WASHINGTON — California-based startup Xona Space Systems has been awarded a $4.6 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to demonstrate how its satellite-based positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) service could support military operations, the company announced Feb. 25.
Xona is developing a commercial PNT service through a constellation of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, named Pulsar, which aims to serve as both a complement and a backup to the Global Positioning System (GPS). The U.S. military is particularly interested in testing Pulsar’s capabilities for uncrewed aircraft operations and autonomous vehicles, areas where precise navigation is crucial.
The company last year raised $19 million in venture funding and is pursuing defense contracts amid growing military interest in diversifying PNT sources to mitigate risks posed by GPS disruptions.
“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,” the company said in a statement.
To execute the contract, Xona has partnered with several suppliers of PNT user equipment, including QinetiQ, StarNav, and Locus Lock, which will provide Pulsar-enabled devices for testing. The AFRL-funded demonstrations will initially take place in simulated environments before transitioning to live trials following the launch of Xona’s first Pulsar satellite. That satellite is slated for deployment in June 2025 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-14 rideshare mission, which will carry multiple small satellites into orbit.
“We’ll be able to provide intermittent capability with the first satellite already,” Xona co-founder and CEO Brian Manning told SpaceNews. “We’re planning to ramp up launches in late 2026 to have the first stage of operational service in early 2027.”
Xona plans to deploy a constellation of 258 satellites.
Manning explained that the AFRL 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.”
The Pentagon has been exploring backup PNT capabilities as GPS jammers become more sophisticated and widely available.
