• ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I watched a video on this recently. Really interesting, especially how the researchers figured out it was a Russian satellite in a really high orbit. All it takes is a low-power burst to overwhelm the GPS network because it runs on such low powered, sensitive signals. They theorize the Russians were testing for very brief windows to see how well it world work. They could jam these signals anywhere over the Earth. Same for other nations too.

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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      5 days ago

      I watched the Veritasium episode on it just yesterday! The other theory is that it was actually being used for covert signals and the disruption was secondary.

      • Devadander@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Considering the impact of these tests, that doesn’t seem likely. You wouldn’t be sending covert messages in a way that would be so heavily scrutinized. I know it was a theory presented during the video, but that’s just journalistic integrity.

        And ultimately, even if they were covert messages, now they also know they can disrupt gps

      • Pollo_Jack@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I thought that was the cover story. They deliberately used a channel partially in the bandwidth for some deniability. It isn’t like they didn’t know what bandwidth GPS used when they designed the satellite.

      • dickalan@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        last I checked that channel was owned by private equity so take it with a grain of salt