Category: Satellite & NewSpace

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.     

On Episode 35 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, Constellr‘s co-founders, CEO Max Gulde and COO Cassi Welling, joined us to discuss the industry’s changing perceptions of our planet’s health. Constellr is developing earth observation applications that monitor the heat on Earth’s surface, with the aim of helping companies and people create more responsible solutions. With such a powerful mission, we were keen to hear their thoughts on perceptions of planetary health in the satellite industry. Here are the highlights: 

Max: “In principle, we see a shift in perception. There have been, and still are, a lot of promises about what Earth observation would eventually do to solve these problems around the globe, and a lot of those promises didn’t come to pass. We have to fight that legacy. It turns out that you can correlate certain things, but the correlation is not that good. This has misplaced a lot of trust, so it’s a challenge. 

We try to be extremely realistic about what we can do and also clearly state what we cannot do. On the one hand side, we are the first generation who can directly see the impact of climate change, and that is scary, but it’s also obviously helping bring across our message. We are also probably the last generation that has the leverage to change things, so we should use that opportunity. On the other hand, people are more acutely aware that this is happening, and they’re uncertain. There’s no discussion anymore about if this is happening or not. We are in deep trouble. 

We can actually do a measurement now which is far more reliable and directly quantifiable than previous modeling approaches. People seem to understand more, and they’re crying out for us to measure things because the model is not granular enough. Making more data-driven decisions is helpful, especially as we’re pushed towards a more compliance-based market that’s about fulfilling certain requirements. Measurements are at the very centre. 

The point is that we’re moving. I’m very happy as a scientist, but maybe there’s a bias there. It’s gratifying to be pushed in this direction and to provide these measurements to help people make better decisions. We see the market moving, despite the early mistrust from overclaiming what satellites can do. Now with a new generation, we’re getting a lot closer to actually fulfilling these promises.

Cassie: “Just to add to that, I think the benefit of science becoming more of a mainstream topic is that it’s completely cross-cutting not just one part of the industry, but it’s pushing us to collaborate, generate partnerships and so on. It’s creating a drive towards NewSpace and more opportunities through being quicker, lighter, more sustainable, more efficient, etc. It goes hand in hand with the evolution of the sector. 

The industry is able to address some of these more specific topics now. Space debris is a massive topic at the moment, so heaps of companies are popping up in that area. That’s just one example of this broader view of ‘Oh, we’re not just sending satellites into space, we’re contributing to planetary debris that’s also impacting the Earth.’ There’s also something called space sustainability ratings that’s growing at the moment, so there’s a lot of drive in the right direction. 

Space offers massive scalability. It allows us to look at the whole planet and assess change over time and be consistent in how we’re measuring things. But at the same time, it doesn’t always allow for the granularity of decision-making on the ground. It’s about having a balance and making sure that space complements other datasets or methodologies that we’re using on the ground so that you get the best possible picture at any one point.”

To hear more from Max and Cassie, tune into Episode 35 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 episode of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, Jeffrey Hill, the Executive Chairman of the SATELLITE conference from Access Intelligence, joined us to discuss the latest event in March. He shared his insights from fifteen years of working for the conference, as well as his insights on the future of the space industry and its resulting impact on the conference. 

How did the satellite industry look when you first started working at the SATELLITE conference in 2009?

Back then it was small enough that everybody knew each other. It was a very intimate industry where everybody worked for everybody at one point in time. It was around 10,000 attendees at the time, so it was still big, but most of them were from the broadcast industry because we had just as many satellite operators as launchers because they would sell to the operators. There were very few young people and very few women. Everybody had an engineering background, so everyone used ‘engineering speak’, even if they weren’t in engineering now because they were executives or in legal or finance. 

The conference used to be all about selling products and discussing the industry’s next engineering transition. Some people, like SpaceX, were trying to disrupt the industry, but the idea of somebody coming in and doing something faster than usual was met with suspicion. People thought these new ventures would fail because nothing had changed in the last ten years. Everybody was about to retire, so who was going to take over? Change needed to happen whether people were ready or not. 

What solutions are currently the driving force of the conference, and how are they shaping the show?

There are a few different ones for a few different groups of people. This year, the main conversation is this convergence between the cellular terrestrial world and satellite telecommunications, with the advancement of 5G as the standard. We have become a general telecommunication show in the sense that people from the terrestrial world have to come and learn about how satellites work and how the satellite business model works. They don’t know how satellite operators make money, so we have an educational component where we’re meeting this new group of people. 

The second most popular conversation is about the fact that satellites’ data analytics and imagery are now so commonly used in the news to inform people about current events. Satellite data is now a crucial element of any news story. It brings proof right to the public. You’ll hear a lot about satellite intelligence data gathering. I imagine we will also hear a lot about the recent news story about Russia possibly bringing nuclear weapons into space and violating the Space Treaty of 1967. I imagine that will be a unifying discussion because everybody in every session dealing with the space segment will have to talk about protecting their assets and infrastructure. 

We’re not just talking about telecommunications on the Earth; now we’re talking about the moon and getting communications systems established there. If we were to successfully land on the moon, it would take us 15 minutes to know if they did. 

How do you see both the industry and therefore the SATELLITE conference developing over the next 10 years?

I think the industry is going to be much more focused on infrastructure security as space becomes more competitive on a global economic scale. I think we’re going to see a lot more discussion about policy because the industry needs guidance. The private industry can move really fast, but without directing policy or some agreement with the major space powers about what is or is not acceptable in space, we cannot approach space real estate. We have to forget about certain boundaries and work together. There’s going to be a complete shift in policy that’s going to require private industry and government to take the lead. 

I also think you’ll see a lot more discussion on the future of propulsion and rocket technology. We’ve really reached the limit of what we can do with fuel-based rockets, which are just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. To get all our stuff in space, we’re going to have to launch more rockets, but we don’t want to destroy our environment while we’re trying to get into space. We have to look at some of these alternatives. 

I think we’re going to see a lot more diversity in terms of the types of people who come to the SATELLITE conference from outside of the space industry. There’s going to be a focus on education and demystifying space, making it seem more normal than it is. In reality, space is a super dangerous, inaccessible place to do anything. We’re going to have software engineers coming from other industries, and they’re going to want to know how their systems will operate on a space station. The space industry is going to have to communicate with them and explain to them why they should be doing their research in space. 

To hear more from Jeffrey, tune into Episode 34 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 expands, differentiating your product or service has become more important than ever. On Episode 32 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we were joined by Adeline Pitrois, the Head of Sales at Latitude, to talk about how the company are setting itself apart by catering to a specific client base. Read on to find out more about how to differentiate your own offerings. 

Why should a small-sat or constellation operator choose a dedicated small or light launch provider rather than the larger providers or ride-share agreements?

Ride-share programmes are very good if you’re at the very beginning of your deployment or if you’re in your IoT phase. But dedicated lunches will allow you to optimise your constellation deployment because it will help you deploy your constellations faster. In the end, it’s a question of revenue, which is important when you start to deploy your business and your constellation. It’s also a question of managing your own lunch solution. If you have your own, you do not need to share it with others and to be ready at a certain time. You are also not constrained by specific arbiters who decide to follow you. 

When you develop a constellation programme, you want to manage it from the beginning to the end. That is what dedicated launches offer you. It’s very competitive because people very often think that if they buy their own launch solution it will be very expensive. Now, we always speak about the total cost to orbit. I try to change how people think about it – you cannot compare different solutions using the price per kilo, because you have only part of the price when you do that. What is interesting to compare is what we call the total cost to orbit. That starts when your satellite is ready on the ground and ends when new satellites start operating in space. If you take all the costs related to your constellation or the way you will put your satellites in orbit, then you realise that even a dedicated launch solution is competitive compared to a rideshare solution. 

This is something nobody can do right now, because we do not have that type of solution except with Rocket Lab, which is currently operating in that market. People need to change the way they see dedicated launch solutions to consider that they are totally free to do what they want with the launch solution and can design 100% of their constellation without any constraint from from from the launch services. 

What differentiates an offering like Zephyr from other providers or solutions? 

When we speak about competition, it’s often mentioned that we have direct competitors and indirect competitors. Indirect competition could be the biggest launch solution, like the one from either RSA, because we are not targeting the same markets. We do not offer the same the same solution. We could have some projects that overlap, but we have really different targeted markets. 

Direct competitors are all Microline solutions like Xavier. The one with the 200-kilogramme capacity in Lille Rocket Lab is a direct competitor. However, latitude will offer a different solution, and we’ll offer the best solution at a very competitive price. We will also offer a very flexible solution, thanks to different elements – one of which is our launch rate. We will target 50 launches per year because that is the key to offering our customers all the different advantages. When you are launching 50 satellites per year, you offer a huge flexibility to your customers, who are then able to deploy a constellation in less than 10 months. Combining these elements at the very beginning of the project will allow us to become a leader in the market.

To hear more about differentiating your satellite products, tune into Episode 32 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.     

Thanks to modern technology, global teams are more connected than ever. But does that mean they operate in a shared culture? On Episode 31 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we were joined by Dr. Clemens Kaiser, the Chief Program Officer at Rivada Space Networks to talk about his experience of building global teams. Here’s what he said: 

What has your experience of mentoring been like? 

I’ve benefited from mentoring, and now I’m acting as a mentor myself. I’ve hired some former colleagues, some of whom had already retired, and I told them to join us on a part-time basis as mentors. Now they’re giving back what they know from doing it over the last 30-year lifecycle. 

Something I’m doing as a lecturer at the university in Munich is sitting down with students who are at the beginning of their 20s to talk about what’s going on in our world. I’m coming from a world which was purely instituted institutional space business, where there were only the big space agencies. Now, we are in an age of NewSpace and commercial space, which are completely new areas. 

There are a lot of opportunities, especially for youngsters. They can choose to go to big established companies where they get a lot of good training, or join startups which are tough and a completely different way of working. Both paths have the same to the same objective of launching admission into space.

How do you create a culture that welcomes new people, and how do you identify the people who will help you take that culture forward?

What is the key to success? People acting as a team. When we do an interview, we ask, ‘Does he fit into the team? Does he fit into our culture?’ We recently did an internal workshop, and people gave us feedback that this is the most tremendous and fascinating team they’ve ever worked with. We looked at each other and said, ‘Yeah, but what have we done?’ Well, you do it automatically. Our way of thinking, the values that drive us, and the culture we are building all come together to help the team work together. 

Everyone has a skill set. We are always together as a team, and no one is left behind. That comes from a leadership team of 10 original people, who then hired a combination of really experienced people who fit into the team. Now we can benefit from really good people coming from other large operators and constellations as well. 

It’s about doing the right things. Having a clear direction helps the younger generation come in and keep the team glued together. Then you can plug in new people who feel immediately at home and accepted while taking on a high level of responsibility. Everyone is also asked to look around their own fence while thinking about the entire system.

How do you instil a team spirit in a global team? 

When I started, it was before COVID-19, and we suddenly completely changed how we worked. We need to find the right balance now. It’s important to get people in one room in front of a whiteboard to brainstorm, work together and collaborate. We have a hybrid working model where we say that even people who are working abroad come in from time to time to spend time with the team. 

We’ve built the kind of culture where people invite their colleagues to meet Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the office, come to meetings together, and do sales and non-technical stuff collaboratively. They get together for lunch or dinner, which is so important in these times. Some experts may have more reasons or justifications to work from abroad or in a remote setting, but mostly the stuff we are doing is really common. We are quite productive, and it works. Even when people need some time off, they stay connected, and they always love to come back because of the personal relationships they have. 

To hear more from Clemens, tune into Episode 31 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.     

With growing concerns over the human side of the space industry, ethics are becoming a pivotal part of conversations in the sector. On Episode 30 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we spoke to Sita Sonty, the CEO of Space Tango, about her thoughts on the topic. Sita has an impressive career history in space, including leading space industry practices at the Boston Consulting Group and working as the Head of Human Spaceflight Sales at SpaceX. She also led an interesting career in government, with over 17 years of experience as a US diplomat. Combining these two areas has given her a wealth of insights into the legal and ethical implications of space. Read on to hear her thoughts. 

“A lot of the decisions that are made by sovereign governments impact where you can launch a launch vehicle from, how much payload it can carry, the purpose of its payload, whether it is designed to have a civil, commercial or national security purpose, how many of those technological pieces can be made in your nation as opposed to manufactured elsewhere… There are also questions like ‘To what extent is technology transfer either problematic from a sovereignty perspective, or highly beneficial from a bilateral negotiations perspective?’ These are the things that have generally been decided upon by senior government officials. 

At the same time, ethical concerns are not only limited to complex foreign policy and national security decisions. Every government has to make those decisions on an increasingly frequent basis, given the amount of activity that’s happening in space, and the number of countries that are getting involved in the space economy. That being said, those decisions are not only made by those senior policymakers – they’re also increasingly made and shaped by the technologists themselves. There is a natural tension between wanting to continue at the pace of innovation so that we’re launching as quickly as we can and meeting those ethical limits. 

We’re providing frequent opportunities to launch, and we’re bringing down the unit economics so that launch capability is at today’s level of affordability. However, it’s not just being provided by one provider – there’s a multitude of launch providers out there that can enable access to space. Let’s say we achieve that, we’re still in a world where there’s one major launch provider, but there’s a number of other newcomers who are increasingly catching up, but are not quite there yet. As that dynamic grows or evolves over time, let’s say there’s increasing access to various orbital planes, the big ethical question is, ‘How do you reasonably allocate access to orbit?’, because it’s not an infinite resource. 

There’s a great study that’s been done by Professor Richard Lunars at MIT, on how to appropriately calculate orbital access if it’s not an infinite resource. How do you appropriately calculate it using just data? On top of that data, you overlay the filter of ethics and say, ‘Well, in a perfect world, there should be equitable access to orbital slots or orbital bins in various orbits, and the proliferation of LEO is the one that is of greatest concern’.

So from an ethical perspective, who gets to decide, and what is the fair outcome? How do you measure the fairness of that decision-making process, as well as mapping as much actual data as possible? You have to consider whether that data is the economic contribution or the percentage of GDP of a given country to its space programme. Is that the proportion by which they’ll be granted access to an orbital slot or set of slots? There’s the international telecom union that has performed something similar in geosynchronous orbit for the telecom industry, but what about LEO? And what about if we’re going beyond one industry and trying to encourage as much industrial growth in low Earth orbit as possible? Is there a new agency that can provide that function? These are the kinds of things that folks in industry think about constantly because there’s this big laudable goal of democratising space, but that is a lot harder to achieve when you think through not just the economics of it, but also the ethics of it.

So how have the ethics questions evolved during my time in the industry? I’d say in a few ways. There’s the ethics of access to performing what you want to perform in the orbital location where you want to perform it because you can’t perform the same functions everywhere. Access is, in effect, controlled by the launch providers. You could set policy to say, ‘Here’s an international organisation, various countries are going to fund it, it’s going to be similar to ICAO, which governs commercial aviation.’ There’s some precedent for the policy segment to say, ‘We’re going to start up agencies at the national and then the international level and those agencies will resource governance structures and technologies that will enable us to have things like air traffic control in space.’ That is a highly evolving segment which provides access to various orbital locations through various launch providers. 

It’s attracted a lot of attention because at the end of the day, do government agencies have enough resources to keep up with the pace of innovation, and continue to provide that access to orbital locations in a reasonable timeframe? That requires resources, judgement, knowledge, skills and abilities. That’s the phase of evolution that we’re in right now. When it comes down to microgravity research (which is what space will do in the value chain), there are other governing bodies that we partner with, such as the FAA and NASA, for certification of our hardware and facilities. We also partner with the FDA to provide us with what’s called the Current Good Manufacturing Practice licence, so that the artefacts that we bring back down from microgravity can be utilised on humans. Whether it’s for stem cell tissues, organs on chips, or drug compounds, to be able to bring substances back down, you still need to have the approval and certification to put that into a human body. There is a thought-through process and set of ethics around it. 

There have been structures that we at Space Tangle have been able to leverage, historically in a pretty short timeframe, so that we’re keeping up with not only the pace of innovation and trying to move the needle on it, but at the same time making sure that we’re thinking through the most ethical and equitable outcomes. We aim not only to preserve the lives of the humans who are going to be beneficiaries of the payload that we bring down but also to do no harm in the process.”

To hear more from Sita about the human element and governmental impact of the space industry, tune into Episode 30 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.     

Orbital debris and mitigation are pressing issues in today’s Satellite and NewSpace industry. On Episode 29 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we spoke with Andrew Faiola, the Commercial Vice President at Astroscale, who is leading the charge in tackling them. 

Why has it taken so long for the industry to do something about debris and future mitigation? 

The proliferation of spacecraft in orbit has accelerated the realization that something needs to be done. Most people are familiar with the Kessler effect, which identified space debris as an issue a long time ago. But now, things are accelerating very quickly. 

The other part of it is technology, and its ability to deal with the issue is starting to catch up. 10 years ago, when Astroscale was founded, our founder had identified that there was going to be an issue, but there wasn’t then the technology to deal with it in a cost-effective way. Because of this burgeoning space economy and the number of companies that are operating in this space, the pace of technology and innovation is accelerating as well. It’s enabling us to start addressing an issue that wasn’t even able to be addressed just a couple of years ago.

What do you think is the viability of the long-term market for these missions beyond the next decade or so? 

The environment is going to get more and more crowded. What we want to do is both mitigate risk by removing large, dangerous objects and ensure that we’re not creating more small debris. In the long term, there is going to be a view towards technology helping remove the smaller pieces of debris as well. I look at all of these things as stepping stones to the in-orbit space economy that everybody talks about. 

Astroscale today is focusing on removing debris from orbit, but what we’re really good at is rendezvous and proximity operations. 10 or 20 years from now, we’re looking at more and more private industries in space, whether it’s human spaceflight, manufacturing, etc; those vehicles are all going to have to coexist together. They’re going to have to be flying, viewing and being serviced in space. Nobody wants to launch tonnes and tonnes of stuff from the ground because no matter how cheap a starship gets, you still have to start on Earth. Can’t we start to repurpose things that are already in orbit? How do we get to a circular economy in orbit rather than just deorbiting? That has to start somewhere. 

On a national scale, what more needs to be done? And more importantly, by whom? 

It needs to come from a number of places, all at the same time. Public awareness is key to putting pressure on legislators to actually enact laws. The industry can only do so much, it needs to come from both ends. Astroscale and others have done an extremely good job of influencing policy over the past years to the point where it is now recognised that the orbital environment has a pollution problem that needs to be sorted out, preferably before we have another tragedy of the commons. 

But what’s the next step to actual legislation or regulation? Historically, I would have come from the standpoint of ‘more regulation is bad’, right? Let the market sort itself out. But in the time that I’ve been here, I’ve actually realised that having the right regulatory framework in place that places the right incentives for behaviour rather than penalties is actually going to catalyse investment and innovation. We need that foundation in order to make a success of it, because this is a brand new market that we’re trying to develop. 

Without having public awareness and the right regulatory and legislative framework in place, it’s hard to make it work. We’ve seen this before in other areas, whether it’s cod fisheries in the North Atlantic, or the Amazon rainforest, everyone knows that they should behave better or things will go bad, but until the right frameworks are in place that incentivise the right behaviour, people will act in their own self-interest. 

To your point about who is responsible, is it national governments or international governmental organisations, I think everybody has a part to play in this. My background in communications for mobility, in-flight connectivity and maritime has shown me that there are organisations like the IMO that put rules of the road in place that people have to adhere to, but there’s national legislation as well. It is probably going to be a combination of all of those that help us move the industry forward. 

To hear more from Andrew, tune into Episode 29 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.