Sodern

Sodern is a French high-technology company founded in 1961, headquartered in Limeil-Brévannes near Paris, and operating as a subsidiary of ArianeGroup. Since its creation for a national strategic mission to develop neutron solutions for French sovereignty, Sodern grew to become the world leader in star trackers and space optronic equipment, with devices aboard satellites operated by ESA, NASA, CNES, JAXA, Airbus, Thales Alenia Space, and dozens of New Space constellation operators — including all OneWeb satellites (1,800+ Auriga star trackers).

Sodern's star tracker product families span the full market: Hydra (high-performance modular, in Baseline, Access, and Custom variants), used on NASA Europa Clipper, NASA Lucy, NASA GOES, NASA InSight, ESA JUICE, and many geostationary telecom platforms; Auriga — a compact off-the-shelf tracker optimised for small satellites and New Space constellations; and Horus — a single-housing autonomous tracker suited to telecom satellites. For space cameras, Sodern produces the Auricam family and navigation cameras (NavCam on ESA's JUICE mission to Jupiter's moons). The company also designs multispectral optical filters for Earth observation payloads.

In parallel, Sodern is a pioneer in neutron interrogation technology: its Sodilog neutron tubes enable oil and gas petrophysical logging at 150°C downhole; its FastGrade pulsed neutron probe delivers real-time mining ore grade estimation; its CNA analyser provides online cement raw mix composition control; and its sealed neutron generators serve nuclear research and waste control. In defence and security, the Astradia daytime star tracker provides GNSS-independent celestial navigation for airborne platforms without emitting any signals.

Sodern's flight heritage spans over 60 years: it developed Europe's first Earth sensors in 1965, launched the world's first star tracker on a civil geostationary telecom satellite in 1993, and delivered components for SPOT-1 (1986), NASA InSight Mars lander (2018), OneWeb constellation (2021+), ESA JUICE (2023), NASA Europa Clipper (2024), and NASA Blue Ghost lunar lander (2025). Sodern America opened in January 2026.