Results from independent analysis of open receiver data, October–November 2026. Each finding links to the live page where you can check it yourself.
Constellation
NavIC is one satellite short of working on its own
Only three satellites (IRNSS-1B, IRNSS-1I, NVS-01) broadcast usable navigation data. Positioning needs four. Five older satellites still transmit, but their atomic clocks have failed, so they only carry the messaging service. Phones keep working because they combine NavIC with GPS and other systems.
See the live status →
Orbits
NVS-02's broadcast orbit is off by about 9,000 km
NVS-02 was stranded in an elliptical transfer orbit in 2025. It still transmits navigation data, but that data describes a different orbit (eccentricity 0.37) from the one it actually flies (0.74, from CelesTrak tracking). Measured distances disagree with it by about 9,000 km, so the monitor marks it unusable.
See the orbits →
Space weather · new method
GNSS receivers work as a solar-flare detector
A flare ionises the sunlit upper atmosphere within a minute, so every GPS signal path shows the same sudden jump in electron content. Tested on the X9.0 flare of 3 October 2024, the detector fired at all five stations at 12:15 UTC, three minutes before the X-ray peak. In blind tests on 26 days of 2026 data it found 5 of 6 M-class flares, including the M1.7 of 19 October, without being told about them. It also found one sharp C-class flare and raised no false alarms. It works by stacking all stations: a weak response that every station shows at the same moment cannot be noise.
See the flare detector →
Signals · new method
NavIC's fixed sky makes interference stand out
NavIC satellites hang almost still in the sky. That means each receiver sees the same signal strength at the same sidereal time every day, repeating to within 0.2–0.5 dB. Against that baseline, small losses are easy to spot. At Lucknow, all four S-band signals repeatedly dropped by 7–15 dB for several minutes while L5 stayed normal. NavIC's S-band sits just above the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi/microwave band, so local radio interference is a likely cause.
See the interference watch →
Ionosphere
The ionosphere over India costs phones metres of accuracy
The equatorial ionisation anomaly lies right across India. In the afternoon, electron content reaches 40–60 TECU. Straight up, that is 6–10 m of extra range error on GPS L1 and 12–17 m on NavIC L5, and about twice that for low satellites. After sunset, plasma bubbles can make signals flicker. Dual-frequency receivers remove most of this error; single-frequency phones cannot.
See today's ionosphere →
Night-time
Plasma bubbles: almost every night in the south, never in the north
After sunset, bubbles of thin plasma rise over the magnetic equator and make satellite signals flicker. In the second half of October 2026 they appeared on 14 of 15 nights over Bengaluru, Colombo, Mahé and Bangkok, usually between 19:00 and 01:00 IST. Lucknow and Kanpur in the north saw none: the bubbles rarely reach that far from the equator. October is peak season; the next one is March–April.
See the night-by-night calendar →
Storms
The 31 October storm thinned the daytime ionosphere
During the Kp 6 geomagnetic storm of 31 October to 1 November 2026, daytime electron content over northern India and Diego Garcia was 25–45% below its normal level for the time of day. That is a "negative storm phase". The next night, it rose to more than double its normal level at Mahé (Seychelles).
See "compared with normal" →
Timing
NavIC time and GPS time agree to within tens of nanoseconds
At Lucknow, NavIC time and GPS time differ by a steady 28.5 ± 2.6 ns (including a constant receiver bias). The difference is stable to 3×10-12 over 5 minutes. Even with only three navigation satellites, NavIC still delivers accurate time to telecom networks, power grids and banks.
See the timing page →
What's next
NVS-03 should restore the minimum of four
NVS-03 launched on 30 October 2026 and is raising its orbit from transfer orbit to geosynchronous. Once it starts broadcasting a NavIC signal, this site will detect it automatically and post an alert to the feed.
Track NVS-03 →