A week without satellite timing would cost Norway roughly NOK 3.4 billion, about EUR 320 million. That estimate, from earlier this year, sits behind three contracts the European Space Agency signed on October 27 at Spaceport Norway in Oslo. All three run through NAVISP, ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Program, and each tackles a different way interference breaks navigation.
Jamming data as a product
Tromso’s Testnor is assembling a commercial library of recorded GNSS interference plus matching RF playback files. It opens with material from Jammertest, the open-air exercise the firm coordinates and ESA calls the largest of its kind, letting buyers probe hardware against authentic attacks.
Ships and drones
Trondheim’s Norse Navigation is designing marine sensors that hold trustworthy fixes under attack, bundling multi-constellation GNSS with Galileo’s Open Service Navigation Message Authentication, spoofing and jamming detection, deliberate degraded-mode running and bridge-suited alerts. SOLAS-covered merchant vessels are the target.
Rift Dynamics of Sandnes, with subcontractor Comrod, is hardening guidance for cheap, disposable drones. Arctic trials should reach toward ten minutes of dependable flight without GNSS and clean recovery once signals return.
Norway’s case for spending
Kristian Svartveit, a satellite navigation adviser at the Norwegian Space Agency, tied the work to a defence review ranking positioning, navigation and timing as central to national security. ESA’s Rafael Lucas Rodriguez noted a quieter advantage: three Galileo ground sites already sit on Norwegian soil, at Svalbard and the remote islands of Troll and Jan Mayen.
Four more satellites
Two days earlier, ESA had enlarged the Galileo Second Generation fleet. Extensions for Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence add two spacecraft apiece, lifting G2 to 16. Thales signed in Rome on October 23, Airbus in Ottobrunn on October 26, with delivery due in 2031. Each carries a digital navigation payload, improved antenna and inter-satellite links.
