Something is jamming GPS over Europe. Here's what we found

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0:00 What is jamming Europe’s GPS?
4:43 How does GPS work?
10:46 How easy is it to jam GPS?
12:18 The Hunt To Find The Jammer
17:12 Who are the possible culprits?
20:06 The Investigation Goes Public
23:00 Narrowing In On The Jammer
25:15 Cosmos 2546
28:25 A Secret Messaging Service?
29:19 What happens if we lose GPS?

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Special thanks to the experts and collaborators who made this video possible:

Professor Todd Humphreys and Dr Zach Clements at the University of Texas at Austin, whose research this story is based on - thank you for sharing your data, your time, and the inside story of the hunt.

Ramsey Faragher, Director of the Royal Institute of Navigation, for the brilliant interview, feedback and stories that helped to shape this video.

Richard D. Easton, for helping us understand the history of GPS.

Dana Goward, President of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, for providing context on interference and alternative systems.

Richard Bowden and Luis Enrique Aguado from GMV for sharing their independent work tracing the source of the interference.

Ben Watts, for sharing his first-hand experience of GPS jamming and spoofing from the cockpit.

KeepTrack (https://keeptrack.space/) for generously giving us access to their satellite-tracking software, which we used to visualise the search through 15,000 satellites for the culprit. And to GPSWise (https://gpswise.aero/) for kindly providing their software which we used to visualise GPS jamming and spoofing.

Bartosz Ciechanowski, whose interactive GPS explainer (https://ciechanow.ski/gps/) was a great resource for research and the basis for one of our technical animations. Thank you for allowing us to build on your work.

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References:

Clements, Z. L., Kriezis, A., & Humphreys, T. E. (2026). Chasing Lightning: Detecting, Characterizing, and Identifying a Powerful Space-Based GNSS Interference - https://ve42.co/GNSSInterference

The rest here: https://ve42.co/GPSJammingRefs

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Writer, Producer & Director: Emilia Gyles
Presenters: Derek Muller & Gregor Čavlović
Editor: Peter Nelson
Asst. Editor & Sound Designer: James Stuart
Animators: Domonkos Józsa, Emma Wright, Alex Drakoulis & Andrew Neet
Illustrators: Jakub Misiek & Maria Gusakovich
Stop Motion: Sulli Yost
Researchers: Aakash Singh Bagga, Sophia Rose & Callum Cuttle
Thumbnail Designers: Abdallah Rabah, Ren Hurley, Ben Powell & Daniel Ellacott
Production Team: Jess Bishop-Laggett, Matthew Cavanagh & Anna Milkovic
Executive Producers: Casper Mebius, Derek Muller & Gregor Čavlović

Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Storyblocks
Music from Epidemic Sound