Celestial navigation on Earth

Sodern aims to address terrestrial navigation issues through alternative solutions based on celestial tracking. A first daytime star tracker, Astradia, was launched in 2025. Sodern is developing a concept of celestial navigation to transmit a precise position to a carrier during its mission.

Astradia - An attitude sensor

After several years of research and development, Sodern has launched Astradia, an endoatmospheric star tracker that, when coupled with an inertial measurement unit, provides attitude measurements day and night to guarantee precise, robust and reliable on-board geolocation information, even in GNSS-denied environments. This daytime star tracker is initially intended for aircraft applications.

Astradia is both the result of Sodern's expertise and cutting-edge, proven technology. It benefits from the legacy of thousands star trackers already operational in space, as well as a proven star catalog and detection algorithms. Furthermore, this technology has already undergone successful flight tests.

Astradia is a new type of sensor for navigation systems.

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Celestial Navigator - A geolocation system

Based on the work that led to the release of Astradia, Sodern has developed and assembled a celestial navigation demonstrator combining, in a single package, an Inertial Measurement Unit and a daytime star tracker.
The objective is to provide continuous positioning data to a carrier throughout its mission. This operational demonstrator has been evaluated and is currently being improved to serve in the future as a new navigation solution for aircraft and naval applications.

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