ESA chooses Norse Navigationfor resilient maritime positioning

The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed a contract with Norse Navigation to take the company's resilient maritime positioning sensors through maritime certification testing and customer validation. The project is funded through NAVISP, ESA's navigation innovation programme, and follows a call from the Norwegian Space Agency.

Why it matters

Satellite navigation signals such as GPS and Galileo are increasingly jammed (drowned out by noise) or spoofed (replaced by fake signals). In some waters this happens every day. A wrong position is dangerous for any ship. For autonomous and remotely operated vessels, where there may be no navigator on the bridge to notice that something is wrong, trusted positioning is a basic requirement.

Norse Navigation's sensors detect jamming and spoofing, counter the attack and keep a position that can be trusted.

Already tested against real interference

The work is already well underway. In September we brought our products to Jammertest on Andøya, the world's largest open test of GNSS jamming and spoofing, and validated our protection against real jammers and spoofers.

“Our vision is to build advanced jamming and spoofing protection into the navigation equipment ships are already required to carry, with no extra boxes or screens on the bridge, and at a price that makes it available to every ship. ESA's support takes us through the last mile, from technology to certified products on board,” says Henrik Foss, CEO and co-founder of Norse Navigation.