Shaping the future of satellite navigation
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To celebrate 30 years of European satellite navigation, ESA opened the doors of ESTEC, its research and technology centre, in September 2025. Partners from across continents gathered for a sensational event that took the audience on a journey through time, honouring the achievements and collaboration that have shaped this story. The event aimed to acknowledge everyone who has contributed to Europe's success in satellite navigation while also looking towards the future.
Today, 10% of the EU’s GDP relies on satellite navigation systems, and downstream market has remarkable growth potential. With positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) data underpinning so many applications in our interconnected world, systems must not only be maintained but also developed and improved. ESA’s navigation programmes must address cutting-edge innovation that will drive their long-term evolution.
The Navigation Innovation and Support Programme (NAVISP) is supporting European industry to succeed in the highly competitive and rapidly evolving global market of PNT products and services. In the nine years since its implementation, the programme has gained significant traction, with more than 350 activities and hundreds of entities involved. The programme anticipated many of the ideas that are now being matured as ESA programmes.
In the years ahead, ESA envisions satellite navigation evolving into a flexible and powerful global infrastructure. Rather than relying on a single system in space, navigation will become a network of connected layers, combining satellites from different orbits, signals from the ground and information from onboard sensors, all working together in real time.
Celeste (formerly known as LEO-PNT) is a pioneering mission to enhance satellite navigation resilience and capabilities by deploying an additional layer of navigation satellites in low Earth orbit. The mission’s in-orbit demonstrator phase features a constellation of 10 satellites, with the first two set to launch in the first quarter of 2026.
The Genesis mission will contribute to a highly improved reference frame of Earth with an accuracy of 1 mm and a long-term stability of 0.1 mm/year, providing a coordinate system for the most rigorous navigation applications on our planet. The preliminary design review was completed in December 2025. Planned to launch in 2028, the Genesis satellite will combine the main geodetic techniques, synchronising and cross calibrating the instruments to determine biases inherent to each technique, allowing them to be corrected for superior precision.
ESA’s Moonlight programme aims to become Europe’s first off-planet telecommunications and navigation provider, creating lunar versions of essential Earth-based services. This will unlock the potential for future lunar missions, enabling high data rates and low latency, improving landing and navigation capabilities and reducing on-board complexity. The first step in this programme is Lunar Pathfinder, which is set to begin operations in 2026.
Recently, ESA's Council at Ministerial Level in 2025 funded three new navigation missions: OpSTAR, NovaMoon and Future PNT demonstrators. OpSTAR will demonstrate in-orbit how optical inter-satellite links can enhance PNT through precise time transfer and ranging between satellites. NovaMoon will enhance Moonlight navigation services as the first station on the Moon for high accuracy navigation. Future PNT demonstrators will allow early development of new technologies that could transform the future PNT landscape. As a part of the FutureNAV programme, these missions will mature and demonstrate promising system concepts and upstream technologies for institutional and commercial use.
Several technologies have been identified as main drivers for the future of PNT: resilience, robustness and autonomy against interference, optical and quantum technologies and sensors, integrated navigation and communication, 5G/6G Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) solutions, disruptive technologies to enhance flexibility such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, new integrity concepts and new signals, and much more.