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

The defence force is already offering sextant training, so members can navigate by the stars, along with terrestrial navigation training. Photograph: Dino Fracchia/Alamy

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?”