Marlan Space and Loft Orbital Set Out $1 Billion Plan for 50 AI-Equipped Satellites

A satellite alert could reach a customer in seconds, rather than after hours of downloading and processing imagery on the ground. That is the goal behind a $1 billion program from Marlan Space and Loft Orbital to grow their Altair Earth-observation constellation from 10 planned satellites to 50. None of the first 10 has launched.

An answer before the imagery comes down

The planned satellites would carry radar, optical and other sensors. Instead of sending all their readings to the ground for interpretation, they are designed to process what they collect onboard. The partners’ proposed result is an alert within seconds, compared with the hours that downloading and processing raw imagery can take.

That makes Altair-Next Gen a more specific proposition than a general-purpose data center in space. Its computing is tied to data gathered by the constellation’s own sensors. French AI company Mistral AI is slated to supply models for onboard reasoning and for natural-language tasking, which would let users give the system instructions in ordinary language.

Loft Orbital co-founder and chief operating officer Alex Greenberg told TechRadar Pro that Mistral would also power services in the proposed AI application store. His description places Mistral in both parts of the design: the models intended to work aboard the spacecraft and services customers would reach through the store.

Customers would choose the model

The application store is meant to give customers a choice of models to run on satellite-collected data, rather than confining them to a single onboard service. The proposed setup would also let them use shared spacecraft and export the data they need to external models. Those choices could make the same sensor network useful for different requests without changing which satellites gather the data.

Choosing a model is different from getting a fast result. An onboard model could send an alert before raw images are downloaded. The store would let customers choose other models to analyze the data. The first option relies on processing in orbit; the second depends on how customers can access that computing power.

How open that menu will be remains unclear. TechRadar Pro says the proposal does not establish whether the store will restrict open-source or open-weight models. For customers, that leaves an important detail unresolved: whether choosing a model will mean selecting from a tightly defined catalog or bringing a wider range of models to the spacecraft.

The buildout starts on the ground

The program is financed with money from a UAE-based investor. Greenberg said Orbitworks is producing the satellites at its Abu Dhabi facility, while more consortium partners will be named over time. French President Emmanuel Macron presented the program at the International Space Summit in Paris, bringing the UAE-backed spacecraft buildout and Mistral’s planned model role into one announcement.

The first 10 satellites are in production. TechRadar Pro reports that deploying the full fleet will take five years. Until the satellites are in orbit, customers cannot judge the proposed fast alerts, shared computing or model choices in practice. The next step is launching the first satellites and testing how well the system turns sensor data into alerts.