Starlink blocks GPS cheat; researchers may crack it.
▼ Summary
– Starlink is shutting down a little-known GPS-style positioning feature that some customers had been using for years.
– The feature offered positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services using SpaceX’s satellite constellation.
– Starlink’s PNT capability was seen as a potential backup to GPS, especially as GPS jamming and spoofing increase.
– Todd Humphreys noted Starlink’s system differs from GPS in having higher frequencies, wider bandwidths, stronger power, and many more satellites.
– The shutdown occurs amid broader interest in Starlink as a navigation alternative, despite most customers not knowing the feature existed.
SpaceX has quietly pulled the plug on a Starlink GPS alternative that most of its internet subscribers likely never knew existed. The feature, which allowed a small number of technically adept users to access positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services through the Starlink satellite constellation, is now being shut down. But this move won’t slow the growing push to use Starlink’s massive low-Earth orbit network as a backup or alternative to traditional GPS, especially as GPS jamming and spoofing become more common threats.
Starlink’s primary mission has always been high-speed internet, not pinpointing user locations like the Global Positioning System or other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). However, SpaceX acknowledged in a May 2025 letter to the U. S. Federal Communications Commission that its satellites could indeed deliver PNT data. For years, a handful of customers had been tapping into that capability , until SpaceX recently decided to lock them out, according to a report from PCMag.
“The beauty of Starlink as a backup to GNSS is that it’s such a different system , frequencies 10 times higher, bandwidths 10 to 100 times wider, power 100 to 1,000 times stronger, satellites 100 times more proliferated,” said Todd Humphreys, director of the Wireless Networking and Communications Group and the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, in an email to Ars.
Even with Starlink’s decision to block this unofficial feature, researchers like Humphreys see enormous potential in using the constellation for navigation. The sheer scale and distinct technical characteristics of Starlink’s satellites make them a resilient complement to GPS, particularly in environments where signals are deliberately disrupted. The momentum toward a Starlink-based navigation system is unlikely to fade, despite this temporary setback.
(Source: Ars Technica)
