satellite navigation? Odysseus’s ten-year journey completed in a matter of weeks, most likely. A happy ending for Odysseus and his crew, but then we would not have the epic poem and the stories and art that it has inspired.
About Galileo
Galileo is currently the world’s most precise satellite navigation system, serving billions of users around the globe since entering Open Service in 2016. All smartphones sold in the European Single Market are guaranteed Galileo-enabled. In addition, Galileo is making a difference across the fields of rail, maritime, agriculture, financial timing services and rescue operations.
The Galileo programme is managed and funded by the European Commission under the EU Space programme. ESA leads the design, development and qualification of the space and ground systems. ESA is also entrusted with research and development activities for the future of Galileo within the EU programme Horizon Europe. The EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) acts as the service provider, bringing the satellites into service and overseeing their operation and the market and application needs.
For more info about Galileo: https://www.usegalileo.eu/EN/