Loft & Marlan Space has established the first satellite production company in the Middle East.
Takeaway Points
- Loft & Marlan Space Establishes the First Satellite Production Facility in the Middle East
- Orbitworks aims to produce up to fifty 500 kg satellites annually.
- Orbitworks is set to begin construction of a state-of-the-art facility that will employ advanced hardware, software, and industrial technologies.
- The first satellite platform is expected to be assembled, integrated, and tested by early 2025.
- Loft & Marlan have started recruiting talent both internationally and within the UAE.
What did Loft & Marlan Space Launch?
Loft Orbital, the space infrastructure company, said on Monday that Abu Dhabi-based Marlan Space, a new space company affiliated with International Holding Company (IHC), has established a joint venture with their company to form Orbitworks, the Middle East’s first private space infrastructure company.
With an initial investment of over $100 million, Orbitworks aims to produce up to fifty 500 kg of satellites annually, the company said.
Pierre-Damien Vaujour, CEO of Loft Orbital, said, “We have long believed in the dynamism and growth of the UAE’s space sector, and we are proud to be playing a small part in the country’s journey to becoming a space powerhouse. From the moment we first met with Marlan Space, we were excited about their vision for bringing scaled production and operations of LEO satellite constellations to the UAE. We are thrilled to support and partner with all players in the country’s space, satellite, cloud, and AI industries.”
According to the company, Orbitworks is set to begin construction of a state-of-the-art facility that will employ advanced hardware, software, and industrial technologies for integration and testing of satellites and has secured components for its first ten satellites, the first of which could be launched as early as the first quarter of 2026.
The first satellite platform is expected to be assembled, integrated, and tested by early 2025. Loft & Marlan have started recruiting talent both internationally and within the UAE, focusing on hardware, software, test engineering, and other aerospace engineering disciplines, Loft said.
Loft said that the UAE has built one of the most advanced AI ecosystems globally, and Orbitworks will collaborate with AI companies and research organizations by providing them with a simple pathway to deploy their apps to orbit.
About Loft Orbital
Loft is a space infrastructure company that provides a simple, fast, and reliable way to deploy missions to low Earth orbit. We have developed a standardized satellite platform that can be configured to fly any customer mission. With our own hardware and software abstraction layers on top of a commodity satellite bus, our platform is truly turnkey and plug-and-play.
Loft offers our customers unbeatable speed-to-orbit by removing the non-recurring engineering that is the root cause of schedule unpredictability and cost overruns. We bypass typical aerospace lead times by maintaining an inventory of fully assembled satellite platforms at our Integration and Test facility in Golden, CO.
Loft handles all elements of the process of deploying and operating space infrastructure on the customer’s behalf, so that customers can focus their time and resources entirely on their mission.
