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The race to find GPS alternatives


Startup Xona Space Systems hopes to provide an unspoofable alternative to increasingly threatened GPS.

But despite the system’s indispensable nature, the GPS signal is easily suppressed or disrupted by everything from space weather to 5G cell towers to phone-size jammers worth a few tens of dollars. The French aerospace and defense conglomerate Safran is developing a system that distributes PNT data via optical-fiber networks, which form the backbone of the global internet infrastructure. But the allure of space remains strong: The ability to reach any place at any time is what turned GPS from an obscure military system into a piece of taken-for-granted infrastructure that most people today can hardly live without.

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