Xona Space Systems Closes $19M Series A to Build Ultra-Accurate GPS Alternative

It's not like there are no GPS alternatives already:

Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS)

India's Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS)

China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS)

European Union's Galileo

Most consumer GPS receivers can use any or all of these already...

Interesting considering only one percent of StarLink’s constellation capacity would be needed for StarLink to provide the service intentionally, and constellation signals can also be used opportunistically.

https://people.engineering.osu.edu/sites/default/files/2023-...

https://people.engineering.osu.edu/media/document/2023-08-11...

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.11578

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10056358/

Recent somewhat related thread with great comments on GNSS RTK: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40318487

> The company has designed its signal to be backwards compatible with many existing GPS chipsets, though some are “forwards compatible,” Manning said. But in general, chipsets will only need a firmware update to access the encrypted Pulsar signal.

So, they're planning to use the same frequency bands as GPS? And the DoD is okay with this?

Space News coverage: https://spacenews.com/xona-raises-19-million-series-a-funds-...

home page: https://www.xonaspace.com/