Satellite manufacturer Astranis announced Nov. 1 it is teaming up with navigation startup Xona Space Systems to compete for a U.S. Space Force contract aimed at developing a backup to the military’s GPS system.
Astranis, which builds small geostationary satellites for internet connectivity, secured an $8 million contract for the initial design phase of the Resilient Global Positioning System (R-GPS) program, which seeks to deploy smaller, more cost-effective satellites to supplement the existing GPS constellation.
Astranis is designing an R-GPS network leveraging its existing satellite platform; integrating positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) algorithms developed by Xona Space. The algorithms will run on Astranis’ software-defined radio hardware.
The R-GPS initiative envisions a fleet of proliferated small satellites capable of transmitting GPS signals, creating a layer of redundancy within the broader GPS infrastructure. The program could expand to as many as 24 satellites, each projected to cost between $50 million and $80 million.
While PNT redundancy is sorely needed for PNT reliant systems such as navigation systems, communications systems, IT infrastructure, financial systems, traffic light timing, and multi-player gaming (just to name a few) the system that provides that redundancy must be cyber secure in order to provide a truly resilient PNT system. In an since the cybersecurity of this new constellation will depend on the current cybersecurity of the Astranis’ systems. If Astranis’ current systems have vulnerabilities there is a strong possibility those vulnerabilities will still be present in the R-GPS satellites and since the satellites will use a software defined radio cybersecurity is of the utmost importance. If not already in progress US Space Force needs to deep dive both Atranis and Xona’s cybersecurity programs and/or institute robust cybersecurity requirements for the R-GPS program.