How will Australia’s emergency services cope if satellites go down? With a sextant and a street directory

Jul 22, 2026 - 15:30

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How will Australia’s emergency services cope if satellites go down? With a sextant and a street directory

Military and SES personnel being taught analog communication and navigation techniques as experts warn solar flare could knock out ‘critical space infrastructure’

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Australia’s emergency services and military personnel are being trained to read paper maps, navigate without GPS support, and sail by the stars in case something knocks out the nation’s space capabilities.

A panel at the 19th Australian space forum in Adelaide on Wednesday was asked to consider what would happen “if we suddenly lost access to critical space infrastructure – no satellites, no GPS, no remote sensing, no secure communications?”