Analyst: Geo-launches in decline
July 3, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Analysts at Quilty Space say that the first half-year of 2023 will achieve six confirmed orders of new geostationary satellites.
That would be considered more or less normal except that five of these orders are in the extremely modest sub-1000 kgs class. As at the end of June this translates into just one geostationary craft has been ordered which might be considered full-sized.
Quilty says that last year – in the full year – there were nice ‘full sized’ geostationary satellites ordered. 2021 saw seven ordered. 2020 was a busy year when 21 were ordered (and with 13 of that number needed for the US C-band replacement tasks).
The best year of recent times was 2014 when 26 full-sized satellites were ordered.