Author: Andrew Ball

Sustainability is a growing concern for the space industry, as huge numbers of satellites are being launched into orbit. To help us unpack the issue, we invited Amin Chabi, the Founder & CEO of Lúnasa Space, to speak to us about it on Episode 43 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast. He shared his views on debris removal and in-orbit servicing, which you can read here. 

“Space sustainability is of growing importance, not just for commercial companies, but also for the governments that have their own assets in space. Every few weeks or months, we see news coming out that some company or region is starting to build mega satellite constellations in space. We recently heard of a third company from China registering for 10,000 satellites. If these mega constellations come into effect, we’re looking at about 100,000+ satellites going into orbit in the next 7-10 years. Managing such a fleet in space is challenging, and we should expect things to go wrong. 

There will probably be a sudden increase in satellites launching into orbit now that the launch costs have dropped, so the possibility of a non-operational satellite colliding with another non-operational satellite will dramatically increase. It’s something that we cannot control. What we need to do internally at Lúnasa Space and then as governments, is show how we can commercially solve the matter, with the government’s support with, let’s say, enabling services. That’s what we usually see in the space/defence industries, where the government starts funding the removal of debris, hoping that these services will get commercial traction. 

At the moment, commercial companies are not very interested in paying to remove their satellites. But why is that? There are no licensing regime requirements, saying that if your satellite was non-operational, you will have to pay to remove it yourself, otherwise you won’t get a licence again. There just isn’t anything pushing these companies to remove their satellites. I’ve spoken to companies in the past that were launching satellites into orbit for just a few hours of operation, and the satellite stayed in space for several years. That’s where the objective of space is not correct. It will damage our future environment if nothing changes. 

We need to look internally at companies like that and think, how can we make these removal offerings more commercially attractive? What can we provide? Some companies are launchers that are transporting satellites into space, then they have further capabilities on board to grab a dead satellite and bring it back on the return journey. Now, that can reduce the costs a lot, because you’re already your primary objective, which is a transporting service, and you’ve got a good revenue potential from that. The cost of the secondary objective of removing debris can be reduced a lot because you have already made a premium. 

There are other solutions as well, such as reusable assets and space trucks which can grab other satellites. There are other services like refuelling that add more servicing opportunities or commercial opportunities to satellites. There are several areas, but I think it has to start with commercial companies like us, planning a way to remove dead satellites in a way that can benefit the end users. Otherwise, if they’re not happy to pay, the number of non-operational satellites will increase, which will become a hazard for our other operational satellites, which matters for our daily lives on the planet.”

To hear more about space sustainability, tune into Episode 43 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

On a special edition episode of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we sat down with three leading HR and talent acquisition specialists to discuss emerging trends in the space sector. Joining us were Kelly Tobin, the Senior Talent Acquisition Manager at Intelsat, Bettina Schaaf, the VP of Recruiting at Rivada Space Networks, and Bethan McAulay, the Head of Talent at Astroscale. A highlight of the conversation was a discussion about the use of AI in their recruitment processes. Here’s what they said: 

Bettina Schaaf: “AI is currently the most important topic within our recruitment. We have to integrate it more in our process. The first place where we use AI is when we search for candidates, and we have various different ways of doing that. When it comes to the screening of applications, for example, at Rivada, we receive your 500, 600, even 700 applications each month, so it’s a challenge to screen everybody. AI could really help with that. In the future, AI will be integrated into each step of our recruiting efforts to make the work more efficient so that we can concentrate on our key business. Having said that, the human component will always have priority when it comes to decisions and collaboration.”

Bethan McAulay: “At the moment we don’t have any generative AI built into our process from a talent acquisition perspective. It’s something we’re constantly talking about, and we’re looking at when the right time is for us to adopt it where’s a value-add. Those elements may be slightly controversial, but I think there is a real place for it – not necessarily in applications or in reviewing, but across the HR spectrum. 

Even from a candidate perspective, I’m quite supportive of candidates using generative AI (to an extent). When it comes to making those applications, there is very little high quality career support out there, particularly at the early careers level, but also for people who are in the mergers and acquisitions world. There are a lot of people being forced out of opportunities after working at companies for a long time, which means they may be out of practice when it comes to writing CVs or understanding interview questions. Using generative AI as a tool to prepare a first draft for CVs or covering letters is really powerful, and it takes a lot of pressure off individuals. But, I don’t want anybody to just submit something completely written by generative AI; I would like to see so they’ve been editing it at least.”

Kelly Tobin: “Recruiters have really loved using the AI tool within the LinkedIn recruiter platform. What we’ve found from our metrics is that there is a much higher rate of response from candidates that we cold-called when we used that AI feature. It looks at the potential candidate’s profile and the job description and creates a tailored message, which saves the recruiter from having to go and read both and spend 15 minutes crafting a message. Instead it’s done for you in 30 seconds or less. So we have found that that works great, because a personalised message definitely generates more responses. 

When we were talking about recruiting people from outside of the satellite industry, one thing that I did recently is I partnered with the National Society for Black Engineers. We put on a special reception just for this organisation at the recent satellite show in DC, and we had different employees coming in to explain everything that we are doing within the different verticals of the business. That was a great success. We are trying to continue to think about different ways to open up this market so that it gets broader attention and applicants, especially from a diverse perspective.”

To hear more about the current challenges for people professionals in the satellite industry, tune in to Episode 42 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

As we hit the mid-point of this year’s World Space Business Week (WSBW), the 2024 edition of the show has already seen some important announcements and inspiring discussions taking place at the Westin in Paris. 

Day 1 saw conversations around investment in the industry with major investment banks sharing their thoughts on the state of the market with key talking points being that, even though we have seen increased investment in the last few years, we have still not returned to the peak of 2021. Then, Director General of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschenbacher, shared ESA’s aims for Europe to have a world-class space programme, lead in the sustainability of space, and continue its international collaboration.  The growth of the direct-to-device market was also a hot-topic with executives from Yahsat, Lynk, Globalstar, Omnispace, Iridium, and AST sharing their thoughts on how to create a sustainable business model and the challenges of delivering the right service. 

Day 2 covered some very pertinent topics with optical communications, multi-orbit services, and ground system architecture all getting their time in the limelight. We heard how satellite operators are moving towards offering multi-orbit solutions as standard, how this is causing a number of specific regulatory problems – especially with LEO and GEO switching, how the benefits of optical communications will further shape the industry, and how most of the industry agrees that the push towards technology agnostic, seamless connectivity should be the goal we all strive for. 

There have also been several exciting announcements that deserve a special mention. Leading US aerospace business, Sceye, announced the successful closing of its Series C funding round, Finland’s ReOrbit shared news of its exclusive agreement with the Uzma Group for a new GEO software enabled satellite project, and the news that Starlink has almost doubled its backlog of IFC orders after last week’s deal with United Airlines. 

With still more than half the conference left to come, we can’t wait to see what other exciting developments are announced.  

The satellite industry has been rapidly developing over the last two years. On Episode 36 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we were joined by returning guest Gary Calnan, the CEO of CisLunar Industries, to explore the changes that have happened since he last appeared on the show. He shared his perspectives on the major trends of privatisation and investment in the industry and explained the global benefits of tackling space debris. Read on for the highlights of the conversation. 

“In the last two years, there have been a couple of major trends in our industry. The whole government of the United States has shifted its mindset in a very definitive way from the prior paradigm of launch and be done. They used to think that you launch a satellite and it’s a one-shot deal where it’s eventually it’s either going to become space garbage or it’s going to be in orbit. From there, we have completely shifted into this paradigm of in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing, or I-SAM. 

The United States has pushed this government initiative across the defence department, the executive branch, NASA, and all the other agencies, saying that we’re going to shift from that earlier paradigm to one where we are launching spacecraft with the intention of building them in space, reusing them, servicing them and repairing them – the very first part of which is refuelling them and really basic stuff like that. Now we’re building towards this paradigm of staying in space and expanding in space instead of creating the one-shot deals that we did in the past. 

A lot of that has been facilitated by launch costs coming way down, which has obviously been principally driven by SpaceX and other companies who are falling on their heels to help drive that competition further. Falling launch costs have enabled a new way of thinking about these things. Simultaneously the government on both the DoD side and the NASA side has shifted to embrace the idea of tapping the private sector, not just to build things for them to own but actually to provide capabilities as a service. So instead of saying, ‘I want you to build me my own moon rocket’, they’re now saying, ‘I want to pay for a ride to the moon’. That’s a wholly different way of thinking about space that has enabled the private sector to push the limits of space and move forward faster. 

Private space companies have shifted away from cost-plus pricing to fixed-price contracts, which helps to keep costs from ballooning. Lower launch costs make it possible to get more satellites and missions into space and make a profit. 

The government paying for services from private industry also provides another incentive for companies to launch their own constellations, so we end up with a satellite environment that is increasingly congested. Because we want to do more with the satellites, they’ve grown in size from the bread blocks of the original NewSpace constellations to something that’s not the size of a school bus but significantly bigger to give those satellites more power. They needed to be more capable, with more powerful sensors, and do things that require more energy. Because there are more of them, they also need propulsion to be able to manoeuvre around as they go. If they’re manoeuvring, they need to be refuelled to stay up there for a while. That’s creating a self-feeding ecosystem that’s driving more and more economic activity, so prices go down for launch, and it just helps to feed the cycle. There really has been a paradigm shift. 

Along the way, we’ve also had shifts in the capital markets. For years there has been a real slump in investment, but that’s starting to crack a little bit. As far as legislation and regulation go, more needs to be done for debris, like mandating lifespans. I know they don’t want to regulate that too hard and stifle the industry’s progress, but they’ve moved to a five-year plan which aims to address these issues. We’re seeing fines levied against companies for not handling an array, which is interesting. It happened recently, and the cost was minimal for the company, but nevertheless, it’s happening. I think it’s all going in the right direction. 

From a debris perspective, we think that once satellites reach the end of a mission, they should be required to orbit right away or do something else. Part of what we offer or enable is doing salvage in space. We partner with other companies that can go out and get these satellites and bring them back. This should all be part of the planning that companies have in response to a requirement that as soon as the mission is over, you have a year to deal with it. Otherwise, space is going to get more and more congested. We have an incentive to keep space clear, but if others aren’t doing it, they’re getting an advantage on cost, which makes it hard to eliminate the tragedy of the commons problem. 

Space is getting crowded. There’s no way we’re going to be able to handle an increase in satellites without addressing the space debris issue. Doing that also increases the carrying capacity of the orbital environment because if we remove the things when they’re broken right away, we can put more satellites up there, which means we can have more capabilities. It’s in everyone’s interest that that gets managed as tightly as possible.”

To find out more about the advancements in the satellite industry over the last couple of years, tune into Episode 36 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here.

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

The space industry is connected to so much of life on Earth. On a special episode of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, I was joined by Jakub Dziwisz, the CEO at Orbify, to discuss how we can include the wider community in conversations about the future of space. Read on for the highlights of the conversation. 

“We’re at an interesting stage of adoption at the moment, which is part of the natural way that any sort of new technology has always been adopted. I still remember cars in the ‘80s; when they would break up in the middle of the road. Every driver would know a little bit about how to fix the car because they were difficult to operate. You would need that knowledge if you were stuck in the middle of the road in the ‘80s. Nowadays you can call someone to come and fix everything for you without getting your hands dirty. The same thing happened with computers in the late ‘90s. 

When this technology became useful, it became so easy that even small children could use it. We are observing the same trend with Earth observation now. Twenty years ago, Landsat imagery was accessible only to the very few people with PhDs. Now, we are always increasing the quality of the images and making them more accessible to normal people. As the technology evolves and matures, it will be able to reach larger amounts of the population.

That’s good because in the majority of societies, citizens have all the influence because every couple of years they vote for the government and decide what type of politics they would like to see. We as consumers have a lot of impact on the goods that we purchase too. When I go to a store, more often than not, I’m trying to understand what impact my chosen products are creating on the planet. If someone tells me “We are green, we produce our goods without killing or harming animals,” then I’m more likely to choose their product instead of the other one. The same thing happens If someone says, “We are using less plastics to produce our bottles,” and things like that. 

This is why I think that we as citizens have all the tools to impact politics and the commercial world and see the change. In order to do this, we need more transparency. I’m not a big fan of regulations, I prefer some dose of freedom, but one of the regulations that the EU is introducing is super helpful, which is called the Anti-Greenwashing Directive. Greenwashing is ending because if you claim to have zero impact or be an environmentally conscious company, you have to prove it. 

Our observational remote sensing service is a great way to collect proof of our corporate impact. We need more information—not necessarily more data, because we already have over 1,000 satellites orbiting the Earth collecting terabytes of data every minute—but we do need numbers that describe the environment around us. And this is exactly what we are trying to bring to the table.

To hear more from Jakub, tune into Episode 33 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

As the satellite industry develops, there are increasing numbers of potential applications for the technology. On The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast we were joined by Kevin Fielder, who is the VP of Sales for the global cruise and ferries market at Anuvu. Kevin shared the work that Anuvu are doing to bring satellite connectivity to the luxury travel market. Here are his insights: 

You work in a very interesting niche in the SATCOM world with a focus on the cruise and ferry market. What seems to be the most interesting aspect of the market right now?

The pandemic – which really disrupted the industry from a force majeure perspective, and squeezed disposable income so that people were not able to travel as much – obviously had a detrimental impact on any kind of disposable spending market. It really hamstrung the industry. Coming out of it, however, there was a new technology from our friends at SpaceX that completely disrupted the market. When I say disrupted, it’s not a bad connotation, I just mean that it has changed the market. 

As people came out of their homes after COVID they were attached to a very fast, high speed internet connection with low latency. Coming back aboard cruise lines, the expectation was that they would have the same experience. It just so happened that at the same point in time we gained the technology that gave them the ability to do that. That situation meant that something that might have had a slow adoption process got ramped up really fast, based upon people’s appetite for that type of technology. This is the experience that people have wanted to have in the cruise environment for years, and now we’ve given them the best of the best available connectivity out on open water. 

Those two things – one being a bad experience for everybody from a health perspective, and the other being a transformative technology that came into play quickly at the same time – have really changed the cruise market for the better. 

What are you most excited or concerned about in relation to this industry?

The markets have been clamouring for LEO (low earth orbit) connectivity options. Starlink jumped to the forefront of delivery on that, and OneWeb is out in the market as well. Amazon is doing their groundwork to get their first satellites up at the moment too. There are plenty of smaller companies who aren’t publicising the fact that they’re launching LEO satellite capabilities for things like IOT and cell service, but they’re in the market too. I think you’re going to see more and more of that in the very near future, because it can reach so many more people than the traditional model. 

There’s a tendency to think that once LEO comes about, the geostationary satellite service will go away, but there’s still a need for it, and maybe a different way of consuming it. That may mean configuring it as a failsafe, because it has much higher latency, but it’s still a good quality product available just about anywhere globally. In addition, there are some models that are consumption based. If you don’t want to consume as much data, you may put some non latency tolerant traffic over those. If you’re going to be paying for it anyway, you might as well utilise it. If I sent you an email, you really don’t care if it arrives now or 30 seconds from now, so why would I use a low latency service at a higher price? Save that capability for a passenger who needs it for streaming.

To learn more about using satellite infrastructure for innovative solutions, tune into episode 28 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

As satellite technology develops, we are seeing a huge change in the way that we use the data and intelligence it provides. On Episode 26 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast we spoke to Kateryna Aheieva, the Head of Business Development at LuxSpace, about how these applications are being developed and the impact they could have on the wider world. Here are her insights: 

Satellite intelligence is becoming a hot topic. Every single day I see more and more companies discussing it. In my previous jobs, the main business was taking pictures from space and selling that data and value-added information to customers from that. Talking to clients and partners, we realised that the requirements on data are actually quite high. It’s not only about the resolution or the quality, but also about the amount of data that can be provided from the space system to the end user that is important. If you want to create a value added service, you have to utilise a lot of data points and have a powerful source of information. So the satellite or the space system itself should be very powerful. 

Constellations were having to get much bigger in order to perform. At LuxSpace, we’re building satellite platforms in the 50-250 kilogramme class, which is a completely different system. It’s a very capable platform for certain applications with very high resolution imagery for agriculture, thermal imagery, etc, which results in high density and very good quality data. Because the space world is occupied by engineers, we are often building systems that there isn’t currently demand for, just because we can push that boundary. So we have a lot of systems built, but not all of them are utilised in the proper way or maybe at the maximum capacity. So I truly believe that space systems could have a better use when they get more intelligent. 

There is a huge opportunity to utilise this intelligence from satellites. When multiple systems or subsystems are taking pictures and sending them to the ground station, when the space system has a diverse list of tasks, when you need less operational capability on the ground to perform that task, and when the space system itself is capable of making some decisions, and analysis to decrease the amount of work that needs to be done on the ground, it will be huge. The system itself is becoming more capable too. Intelligence is coming. 

And a couple of companies around the world are working in that direction. They have onboard computing capabilities, not only for close Earth spaces like low earth orbit, but even higher orbit and also interplanetary missions which could satisfy the needs of the system that is flying far away from Earth and has to be independent and tasking itself. We also see the potential in this market, and the contributions we can make to society by moving the direction of space intelligence instead of bringing the capacity of objects up to a certain level, because applications like communication from space or the internet from space still require certain coverage, but some applications, especially institutional technology demonstration, can be made more smart. 

To hear more from Kateryna, tune into Episode 26 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

The Satellite & NewSpace industry is constantly evolving. On Episode 21 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast we sat down with Lindsey Kemp, who is the Director of Global Markets at Communications & Power Industries (CPI), to discuss her perspectives on these evolutions. Lindsey has been in the SATCOM industry for 15 years, and is currently responsible for global business development of CPI’s antenna and power electronics unit, which plays a key role in shaping innovation and exploring future technologies for the company. Read on to find out what she had to say. 

The satellite space industry has been continuously evolving evidence creation. How is the ground sat market adapting to those new pressures? 

We’re doing some new developments in terms of both amplifiers and antenna systems. It’s critical that we develop the design for manufacturing in a repeatable way, because we have to meet really aggressive timelines at the factory. We’re currently seeing some of these new product launches being very successful. It’s hard, because while we’re incorporating those manufacturing improvements, there are a lot of new things that we didn’t have to accommodate before, but we’re going to have to accommodate for now. It’s to our benefit that we have so much experience, both in terms of where we started and how we’ve been evolving along the way, because that’s prepared us for these complicated considerations and higher volume demands. 

Where do you think some of these developments could have come from?

We’ve been bringing people in from other industries. We have a new operations manager who is from the automobile industry – there’s quite a few people that we have brought in from there. That’s critical because we need to challenge what we’ve been traditionally used to, and be open to new things that we never thought could potentially be possible to get out of our comfort zone. Bringing things in from outside of industry, such as people who have experienced business elsewhere, is going to bring a totally different perspective to our company. What we’re doing is trying to push everything forward. 

What is the biggest development that we still need to successfully cater to new NDSI platforms?

There’s a lot of offerings at K band for LEO and MEO trackers and amplifiers. The ground infrastructure is there already. I think the big one in the future is going to be supporting the V band. There are some challenges that we need to face, but the great thing is that our company is building both travelling wave tube amplifiers and solid state amplifiers. We have the ability to be agnostic when we go into these situations and see that this one makes sense for this application. One of the big drivers for that scalability is the need for solid state amplifiers to support those deployments. That’s something that is going to be really important for us to stay on top of and make sure that we’re looking to the future to be able to support that when that’s ready, because that’s a whole new ballgame in terms of that technology.

To learn more about evolving technology in the industry, tune into The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

The NewSpace industry is rapidly growing. To unpack the changes going on in the industry we spoke to Harriet Brettle, the Head of Market Analysis and Business Intelligence at the European Space Agency, on Episode 19 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast. Harriet is responsible for the analysis of markets relevant to the satellite communications and space solutions markets, giving her some excellent insights into the way the industry is developing. Here’s what she said: 

Is there anything that’s particularly exciting you about the industry at the moment? 

One of the things I really enjoy about working at the European Space Agency is the breadth of opportunities I have to look at within the space sector. One day I might be looking at understanding the potential of optical communications and how that can transform the satellite industry. The next day, I could be looking at how we can use satellite communication for disaster responses. The day after that I could be considering a completely different question that we haven’t even thought about. The variety of areas that we work with is what really hits home. For me that’s the role that space plays in everyday life. Our industry isn’t sitting in isolation, it’s incredibly connected to and impactful for the rest of the world. I’m excited to be working in the satellite communications area. Understanding the role that satellite communications plays is something I really enjoy. 

What are you most excited to see in the future of the satellite industry? 

Change is the only certain thing, right? That couldn’t be more true for the SATCOM sector at the moment. We’re seeing huge market changes. We’re also seeing how satellite operators and the space industry are reacting to all of that market change too. I don’t want to predict the future because we’re always wrong in some way, but I’m really excited to see how things are going to play out. We’re in a very disruptive, exciting time for SATCOM so I’m looking forward to seeing the innovative ways that new and existing players are going to take on those new challenges.

Do you think there is enough demand to sustain all of the players currently looking to enter the market? 

We’re seeing a whole host of new actors come in and disrupt the market. They also say history repeats itself, right? This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a wave of satellite constellations come onto the market, but I think it is different this time. There are a few things that are driving that. One is timing. In terms of where the smallsat technology is now, we’re now seeing launches at a cadence we couldn’t have even imagined just a few years ago. The scale at which we’re able to deploy satellites and the amount of funding that is going into the space sector is phenomenal. 

It’s not just the amount of funding that’s going into particular companies. Jeff Bezos has said publicly that he’s planning to sell a billion dollars of Amazon stock every year to fund Amazon’s project Kuiperthe, which is a great example. That’s the kind of funding that most startups could only dream of. There’s a huge amount of focus on Starlink, but we’re still to see those business cases close. It’s one thing to get the constellation up in orbit, it’s another thing to be able to sell those services at a price point customers are willing to pay. 

We’re also seeing projections for huge increases in the demand for data going forward. From the new conversations around LEO we’re also expecting to see a huge influx in capacity and supply coming onto the market as well. Satellite operators are able to charge to realise that opportunity. I don’t think it’s a slam dunk, but I think we’re seeing a huge amount of progress from a number of different operators, which is very exciting.

To learn more about the state of the NewSpace industry, tune into Episode 19 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.