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Xona bets 258 LEO satellites can outmuscle GPS
Xona says its low-Earth orbit navigation network will deliver signals 100 times stronger than GPS, with early service set for 2027.
Image: Ars Technica
Xona Space Systems wants to bring a pre-GPS idea back with modern economics: a 258-satellite navigation constellation in low-Earth orbit that it says could deliver signals 100 times stronger than GPS.
The pitch is straightforward. By flying much closer to Earth than GPS and other global navigation satellite systems, Xona says its Pulsar satellites could provide more accurate positioning in dense cities, under heavy foliage, and even indoors. The stronger signals could also be harder to jam at a time when interference is increasingly disrupting aviation, shipping, and smartphone apps.
Xona’s first six production satellites are scheduled to launch in October 2026, with early service beginning in 2027. Once the full constellation is deployed, the company says customers will be able to locate themselves anywhere on Earth to within several centimeters.
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“That added power means that we can get into that indoor environment that GPS can’t get to today.” “Our higher power allows you to get into those jamming environments a lot further than you would with GPS by itself.”
Xona already has one satellite in orbit. Pulsar-0 launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission on July 1, 2025. According to a Xona blog post, it has taken part in “live-sky jamming tests across multiple countries,” showing that signals 100 times stronger than GPS can shrink a jammer’s effective area by 95 percent. The company also says software updates improved the satellite’s native positioning accuracy from a 4.2-centimeter ranging error to 1.5-centimeter accuracy.
The system is also aimed at timing customers. Xona says intermittent timing signals could begin in mid-latitude regions after the first six production satellites launch, with eventual timing accuracy of 10 nanoseconds. Unlike GPS, which relies on atomic clocks onboard satellites, Pulsar would use a cheaper software-based timing approach. Xona says it has already signed precision-timing customers in financial markets, telecommunications, data centers, and transportation systems.
Using LEO for positioning, navigation, and timing is not a new concept. Before GPS, the US military relied on Transit, the world’s first satellite navigation system, which became operational in 1964 after prototype launches beginning in 1959. Transit used Doppler shifts from satellites passing overhead to help US Navy Polaris ballistic missile submarines calculate their positions. But with only 36 operational satellites, it could only provide fixes every hour or two.
That trade-off still exists. Zak Kassas, director of the Autonomous Systems Perception, Intelligence, and Navigation (ASPIN) Laboratory at The Ohio State University, told Ars that LEO is “both a blessing and a curse.” The lower altitude means stronger signals and additional motion data that can help with navigation. The downside is scale: to match GPS-like performance, a LEO system needs about 10 times more satellites than a similar constellation in medium-Earth orbit.
Kassas said the first customers will likely be organizations willing to pay for premium resilience and integrity.
“Organizations that place an exceptionally high value on availability, resilience, integrity, authentication, and precision, and are already accustomed to paying for premium PNT services.”
He said those customers would be “defense and national security users and government agencies responsible for resilience.”
Building the Pulsar fleet
Xona has contracted Aerospacelab in Belgium to build some early satellites carrying its PNT payloads, but it plans to manufacture most of the 258 satellites itself at its factory in Burlingame, California.
One recent hire is Tim Graham, who spent a decade at SpaceX and became engineering manager for avionics on the Raptor engines used by Starship. He joined Xona earlier in 2026 to lead satellite development across hardware, software, and propulsion.
“If you look at the historical impact of major technological developments, GPS is up there as world-changing.” “Bringing a more modern design for a modern technology GPS system to the world is a pretty exciting mission.”
When Ars visited in June, Xona’s two in-house satellite buses for the October 2026 launch were undergoing vibration testing. Graham said the company is intentionally pushing hardware until it fails to surface problems before launch.
The satellites are also being designed to work with nearly any launch provider, not just SpaceX, in an effort to maximize flexibility and reduce deployment time.
Receiver compatibility and rivals
Xona is not the only startup chasing LEO navigation. TrustPoint, based in Virginia, plans early PNT services in 2027 and eventually a 300-satellite constellation. According to SpaceNews, TrustPoint is using C-band signals in the 4 to 8 gigahertz range rather than the L-band signals in the 1 to 2 gigahertz range used by GPS.
Xona has taken the opposite approach. It designed Pulsar to work with receivers built for L1 or L5 signals, making it easier to support existing GPS-oriented hardware. The company says some devices would need only firmware and software updates, not a hardware redesign.
On July 9, 2026, Xona announced Pulsar Verified, a compatibility program that provides a custom test plan for hardware makers. Companies already signed up include Trimble and Septentrio, as Xona tries to make a stronger GPS alternative work with the hardware already in the field.
Frontier Editor
Dan is our resident futurist, covering electric mobility, space exploration, and the smart home. He's interested in atoms just as much as bits. Whether it's a new battery chemistry, a reusable rocket, or a protocol that finally makes IoT devices talk to each other, Dan breaks down the engineering that pushes humanity forward.
via Ars Technica
