French satellite manufacturer Loft Orbital has secured a contract worth nearly €50 million ($58.6 million) from the French military to deliver the country’s first sovereign synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite capability, the company said on Tuesday.
The award forms part of France’s DESIR programme — short for Demonstrator of Sovereign Radar Imaging Elements — which aims to expand the range of Earth observation capabilities available to the country’s 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.
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’s Longbow satellite platform derived from the OneWeb satellite architecture. The programme will be executed entirely from Loft’s facilities in Toulouse, southern France.
SAR satellites enable continuous, all-weather monitoring of the Earth’s 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.
“This is exactly the type of programme where speed, execution, discipline and operational maturity matter,” 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.
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’s growing NewSpace ecosystem.
“We can fly any payload on any platform, deployed on any cloud, relying on any ground station network,” Meric said. “We are now really seen as a credible player in the French ecosystem.”
