Launch failures and groundings

After Brexit, Britain — a major financial and engineering contributor to Galileo — was barred from the encrypted Public Regulated Service. The UK has since spent close to £100M studying its own sovereign GNSS replacement.

China activates BeiDou-3, beginning the constellation's global expansion. By the end of the decade BeiDou will have more visible satellites in the sky over much of the world than GPS itself.

China activates BeiDou-1's regional service. The technical justification is operational; the policy justification, repeated openly in Beijing, is that GPS is operated by an adversary that may switch the lights off.

The Council of the European Union formally launches the Galileo programme. The justification, written down explicitly, is freedom from American GPS as a strategic single point of failure.

Washington opens technology-transfer reviews into Loral and Hughes assistance to China after a string of Long March failures. The reviews will end careers and rewrite American export law for a decade.

Challenger's loss grounds the Space Shuttle for thirty-two months, stranding allied payloads — German Spacelab, Canadian, ESA — that had been folded into the American manifest. Backup launchers had been quietly let to atrophy.

A Soviet Su-15 shoots down KAL 007 over Sakhalin with 269 aboard. Two weeks later Reagan announces civilian access to GPS — a gift wrapped in a clear assertion of who owns the signal.

A Soviet nuclear-powered radar satellite re-enters uncontrollably and scatters radioactive debris across the Northwest Territories. Canada bills Moscow $6M for the cleanup. The Soviets pay half.