Xona's satellite GPS alternative nears launch

Xona Space Systems is preparing to go live with the first precision commercial alternative to GPS. A SpaceX rocket is scheduled to launch six satellites for Xona later this month — four modeled on a prototype the company proved out last year, and two built entirely in-house at Xona’s Burlingame, California, headquarters. Those two satellites are intended to be the foundation of Pulsar, the company’s planned 258-satellite constellation, which will offer centimeter-level geolocation precision instead of the meter-level precision GPS provides, with a signal strong enough to be detected inside buildings and in urban environments.

Xona was founded in 2019 by five engineers who met at Stanford University’s aerospace engineering graduate program. One of them, Tyler Reid, now the company’s chief technology officer, wrote his doctoral thesis on using low-earth-orbit satellites to improve navigation; he later worked on self-driving cars at Ford and saw the need for a service like Pulsar to support autonomous vehicles of all kinds. CEO Brian Manning said the idea grew out of casual conversations among the founders about the limits of GPS. “My knee jerk was like, this is dumb,” he told TechCrunch, recalling his first reaction to the idea of competing with a free government service. He came to see the real market not as the signal itself but as the hardware — the billions of GPS-enabled devices sold every year that are not given away for free.

Improving on GPS required Xona to design satellites that keep precise time without onboard atomic clocks, relying instead on their proximity to Earth and close contact with ground-based references, and to make sure its signal works with existing GPS receivers through a simple software modification. Xona can begin beta-testing Pulsar with real customers once its satellites are in orbit and passing over the mid-latitudes about eight times a day. Ian Gough, CEO of electronic-timing company TimeBeat, said the initial pilot will let his engineers check and correct the timing of its devices around the world.

Xona has raised just over $300 million from venture investors since its founding, including $20 million from the U.S. Space Force. While Xona is focused on building a commercial service, the U.S. government has shown clear interest in the technology, as the jamming and spoofing of satellite navigation systems becomes increasingly common in conflicts. Manning believes Pulsar’s signal is powerful enough to deter jammers and spoofers. By 2028, Xona hopes to offer full coverage in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and South Korea.

Why it matters

A jam-resistant, building-penetrating positioning signal would remove one of the technical barriers still holding back autonomous vehicles and other machines that need to know their location precisely — a market Xona is betting will pay for GPS-grade service that has been free for decades.