First-of-its-kind FCC authorization clears Xona to broadcast Pulsar alongside GPS from its planned constellation of more than 250 satellites.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has authorized Xona to broadcast the world’s first commercial navigation signal designed to operate alongside GPS from its full Low Earth Orbit satellite constellation.

The first-of-its-kind authorization comes as Xona prepares to launch its first six production satellites in October and scales manufacturing at its satellite production facility in Burlingame, California. With this authorization, Xona will become the only FFC-authorized private navigation constellation to operate next to nation-state systems from the United States, Europe, China, and Russia.

Pulsar is the first navigation system purpose-built for the demands of modern devices and infrastructure. Its signals are up to 100 times stronger than GPS, protected against spoofing through a dynamic cryptographic watermark, and designed to work with existing navigation hardware through software and firmware updates.

The new authorization expands upon the FCC license granted for Pulsar-0, Xona’s final demonstration mission and the first commercial satellite authorized to broadcast radionavigation signals in L-band spectrum alongside GPS. The new authorization expands this authorization to Xona’s planned full constellation as the company scales production at its Burlingame production facility.

“From the beginning, we were told that what we wanted to do was impossible,” said Brian Manning, Co-Founder and CEO of Xona. “A commercial company had never built a system like Pulsar, and no one had been authorized to introduce a new, high-power navigation signal alongside GPS. This decision is the culmination of years of engineering, testing and coordination, clearing the way for a capability the world increasingly needs.”

Operating alongside GPS required Xona to demonstrate that Pulsar could deliver a substantially stronger signal without interfering with the navigation and aviation services already operating in the spectrum band. The company worked extensively with the FCC, U.S. government agencies, aviation stakeholders and international governments to evaluate Pulsar’s signal performance and coordinate its operation.

Rather than avoiding those constraints by building in less established frequency bands for navigation, Xona chose the harder path: engineering Pulsar for the L-band spectrum already used by more than six billion Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-enabled devices worldwide. By broadcasting a new proprietary signal adjacent to GPS, Pulsar has demonstrated it can integrate into many existing receivers without requiring an entirely new hardware ecosystem.

“Making room for something new required us to demonstrate that we understood the importance of what was already there,” said Christina Youn, General Counsel and Vice President of External Affairs at Xona. “GPS supports aviation, communications, emergency response, financial markets and countless systems people rely on every day. We did not ask regulators or the industry to take our claims on faith. We designed for coexistence, subjected that design to rigorous scrutiny, and then proved it through live transmissions from orbit.”

Since launching in June 2025, Pulsar-0 has completed more than 350 transmission passes across four continents. Its live signals have been independently tracked by more than a dozen commercial receivers, demonstrated compatibility with existing GNSS on existing navigation hardware worldwide, and supported continued testing of Xona’s signal performance in real-world environments.