Faulty navigation data that led to USS Guardian grounding also misplaced Chilean southern coast

In its review of the erroneous Digital Nautical Chart (DNC) that likely contributed to the 17 January grounding of a US Navy ship in the Philippines, the agency responsible for providing the navigation data told IHS Jane's it also discovered a similar error in the placement of Chile's southern coast on those charts.

A spokesperson from the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) said that the grounding of USS Guardian (MCM 5) prompted a comprehensive review of the DNC it provides to the navy to help crews steer ships safely at sea.

After poring through charts covering more than 116 million ² n miles of ocean, agency officials discovered that 25 chart areas - less than 1% of the total DNC holdings - had inaccuracies that required additional scrutiny. Of those, only one was considered to be cause for concern because it was comparable to that of the Tubbataha Reef, which was misplaced on the Coastal DNC in part due to inaccurate Landsat-based commercial imagery from which the DNC was derived, officials told IHS Jane's on 23 January. Landsat consists of a constellation of Earth observation satellites orbiting around the planet.