Insider Brief
- Xona Space Systems secured a contract with the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) to demonstrate resilient commercial Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) solutions for Department of Defense (DoD) missions, bringing its total signed contracts to over $20 million.
- The contract, awarded through the STAR-FISH program, will test Xona’s PULSAR™ satellite navigation service for jamming and spoofing resilience, multipath effect reduction, and security key distribution in GPS-denied environments.
- Xona has partnered with QinetiQ, StarNav, and Locus Lock to integrate PULSAR into commercial user devices, with demonstrations set to include advanced simulations and in-orbit testing following the first PULSAR satellite launch in June 2025.
- Image: Xona Space Systems
PRESS RELEASE — Xona Space Systems (Xona), the company developing a high-performance complementary alternative to GPS, announced today that it has secured a contract with Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) to demonstrate and mature resilient commercial PNT (Positioning, Navigation and Timing) solutions for DoD missions. This award, granted through the Space Technology Advanced Research – Fast-tracking Innovative Software and Hardware (STAR-FISH) program, brings Xona’s total signed contracts to over $20 million to date.
Through this contract, Xona will demonstrate key performance aspects of its PULSAR™ high-performance satellite navigation service on multiple commercial user devices and in a variety of scenarios, including where GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite Signals (GNSS) may be challenged or denied. Testing will include demonstrations of jamming and spoofing resilience, multipath effect reduction, and security key distribution. This effort will accelerate the readiness of advanced alt-PNT capabilities in commercial off-the-shelf user equipment to meet DoD user needs with rapid acquisition times.
As part of this contract Xona has partnered with several leading GPS/GNSS user equipment providers with the ability to rapidly manufacture and deploy PULSAR enabled devices. Partners who will be demonstrating performance of their devices with the PULSAR service as part of this contract include QinetiQ, StarNav, and Locus Lock.
“The technology in modern GNSS user equipment is incredibly advanced these days, and capable of very high-performance if you can provide it a high-performance signal,” said Brian Manning, Xona CEO & Co-Founder. “This contract is enabling us to demonstrate not only the advanced capabilities these receivers can achieve with the PULSAR service, but also the utility of combining mass produced hardware with a securely controlled PNT service to support anything from small drones to large DoD systems.”
This multi-year award will feature Xona’s advanced simulation capabilities along with demonstrations using the first PULSAR satellite that is scheduled to launch in June 2025.
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