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START-UP XONA © immimagery /AdobeStock

Meet ‘Super GPS’

XONA Ups the Space Race Ante

With a mission to power the current and next-generation of GPS-enabled products and systems, XONA Space Systems keeps the mantra ‘precision, power and protec- tion’ in all that it does as this 2020-start-up designs, builds and launches its ? eet of low earth orbit satellites. We spoke with XONA CEO Brian Manning for his in- sights on how this could impact the maritime, offshore energy and subsea sectors.

By Greg Trauthwein $30,000 sedan and add $500,000 worth of sensors on top of

Thanks for joining us today Brian. To start … XONA it … not something that’s scalable. [So he starts to look for

Space Systems … when and why was it founded?

The founding team all met back at Stanford, Stanford Aero- a technology that is scalable, the use of technology not for a space engineers that all [studied] together 10 years or so ago. luxury item but something that is really making a difference

A lot of the company has formed around the work of our CTO, in everyone’s life]. At XONA, we are believers in the potential

Dr. Tyler Reid. After his PhD, Dr. Reid went to work at Ford of modern technology, but also believe that for it to be able to in its autonomous driving group. A lot of the challenges that scale you need to have the infrastructure available to support he was trying to solve there was what types of navigation, these things. sensors, systems, et cetera, can support [autonomous driving]. [Foundational for modern, autonomous products] to operate

What he was ? nding is that they were able to get these ve- safely is knowing where they are to a very high degree of ac- hicles to work in certain environments, but when you take a curacy. GPS can generally tell you what road you’re on, but 38 July/August 2024

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