Everyday space, every way, everywhere?

Stars guided our ancestors and, while those stars may be increasingly hard to see, amongst the objects in their place are the satellites who see us and still help guide us from beyond earth.  There is hardly an industry or an activity that does not depend on space for its modern effectiveness, efficiency or existence.  For navigation, broadcast and for telecommunications the role of these satellites are subliminal, the sophistication of the enabling and delivery technologies long forgotten (until the point they occasionally fail), even as commercial enterprise competes in space for our eyeballs and custom down here.  For the third pillar of the space economy, earth observation (EO) – the repeat capture of location specific data about the planet, in all its various forms, has yet to become as subliminal – that time is still only dawning.

In this context it might almost appear odd that space is hot and newsworthy but hot it is, in part thanks to the characters, the failures and the ambitions in orbit and beyond earth.  Moon colonies, asteroid mining, space tourism and Martian shores might get the headlines but the humdrum business of the space economy rests in our own orbit, at least for now.

Large corporates are now exploring or wondering how they can explore how they can best harness the capabilities of the vast volumes of data flowing from the remotely sensed world of satellites (as well all their own or licensable location, process or asset specific data sources).  Spoiler alert, seems for the most part to be sustainable these data sources will become so integrated into the information value chain as to be invisible (to most) thanks to data scientists and domain experts but the strategic approach will still be important in enabling that outcome and impact. 

And the market is responding to help them appreciate that value and navigate a suitable path.  The big consultancies have space practices, M&A activity is seeing consolidation across both upstream and downstream and the research and information brokers are creating reports and analyses. 

SME land is alive and well in this #newspace world as any exploration of KTN landscape map or the Satellite Applications Catapult’s catalogue will reveal – space manufacturing, space servicing, space domain awareness, space compute at the edge, space based solar power, refuelling and more.  And space is a collaborative enterprise, fertilised by NASA, ESA and others, fuelled by Moore’s Law (miniaturisation and its consequence for payload weight, power and cost) and, leveraged through ride share to get up there and by a rich ecosystem that translates that technical wizadry into practical applications on and for earth and its citizens and businesses. Hence those visible white dots – close by satellites and space stations whizzing by replacing stars dimmed by light pollution. 

A fertile ground and a fertile time to sprinkle some forward-facing thought as for example Sifted and Deloitte have done is their recent Spacetech report.  Or as the HBR might say, your business needs a space strategy, now!  And you can find the same kind of thing across McKinsey, Forbes et al.

And there is much to agree with and ponder therein.  Large scale deployment of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites is transforming both global telecommunications (for those that have a device) and positioning (navigation and timing, collectively PNT), and has a proven return on investment model.  Earth observation sits across all three orbits though most commercial satellites are out beyond the LEO swarms of Starlink and OneWeb.  Many EO players are lowering their orbits and launching their own clusters of cube and nano-sats.  And there may be an opportunity to piggy-back this LEO infrastructure with EO and PNT capability too.  Whatever the approach it has to result in data streams that are relevant to more than just the very public needs of protecting the planet if investors are not to lose their shirts (though some surely will). 

Upstream is expensive, slow, risky and with uncertain returns but it is inspiring. Investing in space sustainability – not just space domain awareness but refuelling, self-healing, longevity, manufacturing and more – looks one smart upstream way to drive that downstream value. Does the Airbus 3D printer mission to the ISS indicate the roadmap to 3D printing of satellites or data centres in space for space?  Raw materials from the moon or asteroids and energy from the sun?

While we are in the early days of those initiatives there is continuing investment in the downstream, in the ways in which all those assets and all that capability is transformed into value.

The marvel and power of web search, of ChatGPT and the various public incarnations of AI in the social media eye makes us all Donald Rumsfeld, not knowing what we don’t know.  Making any kind of sense of or drawing any kind of value from the petabytes of data flowing from the remotely sensed world demands that those tools turn that “big data” (remember that - volume, variety, variability, velocity, veracity?) into actionable insights with impact.  “Selling” images multiple times will be for the birds; having different insights derived from time-series data of the same location over long periods of time offers sustainability to both sides of the market by an entirely different business model.  One person’s flood risk forecast service is another person’s agricultural commodities futures signal service or a farmer’s advice service.

There will be use cases where the raw data needs to make its way to some secure site for storage, provenance and governance and even for analysis.  With cooling and power demands of data centres becoming a significant contributor to atmospheric emissions it makes sense to put edge compute, customisable AI and data storage in space.  Ubiquitous telecoms connectivity will be complemented by data relay satellite networks enabling insights to be squirted across space and down to those that need them in near real time, securely and discreetly. 

So earth observation data becomes that long sought after “just another data source” that is combined with other data to produce the actionable insights that decision makers want.  Dating and mating in this space economy is now and is going to continue to be about a collaborative ecosystem. There will be vertical integration and horizontal deployment and there will remain a need for the relevant “back office” skills (design, build, deliver, maintain, process, distribute). Much as telecommunications doesn’t have to explain itself so the path to ubiquity for earth observation remains conditional on the ability to translate user need for the data scientist and analyst and tell the stories that convey value to the markets.  It seems that application areas such as ESG metrics, insurance and risk and the interplay between them may offer the scale to see migration to the annuity business models necessary to sustain the commercial (non-defence) market.

Subliminal EO here we come?