France taps Loft Orbital to develop nation’s first ‘sovereign’ SAR satellite
The program is aimed at providing "a critical technology for the armed forces and for France’s strategic autonomy," according to Loft's announcement today.
The program is aimed at providing "a critical technology for the armed forces and for France’s strategic autonomy," according to Loft's announcement today.
While the company currently is using already available data from satellites like NASA's Landsat and ESA's Sentinel-2, Hydrosat also intends to launch its own constellation of 16 microsats to low Earth orbit (LEO).
CEO Pieter Fossel explained how the temperature of the ground, for instance, can be a critical factor for helicopter-borne special operations missions.
Loft's two satellites are carrying payloads for a Space Development Agency demo, the UAE Space Agency and European commercial satcom firm Eutelsat, among others.
Two of the experiments, each involving two satellites, are focused on laser links: one between satellites themselves; the other from satellites to a MQ-9 Reaper drone on the ground.
The company's software-defined Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) technology will offer military users an agile new signal from low Earth orbit (LEO) that is not dependent on existing satellite navigation systems," said Nicholas Paraskevopoulos, Northrop Grumman's chief technology officer.