New Space: the changing face of the space industry

For dec­ades, the field of space developed thanks to large infra­struc­tures such as space agen­cies (NASA, ESA, Rus­si­an Roscos­mos) and large aero­naut­ics industry groups (Boe­ing, Lock­heed Mar­tin, Air­bus, Dassault). But times are chan­ging. Today, new eco­nom­ic mod­els are emer­ging, based on agil­ity, innov­a­tion and great­er risk-tak­ing – both tech­no­lo­gic­al and eco­nom­ic. This shift has giv­en rise to bud­ding private com­pan­ies try­ing to make their mark in the highly com­pet­it­ive field of space.

What changes have enabled their appear­ance? What is this new dynam­ic? For what applic­a­tions and mar­kets? Let’s take a closer look at what is known today as the “New Space”.

The last two dec­ades have seen sev­er­al changes that have made it easi­er (and cheap­er) to access and use space. First, tech­no­lo­gies have seen con­sid­er­able evol­u­tions mak­ing is pos­sible, today, to com­press equip­ment into a volume equi­val­ent to a few shoe­boxes. Such tech­no­logy would pre­vi­ously have required a satel­lite the size of a car. Hence, thanks to the mini­atur­isa­tion of elec­tron­ic com­pon­ents, new mater­i­als and on-board arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence algorithms, new satel­lites are small, flex­ible and much cheap­er than their predecessors. 

From ‘microsatel­lites’ weigh­ing barely more than 100 kg, we have now moved on to nanosatel­lites (about 10 kg). These nanosatel­lites are now mainly used by uni­ver­sit­ies for edu­ca­tion­al and ped­ago­gic­al pro­jects or by research organ­isa­tions to carry out space exper­i­ments at low cost (around €100 000 per unit). The DART probe that recently crashed into the Dimorphos aster­oid to test the pos­sib­il­ity of deflect­ing an aster­oid by “kin­et­ic impact” car­ried a nanosatel­lite called LICIA (Light Itali­an Cube­sat for Ima­ging of Aster­oids) that allowed real-time film­ing of the impact and imme­di­ate return of the data to Earth.

But the sav­ings are not just in pay­load mass. A com­pany that needs to send a few nanosatel­lites into orbit for its oper­a­tions now has a much wider choice of launch­ers that will put their equip­ment into orbit. Along­side the tra­di­tion­al pil­lars of space (European Ariane, Rus­si­an Soy­uz, Chinese Long March), new rock­ets are being developed with this cent­ral idea of eco­nom­ic efficiency.

One example is SpaceX’s fam­ous Falcon9 with its reusable primary stage, which can auto­mat­ic­ally return to land at its start­ing base. Then, after a thor­ough tech­nic­al inspec­tion, they can take off again. Some of the launch­ers are already on their 15^th flight in a row without fail­ure. For a price of around $65m, it is thus pos­sible to afford the ser­vices of this orbit­ing tool. This launch­er is used for a wide vari­ety of pur­poses: send­ing cargo sup­plies (Dragon Mis­sions) or astro­nauts (Crew Dragon cap­sule) to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion satel­lites (Asi­asat, ABS-2A, etc.), sci­entif­ic study satel­lites (DSCOVR, TESS) or tens of thou­sands of Starlink micro-satel­lites, pro­duced by SpaceX, and inten­ded to provide glob­al Inter­net coverage.

Anoth­er concept comes from New Zea­l­and. Designed by the Rock­et Lab com­pany, the Elec­tron launch­er, after suc­cess­fully pla­cing 34 satel­lites in orbit, was recently recovered by a heli­copter as it des­cen­ded to earth by para­chute. This is anoth­er way of put­ting the notion of reusab­il­ity into prac­tice. This launch­er, which is less power­ful than the Falcon9, spe­cial­ises in launch­ing nanosatel­lites for Earth ima­ging (DOVE from Plan­et Labs) or mari­time sur­veil­lance (Bro-One from French start-up Unseen­labs). One example is the recent launch of the CAPSTONE satel­lite around our nat­ur­al satel­lite to test the sta­bil­ity of the orbit where the future Gate­way lun­ar sta­tion will be built.

There is no need to build a rock­et cap­able of going to the Moon if you just want to place your pay­loads in low orbit.

There is no need to build a rock­et cap­able of going all the way to the Moon if you just want to place your pay­loads in low orbit, a few hun­dred kilo­metres above the Earth’s sur­face. Because it is at this alti­tude that the bulk of the mar­ket is to be found.

This is why sev­er­al start-ups are work­ing on the idea of ‘micro-launch­ers’, mini­ature rock­ets with just the capa­city to reach low orbit. One example is the French com­pany Ven­ture Orbit­al Sys­tem and its Zephyr micro­lan­cer (17 metres long), part of whose propul­sion sys­tem is built by indus­tri­al 3D print­ing for reas­ons of eco­nomy. Its maid­en flight is sched­uled for 2024.

One of the great nov­el­ties of New Space is also its dis­rupt­ive char­ac­ter, allow­ing new uses to be found for space tech­no­lo­gies. And in this field, even in France, ideas abound.

The field of space tour­ism, for example, suf­fers from a mixed image because of the envir­on­ment­al con­sequences of space flights. While some launch­ers, such as the New Shep­ard from Blue Ori­gin, owned by bil­lion­aire Jeff Bezos, can boast of using fuels (oxy­gen and liquid hydro­gen) that pro­duce only water after com­bus­tion, oth­ers, such as the Space­Ship (from Richard Bran­son’s Vir­gin­Galactic) or the fam­ous Rus­si­an Soy­uz launch­er (which has already sent wealthy tour­ists to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion), use fuels that emit oth­er car­bon compounds. 

One of the great nov­el­ties of New Space is also its dis­rupt­ive char­ac­ter, allow­ing new uses to be found for space technologies. 

The pro­pos­al of the French start-up Zeph­alto is there­fore to devel­op a stra­to­spher­ic bal­loon cap­able of offer­ing six pas­sen­gers and two pilots a “low-car­bon” jour­ney into space. The first flight is planned for 2024.

Some­times, the innov­at­ive aspect does not con­sist in build­ing new satel­lites but in mak­ing bet­ter use of the immense amount of data gen­er­ated by all the satel­lites already in place. The star­tup Kayrros, for example, uses data from the Earth obser­va­tion satel­lites of the European COPERNICUS pro­gramme to auto­mat­ic­ally detect large indus­tri­al meth­ane leaks, mon­it­or defor­est­a­tion, or accur­ately assess the car­bon con­tent sequestered in vegetation.

Back on Earth, in the field of agri­cul­ture, the start-up Agreen­cul­ture offers a solu­tion for autonom­ous agri­cul­tur­al machines guided by satel­lites with a pre­ci­sion on the ground of less than a cen­ti­metre, which enables the robots to carry out pro­grammed weed­ing and main­ten­ance tasks.

And if, finally, you need to put your satel­lites into orbit to meas­ure space radi­ation, provide tar­geted tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion cov­er­age or syn­chron­ise ter­restri­al power grids, U‑Space is offer­ing to help its cus­tom­ers design and build the nanosatellite(s) for their needs. Once these are built, cus­tom­ers will be able to choose the star­tup Exo­trail and its “space van” to carry sev­er­al of these nanosatel­lites and, once SpaceX’s Falcon9 launch vehicle has released it into space, let it drop each pay­load into its own oper­a­tion­al orbit. 

New Space developed in the United States with the emer­gence of innov­at­ive start-ups sup­por­ted by digit­al mil­lion­aires will­ing to invest massively in this new access to space at reduced prices.

Moreover, digit­al tech­no­logy is nowadays about space. Geo­pos­i­tion­ing, net­work syn­chron­isa­tion, tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, glob­al inter­net, these new mar­kets are open­ing up to any­one who wants to take them, and the com­pet­i­tion is fierce. Today, Europe is try­ing to regain this ground. It is true that Amer­ic­an com­pan­ies find it easi­er to raise huge sums of money, but they also spend a lot in the pro­cess, with an effi­ciency that is not, in the end, drastic­ally super­i­or to the European approach, which focuses more on sobri­ety and efficiency.

One thing is cer­tain, the sec­tor of young com­pan­ies posi­tioned on space (wheth­er in terms of innov­at­ive tech­no­lo­gies or ser­vices using space data) is boom­ing in France. Today, sev­er­al start-ups are being cre­ated every month, and the pace is accel­er­at­ing every year.

Today, sev­er­al start-ups are being cre­ated every month, and the pace is accel­er­at­ing every year.

Of course, this grow­ing trend is not without its legit­im­ate con­cerns. What about the legis­lat­ive frame­work in which this new eco­nomy is devel­op­ing? In low orbit, a satel­lite nev­er stays over a single ter­rit­ory but cir­cu­lates freely around the world. This over­flight of an increas­ing num­ber of private eyes and sensors over for­eign ter­rit­or­ies is not without its own stra­tegic and geo­pol­it­ic­al problems.

And, last but not least, is the expo­nen­tial increase in the num­ber of satel­lites in low earth orbit and the risk of col­li­sion in space, threat­en­ing to send thou­sands of pieces of debris around the earth at tens of thou­sands of kilo­metres per hour (which could in turn dam­age oth­er satel­lites orbit­ing at the same alti­tude). The prob­lem is not so much the indi­vidu­al satel­lites as the satel­lite con­stel­la­tions, sets of thou­sands, some­times tens of thou­sands of microsatel­lites cov­er­ing almost the entire sur­face of the Earth, such as SpaceX’s Starlink glob­al inter­net pro­ject, cur­rently being deployed, whose total num­ber of satel­lites is estim­ated, if it is com­pleted, at 42,000.

It is true that some New Space com­pan­ies spe­cial­ise in the detec­tion and/or real-time track­ing of these hun­dreds of thou­sands of objects and debris in orbit, such as the French start-up Space­able, but will this be enough to guar­an­tee their safety? Only time will tell.