I wish people (especially journalists) would get it through their skulls already:

• Vehicles don't communicate with satellites.
• GNSS (like GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, or BeiDou) do not use two way communication.
• The satellite can therefore not know the position of a GNSS receiver.
• Instead the satellites send timestamps and their positions, the receiver uses that information to calculate its own position. If the system with the receiver needs to report its position to someone they typically use some form of terrestrial communication, like mobile phone networks.

With that knowledge the comment by /u/imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com makes a lot more sense than whatever the article is trying to imply about satellite failures.