A new global navigation satellite manufacturing facility opened in Burlingame April 9, boasting state-of-the-art technology that can deliver precise positioning and timing for the technology that needs it — from autonomous vehicles to mobile devices.
Xona satellites have a signal that’s up to 100 times stronger than traditional global positioning systems, are accurate to 2 centimeters of location and orbit 20 times closer to Earth than existing GPS, company leaders said.
“This new era of technology is largely here. I mean, there’s cars driving themselves, robots, mobile devices, physical AI, wearables, autonomous farm tractors,” Xona CEO Brian Manning said. “All of these things share one, just fundamental thing in common … that to operate safely, to operate safely at scale, they simply need to know where they are.”
U.S. Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, lauded the company and its decision to build out its manufacturing capabilities in Burlingame. It’s of particular importance now, as the United States will either find itself as a leader in navigation or a follower, he said.
“The question to the United States is simple — will we lead this era of navigation, or will we follow?” Mullin said. “This facility is about taking that capability and demonstration and turning it into something repeatable and scalable. There’s a long history in this region of moments like this, where a breakthrough moves out of the lab and into the world.”
One test satellite has already been launched into orbit, Manning said, with six planned for October. Over the next five years, Xona plans to deploy 300 satellites, according to a press release from the company.
While Xona exists within the private industry space, it works with a variety of clients, including the U.S. government, he said. Its protections against satellite jamming from outside actors make it a valuable asset to the government and other companies, leadership said.
“Anything that moves, anything that needs to know where it is, is a potential customer of ours — including the Department of Defense,” Manning said. “We’re not built as a defense contractor necessarily, but we are proud of the work that we do with the U.S. government and other governments.”
The United States has seen firsthand the impact that navigation interference can have on the national economy, Mullin said, reiterating just how integral companies like Xona are in the present moment.
“We’ve seen navigation disrupted in critical shipping lanes, driving gas prices up for everyone. We’ve seen spoofing incidents impact aviation, grounding and delaying flights. We’ve seen how relatively easy it is to interfere with signals that so much of our economy depends on,” he said.
While there have been minor upgrades to GPS technology over the years, it has largely not kept pace with technological development in other arenas. That’s a problem Xona is trying to solve, Manning said.
“It’s ignoring the underlying challenge that the infrastructure was not built to do what everyone is trying to use it to do today,” he said. “That’s what we’re building, is an entirely new infrastructure.”
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