Photo: Xona Space Systems

Satellite navigation startup Xona Space Systems has raised $8 million in a funding round that the company says will fully fund its first mission.

The Seraphim Space Investment Trust and MaC Venture Capital co-led the round. The trust is part of Seraphim Capital, and went public on the London Stock Exchange in July. Other participants in the round include: Toyota Ventures; Daniel Ammann, co-founder of u-blox; and Ryan Johnson, former CEO of BlackBridge; 1517 Fund; and Stellar Solutions. 

Xona is working to offer an alternative to traditional Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). The company has developed a technology called PulsarTM, which is a precision Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) service from small satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). Xona said this system offers 10 times more accuracy and 100 times better interference mitigation, and performed a ground demo earlier this year. 

These funds will support the company’s first orbital mission, scheduled for mid-2022, to demonstrate the PulsarTM precision LEO PNT service. The round comes after Xona raised $1 million in a pre-seed round in May 2020. 

“Knowledge of location and time is one of the most fundamental aspects of both human life and machine operation,” commented Xona CEO Brian Manning. “Xona was founded around the mission of enabling modern technology to operate safely in any environment, anywhere on Earth. To achieve this for both humans and machines, a foundation of reliable and accurate PNT is an absolute necessity.”