Opinion

There are three types of commercial space ecosystems, the historic one, the self-created and the incidental.  The first one is exemplified by over 60 years of the United States space program, where government-funded missions gave life to private contractors that gained industrial expertise nowadays being used to supply end-to-end missions for public and private customers.

The global space launch services market in 2019 was valued at $9.5 billion and is projected to reach a market value of $47.6 billion by 2030, according to business intelligence company Visiongain. Last year Europe occupied 5th place in the global space launching ranking, with only 4 successful launches.

There are currently more than 11,000 satellites in LEO and GEO, and only about 3,000 of those are active, this means that there are over 8,000 deactivated satellites. But space is booming, and in 2020 the world registered the highest number of satellites launched per year, with a record of 1,283 which represents 42% of all active satellites now in orbit.

On November 14th of last year, Russia deliberately destroyed one of its satellites as a test of a new anti-satellite weapon (ASAT). According to a US State Department press briefing, “this test has so far generated over fifteen hundred pieces of trackable orbital debris and will likely generate hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris.”

Rotoiti interviewed several professionals working in various segments of the space industry. This brief summarizes their views on major reputational issues that are specific to the space industry. In the space industry, as in any industry, there is a unique set of issues that tends to play an outstanding role in affecting market actors’ reputations.

In August 2021 Canada registered over 7,500 wildfires, burning more than 2.5 million hectares of forest. This is projected to double by 2050 due to climate change. Fire management agencies in this country invest between $800 million to $1.4 billion annually to prevent wildfires.

Rotoiti interviewed several finance experts in the space industry. This brief, based on those conversations, summarizes the risks and benefits that venture capital poses to space firms. Many firms assume that they must attract venture capital (VC) in order to succeed, but it is important to first define success and then assess if VC is necessary to achieve that success.

The recent note verbale on two encounters between the Chinese space station and Starlink satellites has triggered a broader discussion on Space Traffic Management. But what do we actually mean by Space Traffic Management and what do we actually need? For many (including me), Space Traffic Management has a short-term and a long-term dimension.

On 15 November 2021, a Russian ground-based DA-ASAT (direct ascent anti-satellite) interceptor, ‘Nudol’, hit defunct Russian spy satellite Cosmos 1408, built and launched in the 1980s, at an altitude of 480 km. The destruction caused a cloud of debris of about 1500 pieces and forced the crew of the ISS, four Americans, two Russians, and a German,

The recent op-ed is an opinion piece, the opinions of the authors. As principals in these operations, their opinions are different than those who operate satellites. We will always be able to launch and retrieve satellites. Space is a finite resource only in the sense that our actions establish an equilibrium with a relatively fixed number of satellites.