Loft Orbital and UAE-based Marlan Space announced on September 9 a $1 billion commitment led by the Royal Group of Abu Dhabi to expand the Altair Earth observation constellation from 10 to 50 satellites. The spacecraft will combine optical and synthetic aperture radar imaging with onboard artificial intelligence, serving government and commercial customers in the United Arab Emirates, France and other European markets.
The companies disclosed the investment in Paris during the International Space Summit organized by French President Emmanuel Macron. The financing represents one of the largest commitments to a privately developed Earth observation constellation and gives Loft Orbital and Marlan Space the capital to move Altair from an initial deployment into a 50-satellite system.
OrbitWorks, the Abu Dhabi satellite manufacturing joint venture established by Marlan Space and Loft Orbital in 2024, will assemble, integrate and test the spacecraft at its facility in the Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi, or KEZAD. The program is expected to draw heavily on European suppliers while also using components from other international partners.
OrbitWorks originally planned to build 10 multi-sensor satellites for Altair. The new financing adds 40 spacecraft, substantially increasing the constellation’s potential imaging capacity, revisit frequency and resilience.
Onboard AI to Reduce the Time Between Detection and Alert
Altair is intended to combine optical imagery, which provides visually detailed observations under daylight and clear-weather conditions, with radar data that can be collected at night and through clouds. Operating both sensor types within one constellation would allow customers to use complementary datasets rather than relying on a single imaging method.
Artificial intelligence will be used to process selected data aboard the satellites instead of transmitting every raw image to the ground before analysis. According to the companies, the architecture could support rapid detection and alerting for wildfires, infrastructure changes, road traffic, agricultural conditions and environmental events. Security-related applications could include monitoring sensitive infrastructure and detecting time-critical activity.
Onboard processing can reduce downlink requirements by identifying relevant observations, compressing results or transmitting alerts before full datasets reach a ground station. Its operational value, however, will depend on the performance of the imaging payloads, processing hardware, detection models, communications network and tasking system.
The spacecraft are expected to use Nvidia computing hardware, with French artificial intelligence company Mistral AI contributing AI technology. The companies have not disclosed key constellation specifications such as satellite mass, imaging resolution, orbital altitude, radar frequency band, daily collection capacity or the schedule for deploying all 50 spacecraft.
OrbitWorks said in August that it had secured an agreement with the French space agency CNES to provide services using Altair. The arrangement gives the constellation an institutional link to France as the program targets customers in European and Emirati markets.
Abu Dhabi Manufacturing Hub Gains an Anchor Program
The Altair expansion also provides a major production program for OrbitWorks. The joint venture operates a roughly 5,000-square-meter facility designed to manufacture as many as 50 satellites weighing up to 500 kilograms each annually.
That capacity is important for a constellation requiring repeatable assembly, integration and testing rather than one-off spacecraft production. Building dozens of satellites to a common design can shorten manufacturing cycles and distribute development costs across the fleet, but it also places greater demands on component availability, supplier qualification, software configuration control and production quality assurance.
For the UAE, the investment advances an effort to establish domestic satellite manufacturing and geospatial intelligence capabilities instead of relying exclusively on spacecraft and imagery acquired overseas. It also extends the country’s space industrial base beyond government-led missions by anchoring a commercially oriented production line in Abu Dhabi.
Loft Orbital brings a standardized satellite-infrastructure model in which spacecraft buses, payload interfaces, flight software and mission operations are designed to support multiple customers and payload types. Altair marks a move into a large, dedicated imaging constellation while retaining the company’s underlying infrastructure and operations expertise.
The partners expect SpaceX to conduct most of the initial launches, while European launch provider MaiaSpace could support deployments beginning in 2028. Neither the number of satellites per launch nor a complete deployment timetable has been announced.
The next major indicators for Altair will be the completion of its first production spacecraft, disclosure of confirmed launch assignments and evidence that its optical, radar and onboard AI systems can deliver operational products at the latency and scale promised to customers.
