Sodern
French manufacturer of space optronics (star trackers, cameras) and neutron technology instruments. ArianeGroup 90% / CEA 10% subsidiary. Headquartered in Limeil-Brevannes, France; US subsidiary Sodern America in Englewood, Colorado from 2026.
Sodern is a French manufacturer of space optronics and neutron technology instruments, headquartered at 20 Avenue Descartes, Limeil-Brevannes, near Paris. Founded in 1962 within Philips' Laboratory of Electronics and Applied Physics and incorporated as an independent legal entity in 1973, the company has operated for over sixty years across two distinct technology domains.[^sodern-home]
Ownership is held 90% by ArianeGroup (the Airbus-Safran joint venture that produces Ariane launch vehicles) and 10% by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). The company employs over 450 people, approximately 60% of whom are engineers.[^sodern-about]
Sodern's primary space product is the star tracker, a sensor that determines spacecraft attitude by imaging and matching star fields against an onboard catalogue. Three product families address the full market range. The Auriga is a compact off-the-shelf tracker optimised for small satellites from 6U CubeSats upward and for large constellations; it has been flight-proven since 2019 on the EutelSat OneWeb constellation and delivered two optical heads for the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander in 2025.[^auriga-page] The Hydra serves institutional and scientific missions requiring higher accuracy: it has flown on NASA Europa Clipper, NASA Lucy, ESA JUICE, and multiple geostationary weather and communications satellites.[^hydra-page] The Horus targets single-field-of-view applications on telecommunications platforms. Across all three families, Sodern reports more than 2,000 units in flight as of January 2026, with customers including Airbus Defence & Space, Thales Alenia Space, NASA, ESA, and CNES.
In January 2026 Sodern announced the opening of Sodern America, a wholly owned US subsidiary in Englewood, Colorado, designed to produce Auriga star trackers domestically for American customers. The US market accounts for approximately one-third of Sodern's space revenue.[^sodern-america-news]
Alongside its space optronics business, Sodern manufactures sealed neutron tube generators and associated analysis systems for industrial and security applications, including on-line cross-belt analysers for cement, coal, and mining industries, borehole logging instruments for oil-field applications, and explosive-detection systems. Over 250 cross-belt analysers operate across more than 40 countries.[^neutron-page]