Xona Space Systems has introduced Pulsar Verified, a partnership program that certifies receivers, chipsets, and test equipment for interoperability with the company’s Pulsar low Earth orbit positioning, navigation, and timing signal, said Tyler Reid, co-founder and CTO at Xona.
The program follows Pulsar-0’s first year in orbit, during which the satellite completed more than 350 transmission passes across four continents and returned 22 terabytes of observation data, with commercial receivers tracking its signals from Finland to Australia.
The inaugural Pulsar Verified cohort includes Trimble, which is bringing devices launched as early as 2018 to Pulsar compatibility, along with Septentrio (part of Hexagon), STMicroelectronics, Safran, StarNav, and Keysight. Septentrio joined Xona’s ecosystem around the time of the company’s Series C fundraise and is working to integrate Pulsar across its next-generation device lineup. Safran’s Skydel and Keysight’s PNT X, both GNSS simulators capable of modeling Pulsar constellation behavior, have separately attained Pulsar Verification, allowing developers to test against the signal before receiver hardware ships. Xona CEO Brian Manning said Pulsar Verified equipment installed in drones, robots, phones, or IoT devices will be ready to use the service as it comes online.
Xona positioned the verification program as a response to escalating jamming and spoofing incidents affecting commercial aviation, shipping, agriculture, and financial systems beyond traditional conflict zones. In live-sky jamming tests, the company said its stronger signal held where GNSS was disrupted, and that Pulsar can shrink a jammer’s effective area by as much as 95%.
The certification push follows a $170 million Series C round closed in March, led by Mohari Ventures Natural Capital with participation from Craft Ventures, ICONIQ, Woven Capital, NGP Capital, Samsung Next, and Hexagon, among others. Xona opened a satellite integration and assembly facility in Burlingame, California, in April to scale production toward a planned 258-satellite constellation, with the first U.S.-built satellites expected to launch later this year. In June, Xona signed a memorandum of understanding with Murata Manufacturing — an existing investor through its Wonderstone Ventures arm — to explore Pulsar integration into communications modules, timing devices, and industrial electronics for data centers, financial networks, and 5G/6G infrastructure.
