French satellite manufacturer Loft Orbital has secured a contract worth nearly \u20ac50 million ($58.6 million) from the French military to deliver the country\u2019s first sovereign synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite capability, the company said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The award forms part of France\u2019s DESIR programme \u2014 short for Demonstrator of Sovereign Radar Imaging Elements \u2014 which aims to expand the range of Earth observation capabilities available to the country\u2019s defence sector. Unlike other European states such as Sweden and Germany, which have opted to procure SAR satellites or data from commercial providers such as ICEYE, France has chosen to pursue a domestically developed solution.<\/p>\n
Under the contract, Loft Orbital will act as prime contractor and lead a consortium of French companies tasked with delivering a demonstration satellite into service by mid-2029. Thales Alenia Space and TEKEVER France will jointly design the SAR payload, which will be integrated into Loft\u2019s Longbow satellite platform derived from the OneWeb satellite architecture. The programme will be executed entirely from Loft\u2019s facilities in Toulouse, southern France.<\/p>\n
SAR satellites enable continuous, all-weather monitoring of the Earth\u2019s surface, as radar imaging can operate at night and through cloud cover, offering advantages over optical Earth observation systems. Such capabilities are increasingly sought by defence agencies for surveillance of conflict zones, borders and maritime routes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is exactly the type of programme where speed, execution, discipline and operational maturity matter,\u201d said Emmanuelle Meric, European general manager at Loft Orbital. She said the project demonstrates how newer, agile space companies can work alongside established industrial players.<\/p>\n
The agreement marks the first time Loft Orbital has been selected as a prime contractor by the French government, a role traditionally held by long-established aerospace and defence groups. Meric said the contract would allow the company to demonstrate its ability to deliver sovereign systems and strengthen its position within France\u2019s growing NewSpace ecosystem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can fly any payload on any platform, deployed on any cloud, relying on any ground station network,\u201d Meric said. \u201cWe are now really seen as a credible player in the French ecosystem.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
French satellite manufacturer Loft Orbital has secured a contract worth nearly \u20ac50 million ($58.6 million) from the French military to deliver the country\u2019s first sovereign synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite capability, the company said on Tuesday. The award forms part of France\u2019s DESIR programme \u2014 short for Demonstrator of Sovereign Radar Imaging Elements \u2014 which aims […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[159,5983,244,242,5984,4592,1277,5985,20,5986,5987,874,5988],"class_list":["post-19957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-earth-observation","tag-emmanuelle-meric","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-french-armed-forces","tag-loft-orbital","tag-oneweb","tag-sar-satellites","tag-satellite","tag-synthetic-aperture-radar","tag-tekever-france","tag-thales-alenia-space","tag-toulouse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}