OHB Brand Guidelines: From Bremen Ship Hydraulics to Galileo, SAR-Lupe & Hera

A ship-hydraulics firm that turned to space.

OHB’s story starts with a small marine business, not a space programme. German and English Wikipedia both give the starting point as Otto Hydraulik Bremen GmbH, founded in 1958 in Hemelingen, a district of Bremen, which built and repaired electrical and hydraulic systems for ships of the German armed forces. In 1981 Christa Fuchs took the company over; it then had five employees. In 1984, working with MBB-ERNO as project lead and the Sarstedt shipyard, it won the contract for the lead ship of the MPOSS oil-skimming system, German Wikipedia says.

The turn to space came in 1985, when Manfred Fuchs, then director of space flight at MBB-ERNO, moved to the company. Early space work included Mikroba, a series of free-fall experiments dropped from balloons, backed by the federal research ministry and the agency now called the German Aerospace Center, and a centrifuge built for the Spacelab laboratory. A new headquarters near the University of Bremen opened in October 1988. In 1991 the firm was renamed Orbital- und Hydrotechnologie Bremen-System GmbH, keeping the three letters while changing what they stood for; Wikipedia ties the new name to Manfred Fuchs’s aim of building smaller, less costly satellites.

The first of those was BremSat, developed with the University of Bremen’s ZARM centre and carried into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on 3 February 1994; Wikipedia counts it among the first German small satellites. The SAFIR satellites for position-finding and object tracking followed, and a telematics company, OHB Teledata, was set up in 1993. OHB Teledata went public on the Neuer Markt in Frankfurt in March 2001, and in 2002 it merged with OHB System to form OHB Technology AG, renamed OHB AG in 2011.

From SAR-Lupe to Galileo.

The 2000s made OHB a prime contractor. German Wikipedia says the company led the development of SAR-Lupe, a radar reconnaissance satellite system for the Bundeswehr, and in 2013 won the prime contract for its successor, SARah. It also supplied equipment for the International Space Station and Europe’s Columbus module. In January 2010 OHB won a contract to build 14 satellites for the European Galileo navigation system; German Wikipedia now counts 34 Galileo satellites among its largest projects, with Surrey Satellite Technology supplying the navigation payloads, according to English Wikipedia.

The group grew by acquisition. Wikipedia lists MAN Technologie, now MT Aerospace, in 2005; the Italian firm Carlo Gavazzi Space, now OHB Italia, in 2009; and Thales Alenia Space Antwerp, renamed Antwerp Space, in 2011. In June 2011 SpaceNews reported from the Paris Air Show that OHB had bought the Space Systems division of the Swedish Space Corporation, whose 53 staff would carry on as OHB Sweden; the Swedish team was already working on OHB’s SmallGEO satellite platform. In 2014 OHB System merged with the Munich firm Kayser-Threde, and in March 2015 the parent became a European company, OHB SE.

Science and exploration run alongside the government work. In September 2020 SpaceNews reported that the European Space Agency had finalised a contract with OHB to build the Hera asteroid spacecraft, leading a team of companies from 17 ESA member states. The SmallGEO platform carries the Hispasat H36W-1 communications satellite and, German Wikipedia says, serves as a basis for the third generation of Meteosat weather satellites. German Wikipedia also records that the two SARah satellites launched in December 2023 had still not entered service by March 2025 because of a technical fault, with OHB, as their maker, carrying the financial risk.

How the category presents itself.

Earth-observation companies sell something most customers never see being made. Their satellites are small, distant and short-lived, so the brand has to be carried by what comes back: the picture, the signal and the map. The companies in this guide build or operate satellites that take optical photographs, record radar echoes, or listen for radio signals from ships, aircraft and the atmosphere, and most of them now describe themselves as data or intelligence businesses rather than satellite makers.

Their public image leans on a few recurring scenes. Crisp overhead views of ports, farmland and city grids show what optical satellites can see from orbit. Radar companies favour grainy, false-colour textures in which water turns dark and buildings glow, because radar images look nothing like photographs. Small satellites appear on clean-room benches under bright light, handled by staff in gowns and gloves, as proof that the hardware is real and made in-house.

On their websites the satellite often gives way to the screen. Maps, dashboards, map layers and charts present the data as something a customer can open and use, and product names tend to describe a platform, a feed or a service rather than a spacecraft. Many of these firms sell to governments and defence ministries as well as to farming, shipping, insurance and mapping businesses, so their language swings between mission and market.

The trade meets at shows such as the GEOINT Symposium in the United States and the European Space Agency’s Living Planet Symposium in Europe, where launches, contracts and new image products are announced. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — who founded it, who owns it now, where its satellites are built — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family company with a minority investor.

Today OHB describes itself as a space and technology group headquartered in Bremen, organised in three segments: Space Systems for satellites, Aerospace for structures and tanks for launchers and aircraft, and Digital for satellite operations, ground systems and data services. German Wikipedia puts the workforce at around 4,000 people at 15 sites in ten countries. Since 2018 OHB has held a stake in Rocket Factory Augsburg, which is developing a small launch vehicle.

Ownership changed in two steps. In August 2023, German Wikipedia says, OHB announced that the investment firm KKR would make an offer for its shares with the aim of taking the company off the stock exchange, while the Fuchs family kept its holding. On 27 August 2024 OHB announced that all regulatory approvals had been received and the offer would be completed, leaving KKR with about 28.6 percent, the Fuchs family with about 65.4 percent and roughly 6 percent in free float; it said then that it still aimed to leave the exchange. The shares remain listed: according to an OHB announcement of 22 September 2026, they trade in Frankfurt’s Prime Standard, entered the SDAX index in August 2026 and joined the TecDAX on 21 September 2026. Marco Fuchs is chief executive.

For a design guide, OHB shows how a three-letter name can survive a complete change of meaning, from ship hydraulics to orbit, while the company stays in family hands. Compare SSTL, which built the navigation payloads for OHB’s Galileo satellites, and Airbus, the owner of SSTL. For this guide we use a deep navy, a steel grey and a clear signal blue with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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