A new commercial positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) collaboration, anchored by TrustPoint’s low Earth orbit (LEO) C-band navigation service, is taking shape with industry partners on both sides of the Atlantic.
The effort represents a significant step toward hybrid GNSS/LEO PNT resilience, bringing together new space platforms and mature receiver technology from established global suppliers.
TrustPoint is a U.S. startup developing a commercial global navigation satellite system comprising a proliferated C-band LEO constellation. Earlier this year, it announced the successful launch and first contact of its third satellite, Time Flies, part of a series of demonstrators supporting field testing of TrustPoint-enabled receivers being developed by a number of partners.
Also in 2025, TrustPoint was awarded a $1.2 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract for work under the U.S. Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), to create and demonstrate the first receivers capable of processing TrustPoint’s C-band GNSS service.
For this work, TrustPoint is joined by NovAtel, operating within Hexagon AB, the Stockholm-based industrial technology group and well-known fixture of European research, development and manufacturing activities in autonomy and precision PNT. Hexagon NovAtel brings to the project its advanced anti-jamming GNSS technology, using adaptive antennas and signal processing to suppress jamming while preserving GNSS positioning and timing.
In a recent press release, Patrick Shannon, CEO and Founder of TrustPoint, evoked the growing relevance of alternative PNT architectures: “This Phase II award highlights the importance of frequency-diverse, resilient PNT solutions for today’s military operations.”
Joining hands
While the NAVAIR contract is a U.S. government award, the engagement with Hexagon NovAtel leverages a global supply chain and European technical heritage in GNSS receivers, effectively casting the collaboration as a broader transatlantic industry initiative. Hexagon’s GNSS products are widely used in European markets, and its core technology teams in Europe have contributed significantly to receiver design and testing.
The integration of TrustPoint’s C-band navigation signals with Hexagon NovAtel’s receiver platforms establishes groundwork for hybrid LEO–GNSS PNT, potentially strengthening resilience for commercial and government users and contributing to robust navigation performance in contested environments through diversified, frequency-resilient signal architectures.
With further receiver demonstrations and interoperability testing anticipated into 2026, this collaboration exemplifies a private-sector-driven path toward diversified navigation architectures that both complement legacy GNSS, like GPS and Galileo, and enhance PNT robustness beyond traditional MEO signals, a model that is rapidly gaining ground in specialist GNSS discourse.
