by TAMPA, Fla. – California-based Xona Space Systems is expanding into Canada before deploying the first in a proposed constellation of small navigation satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) next year.
The five-year-old company said on September 27 that it has opened its first international office in Montréal, Québec, as it prepares to deploy a commercial positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) service as an alternative or backup to the GPS.
“As we move toward constellation deployment, we are rapidly entering a phase of the business where we will need to significantly scale our manufacturing and customer service staff,” said Brian Manning, co-founder and CEO of Xona, “and we have determined that keeping this 100% in Silicon Valley is not the most efficient route for us.”
He said the Montreal office’s main focus is developing user equipment for the Pulsar PNT service, which will also require existing GPS devices to undergo firmware updates to ensure compatibility.
However, Xona is also considering expanding manufacturing operations to Canada for the PNT cargoes it develops in-house.
Aerospacelab is under contract to produce the first small satellite platform for Xona from its recently opened factory in California. The satellite will be the European manufacturer’s first spacecraft in orbit for a commercial customer.
Manning said Aerospacelab has reserved a launch slot for its inaugural spacecraft on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Transporter 14 rideshare mission in June.
Aerospacelab aims to start integrating the payload into its satellite platform before the end of this year.
Extension time
Xona ultimately plans to operate a LEO constellation of between 250 and 300 small PNT satellites.
“We are still evaluating potential vendors for the initial phase of implementation, but we plan to finalize selections before the upcoming launch,” he said via email.
By operating in a much lower orbit than GPS and similar global navigation satellite systems, Xona says Pulsar can provide ten times better accuracy than standard GNSS networks, while providing services via encrypted signals.
The value of customer contracts Xona has signed with commercial and government customers has doubled in the past six months, said Manning, who declined to provide further details.
“With a single satellite, our main focus is on executing our customer pilot programs to validate and refine PULSAR user equipment in different environments, as coverage will obviously be intermittent with a single LEO satellite,” he added .
“With just sixteen satellites, we will have sustained coverage across several high-value customer regions that can start generating real revenue.”
Xona has 35 full-time employees and wants to grow to 50 early next year.
Tyler Reid, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Xona, leads the team in Canada, where the company currently employs seven people.
The expansion plans come after Xona raised $19 million in a Series A funding round earlier this year.
