Xona Space Systems, a California firm, is preparing to launch the first six production satellites of a new low-Earth-orbit (LEO) navigation network, with satellites launching in October 2026 and early service starting in 2027. Unlike GPS and similar systems, which orbit at much higher altitudes, these Pulsar satellites promise signals up to 100 times stronger, offering far greater accuracy in cities, under foliage and indoors, while also being more resistant to the jamming and spoofing that increasingly disrupts aviation, shipping and smartphone navigation.

Xona's first satellite, Pulsar-0, launched in July 2025 and has already taken part in live jamming tests that reportedly cut a jammer's effective range by 95 percent, alongside trials of an anti-spoofing watermark and software updates that improved positioning accuracy to 1.5 centimetres. Once the full 258-satellite constellation is complete, the company says users could pinpoint locations to within several centimetres and access timing signals accurate to 10 nanoseconds, achieved more cheaply than GPS's atomic clocks via software-based methods. Early adopters are expected to be organisations needing the highest levels of precision and resilience, such as defence, government and financial or telecoms firms, with broader urban coverage arriving once around 16 satellites are in orbit.