Six satellites for Xona Space Systems are scheduled to launch on a SpaceX rocket later this month, the first step toward the company’s 258-satellite Pulsar constellation and the first precision commercial alternative to government-run GPS networks. Four of the satellites use a platform from Aerospace Labs similar to a prototype Xona launched last year that proved the technology; the other two were built entirely by Xona at its Burlingame, California, headquarters.
Pulsar’s pitch is precision and resilience. The company says its low-Earth-orbit signal will deliver centimeter-level positioning instead of GPS’s meter-level accuracy, work indoors and in urban canyons where GPS fades, and be strong enough to deter jamming and spoofing. The satellites keep time without onboard atomic clocks, syncing to ground-based references instead, and their signals can be received by existing GPS receivers with a software modification. Once the six are in orbit, passing over mid-latitudes about eight times a day, Xona plans to begin beta-testing with real customers; TimeBeat, an electronic timing company, is lined up as an early pilot.
The company has raised just over $300 million from venture investors since its 2019 founding, including $20 million from the U.S. Space Force, a sign of how seriously the military takes navigation resilience. Xona aims for full coverage of the U.S., Europe, Japan, and South Korea by 2028. The scheduled launch is a small step toward that: 258 satellites is roughly the scale required to match GPS’s continuous global coverage from low Earth orbit.