Through its Navigation Innovation Support Programme (NAVISP) Element 3, ESA is supporting this work as part of a broader effort to help Member States move from awareness of PNT risk to practical, deployable resilience measures aligned with national policy frameworks.

This digital twin will provide virtual representations of various systems and services that could form the future British PNT system-of-systems, aggregating data from satellite systems such as GNSS and complementary systems such as eLoran, which offers navigation capabilities based on terrestrial towers, and the UK’s National Timing Centre, which provides accurate, resilient and secure timing, traceable to the global time scale, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Under Phase 1 of the UPDATE project in 2025, GMV defined the requirements, outlined the high-level architecture and established a development roadmap for the digital twin. The contract for UPDATE Phase 2 was signed in January 2026 with GMV to lead a consortium for the development phase of the digital twin environment. Sub-contractors Skyral, QinetiQ, the University of Bath and the Satellite Applications Catapult will bring their specialised expertise to the project.