Report: $284bn satellite market over next 10 years
November 13, 2018
By Chris Forrester
Euroconsult reports that the ‘build and launch’ market for the next decade looks extremely healthy.
The Paris-based consulting and analysis firm says it anticipates that 330 satellites with a mass over 50 kg will be launched on average each year by 2027 for government agencies and commercial organisations worldwide. This is a threefold increase over the past decade as the satellite market experiences a paradigm shift with the rise of small satellites and large constellations.
“The satellite sector is undergoing a massive transformation as more commercial and governmental entities take advantage of constellations to introduce new satellite services on Earth,” said Rachel Villain, Principal Advisor at Euroconsult and editor of its ‘Satellites to be Built & Launched over the Next 10 Years’, report. “We anticipate that over 40 constellations of various sizes and capabilities will launch about 2,300 satellites into low or medium Earth orbits for services as diverse as communications, navigation, Earth observation, meteorology and data collection from Earth sensors.”
“The 3,300 satellites over 50 kg to be launched over 2018-2027 should represent a market of $284 billion for the space industry in terms of building and launching, up 25 per cent over that of the past decade. At the same time, a price decrease is visible in the satellite industry, driven by the commercial constellations of smallsats introducing new production and operation concepts including economies of scale, softwarisation, and vertical integration up to data analytics.”
Euroconsult says that governments will be the largest customer and responsible for more than 1300 satellites over the next ten years. In the commercial space sector, Euroconsult believes about 50 companies will launch almost 2,000 satellites, of which 1,700 units will be for 22 commercial constellations (of which one single constellation accounts for 70 per cent). Commercial space still means communications and broadcasting satellites in geostationary orbit; these satellites represent almost 50 per cent of the $70 billion of commercial revenues expected over the decade. The two other large commercial markets are for non-geostationary orbit satellite constellations for communications (25 per cent of revenues) and Earth observation (11 per cent of revenues). New commercial markets are emerging for in-orbit services such as life extension, and for in-orbit tourism (mostly lunar).