California startup building commercial GPS alternative as jamming threats grow

As GPS jamming and spoofing become a growing concern for aviation, defense and space operators, a California satellite startup is developing a low-Earth-orbit navigation network designed to provide a commercial backup that is harder to jam.

Xona Space Systems is developing Pulsar, a positioning, navigation and timing constellation that differs from GPS because its satellites will operate much closer to Earth. The company says the system is designed to provide high-accuracy location and timing services, including centimeter-level positioning.

The company’s commercial service is intended to provide the same broad category of positioning, navigation and timing service, known in the industry as PNT, as a backup or alternative to GPS and other government systems.

Traditional GPS satellites operate in medium Earth orbit, more than 12,000 miles above Earth. By the time those signals reach users on the ground or in the air, they are weak enough to be disrupted by relatively low-power jammers.

Xona’s system is different because its LEO satellites will broadcast a signal up to 100 times stronger than legacy GNSS signals and will include authentication to help protect users from spoofing.

GNSS is the broader term for global navigation satellite systems, including GPS, Europe’s Galileo, China’s BeiDou and other government-operated constellations.

Xona launched Pulsar-0, its first production-class satellite, in June 2025. The satellite is being used to validate signal authentication and performance before the company begins deploying a larger constellation.

The full Pulsar constellation is expected to include about 300 satellites, according to Xona. The company raised $170 million in Series C funding in March 2026 to accelerate deployment of the constellation and scale satellite production at its factory in Burlingame, California.

Xona said the funding followed on-orbit work in 2025, including the broadcast of what it described as the first fully authenticated satellite navigation signal and the highest positioning accuracy recorded from orbit.

The company is targeting customers in markets that depend on precise location or timing, including defense, critical infrastructure, logistics, automotive, construction, agriculture and mining.

GPS jamming and spoofing are already disrupting aviation in parts of Europe and the Middle East. Xona is betting that customers will pay for a stronger backup signal rather than rely entirely on government-run GNSS systems.

According to a report by Space.com, Xona’s Pulsar-0 satellite has mapped widespread GPS signal degradation over Europe and the Middle East from orbit, results that surprised even the company’s own engineers.

The satellite orbits about 310 miles above Earth. Xona co-founder Kaz Gunning told Space.com that the company expected to see some jamming, but found more than expected.

“When we fly over North America, for example, we see a beautiful signal all the time,” Gunning told Space.com. “But as soon as we started doing any operations above Europe, we noticed that there was really something going on there. We thought we were going to see some jamming, but it’s quite a bit more than we expected.”

In the hardest-hit areas, GPS signal strength at the satellite’s altitude dropped from about 40 decibels to as little as 10 decibels, according to Space.com.

The finding suggests GPS interference is not only a problem for aircraft and ground users. It can also affect satellites in low Earth orbit that use GPS for position, timing, pointing and operational coordination.

“You lose the GPS capability as soon as you pass over these regions,” Gunning told Space.com.

Xona’s planned Pulsar constellation is intended to reduce that vulnerability, though not eliminate it. A stronger signal from low Earth orbit would make jamming harder and shrink the area a jammer can affect.

Gunning told Space.com that existing jammers would affect about 5% of the area they can currently disrupt once Pulsar is operating.

Xona plans to launch a batch of six satellites in October 2026 and begin ramping up production after that. Early customers in timekeeping are expected to begin using Pulsar with intermittent coverage by the end of 2026, with basic service expected in early 2027.

Xona has not publicly disclosed pricing for Pulsar. The company has previously said it expects to offer different performance tiers, with business models that could include recurring subscriptions or lifetime fees depending on the customer and market.The post California startup building commercial GPS alternative as jamming threats grow appeared first on AeroTime.

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