The “New Space” revolution is not just commercial—it is a transformation in how space is governed.

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I recently recorded a podcast interview with Dr. Deganit Paikowsky, senior lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, and a non-resident scholar at the George Washington Space Policy Institute.

The excerpts below present key passages from our conversation. In my view, anyone involved in long-term space strategy—and in asking the right strategic questions about the future of space governance—should pay attention to this discussion.

The extract is part of the podcast series Prague Space Security Talks, sponsored and produced in collaboration with the Prague Security Studies Institute.

You can listen to the full audio interview here.

For a deeper dive into the framework behind her arguments, you can read and download Dr. Paikowsky’s academic article here.

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Emma Gatti (EG) -  Deganit, you just published a very interesting paper in Space Policy in which you examine how and why the US space policy has evolved from a centralized national program into a decentralized space ecosystem. What do you mean by a national space program versus a decentralized space ecosystem? How do the two models differ?

Deganit Paikowsky (DP) – In my analysis of the US’s space politics’ evolution, I argue that the logic in the early space age was that the state defined the program, owned the major infrastructure, and measured success in terms of national achievements.

In contrast, in contemporary US space politics, the ecosystem is decentralized, meaning it is a much more distributed innovation system composed of interdependent actors: government agencies, private firms, academia, financial groups, regulators, and, increasingly, international partners.

Innovation in this kind of distributed system often originates outside the state. The role of government becomes less about commanding every component or micromanaging the system, and more about aligning actors and enabling the system to prosper.

In this kind of ecosystem, national capability and power come from the relationships themselves—the flow of resources, the knowledge networks, and the overall vitality of the system.

How have the United States traditionally thought about space, and how has that approach evolved?

By systematically analyzing US high-level space policy documents since the 1960s onwards, I offer an account of the evolution of American space politics as a gradual, cumulative process in three waves. The early period—what I call the exploration wave—runs roughly from the 1950s to the 1980s.

During that time, although intelligence from reconnaissance satellites was significant, national power from space was mainly understood through spectacular demonstrations. Space was a form of symbolic competition through singular events. As such, governance was highly centralized.

Toward the 1980s, however, we began to see a shift in the language used in policy documents. Instead of only talking about exploration, policy documents in the United States increasingly began using the term exploitation: how are we going to utilize space?

Symbolic demonstrations still mattered, but another layer that gained more importance emerged—operational utility.

This shift was amplified by the end of the Cold War. Strategic pressures temporarily declined, government budgets were reduced, and there was a strong incentive to find ways to make the use of space, and the operational utility of space, more affordable.

Around fifteen years ago, we began to see early signs of a third wave that perceived space as a physical area of human expansion. In this context, policy documents began to frame space as a domain of sustained human and economic presence. Policy increasingly treated commercial vitality, industrial scale, and international partnerships as core strategic requirements for achieving that goal, which combines exploration and exploitation.

This is why I describe the ‘New Space’ revolution not simply as a commercial revolution, but as a reconfiguration of governance, particularly of the role of space agencies or state bureaucracies in the United States.

Do you think this model will become predominant globally, or will it remain specific to the United States because of its particular characteristics?

First, prosperous technological ecosystems are becoming core national strategic assets, see the digital landscape, for example. The United States treats its space ecosystem as a strategic asset, and I do see other countries moving in that direction.

This leads to several implications.

The first is that commercial actors are now far more embedded in global politics. Space has become a highly competitive and contested domain from a geopolitical perspective, and commercial actors are increasingly and directly entangled in these rivalries.

The second implication is that governance becomes much more complex, and this complexity will continue to grow, especially with the growing reliance of dual-use technologies.

In that sense, the next space race will not only be about who can produce the most spectacular achievements. It will be about who can orchestrate this complexity most effectively, whether constructively or obstructively.

So the key question becomes what model of governance countries choose?

Exactly. The question of space governance ultimately depends on goals, objectives, and ways of implementation.

If you ask whether the U.S. model is the ideal type, my answer is no. First, it has its own limits. However, every country has its own characteristics: its strategic culture, budget, industrial base, and vision of its role in the global system. Such characteristics shape objectives and implementation mechanisms.

Each country will therefore have to find its own way of organizing and governing its space ecosystem.

But the key shift is this: moving from directing to orchestrating engagement with the ecosystem’s components.

The real challenge is learning how to orchestrate that ecosystem in a favorable way for your national context.

The full interview with Dr. Deganit Paikowsky can be listened here, and her latest research paper, where she tackles this topic in depth, can be found here.

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As the world turned its attention in February to the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympic Games, where fractions of a second separate gold from silver in slalom, and flawless coordination ensures athletes’ safety in bobsleigh, another arena of precision and vigilance unfolds far above us; in orbit, where space objects travel at very high speeds, the margin for error is not measured in fractions of a second, but in metres between two objects on a collision course.

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As the number of active orbital objects increase alongside the need for a more sustainable use of the space domain, timely and accurate Space Situational Awareness (SSA) data is becoming a valuable asset of strategic and economic significance. Yet, the global framework that underpins it is shifting.

In the United States, the Executive Order “Ensuring American Space Superiority” published last December turns to the idea of a fee-based Space Situational Awareness system to help foster a market for U.S. commercial SSA service providers. Under this model, satellite operators would pay for services (high-precision tracking, conjunction analysis, collision-avoidance etc.) that were previously offered for free.

At the same time, private actors are moving decisively into this domain, further accelerating the transformation of what was once a predominantly governmental function. For example, SpaceX recently announced that it has developed its own novel SSA system, called Stargaze, using images from star tracker cameras on its Starlink satellites to identify other objects in orbit.

These developments are not marginal. They redefine how transparency, safety, and strategic autonomy in orbit may be organised in the coming decade. And Europe, given its current over-reliance on U.S. data, cannot afford to remain a spectator in this transition.

In its new Position Paper “Support our ability to access and operate in space in a secure, safe and sustainable way”, Eurospace stresses that sustaining European strategic autonomy in space requires stable institutional demand to support the development of a competitive European SSA industrial base and foster a market-driven ecosystem for space safety services.

In this regard, the next European Union Multiannual Financial Framework provides an opportunity to significantly increase the budget allocated to the procurement of commercial SSA data through EUSST, the recognised central provider of collision avoidance services, while further supporting the deployment of more distributed and higher-performing Space Surveillance and Traffic (SST) capabilities.

But it should also support the emergence of a competitive European market for space safety services, enabling industry to develop and export SSA/SST solutions by encouraging the development of industrial enhanced SST services that address both institutional strategic needs and commercial demand, in addition to existing public services provided free of charge. This would fulfill the requirement for autonomous surveillance in line with European needs, while creating an anchor institutional market for European service and data providers and enhancing the overall effectiveness of SSA services for all European users.

Just as Olympic success relies on preparation, coordination and the right equipment, Europe’s future in orbit will depend on its ability to act with autonomy. In a domain where precision defines safety and sovereignty, Europe must compete, not watch from the stands.

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Charles Galland is Policy Director at Eurospace, representing the European space industry at the heart of EU and ESA decision-making. He specialises in shaping space policy and fostering dialogue between institutions and industry.

English Introduction

I have been pondering whether it was worth writing a note of analysis on the recently published Italian white paper titled “Made in Italy 2030”, which dedicates 10 pages out of 324 to the space sector.

The short answer is no. At least not from an international perspective.

For this reason, the next article will exceptionally be in Italian. Not because the topic is inherently fascinating for Italians either, but because once in a while it is worth examining the idiosyncrasies a country cultivates within its own borders.

If you are not particularly interested in Italian meta-politics, you may safely skip this. If you need a 10-second summary, here are the key points:

• Italy is clearly concerned about the state of its defense capabilities and sees space as a tool to reinforce them. Space is now treated as a strategic pillar of national defense, embedded in what is explicitly called the “Space and Defense Economy.”

• Italy intends to invest in virtually every segment of the space sector: Earth observation, PNT, debris, secure communications, weather, dual-use technologies. The result reads less like strategy and more like dispersion.

• The launcher bottleneck is not really named as a structural issue (except once), despite Italy being the first investor in Vega and currently launching institutional payloads on foreign rockets.

• Despite the government’s public alignment with the United States, the document hints to a gradual diversification of industrial partnerships toward the UK, France, Germany and “Asia” — without specifying which Asia, or how this diversification would be operationalized.

If you still want the details, the analysis continues below in Italian.

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Spazio e Difesa: anatomia di una strategia incompleta

Ho letto tutte e dieci le pagine dedicate all’Economia dello Spazio all’interno del documento (ufficialmente chiamato “libro bianco”) sulla visione strategica dell’industria italiana per il 2030, chiamato “Made in Italy 2030” e pubblicato a fine gennaio 2025. Rappresentano il 3% del totale. Una proporzione che riflette, forse involontariamente, il peso attribuito al settore.

Iniziamo ad analizzare il testo.

Cambio di paradigma

“La filiera Economia dello Spazio e della Difesa comprende la Space economy, l’aeronautica e le Industrie della Difesa”.

La Space Economy non viene considerata autonomamente, ma come sottocomponente della difesa. È un cambio di prospettiva significativo. Lo spazio non come settore con ambizione civile autonoma, ma come estensione funzionale della difesa nazionale. In questo quadro, parlare di esplorazione lunare o marziana diventa marginale.

Sovranità dichiarata, numeri meno

“La filiera ha una particolare rilevanza come presidio fondamentale della sovranità politica, economica, industriale e tecnologica nazionale”.

Niente da eccepire. Tuttavia, né i fondi statali né il fatturato del comparto sembrano riflettere concretamente questa centralità.

Innovazione… ma di quale settore?

“La propensione all’innovazione è trainata da un’elevata spesa in ricerca e sviluppo”.

Una nota precisa che tale spesa riguarda la “fabbricazione di armi e munizioni e fabbricazione di aerei, veicoli spaziali e macchinari correlati”. È legittimo chiedersi quanta parte di questa innovazione sia effettivamente spaziale, e quanta sia semplicemente industria bellica tradizionale.

Non sto facendo una domanda ideologica. È una domanda contabile.

Filiera “pressoché completa”

“L’Italia appartiene al ristretto gruppo di Paesi che dispongono di una filiera produttiva estesa, integrata e pressoché completa”.

Estesa e integrata, sì. “Pressoché completa” immagino tenga conto del fatto che, nel 2026, l’Italia continua a lanciare la totalità dei propri satelliti istituzionali su vettori non nazionali. Essere primo investitore in Vega e non usarlo per le missioni nazionali è un dettaglio che meriterebbe almeno una riga di autoconsapevolezza.

Leadership

“L’Italia vanta una lunga tradizione nel settore spaziale […] ed è riconosciuta come leader in alcuni specifici segmenti, come osservazione terrestre e infrastrutture orbitanti”.

Tradizione e leadership non coincidono automaticamente. La leadership implica capacità di indirizzo strategico, capacità di dettare l’agenda, definire standard, orientare programmi. Ed essere ottimi esecutori non equivale a essere leader.

Sull’osservazione terrestre possiamo discutere.
Sulle infrastrutture orbitali parlare di leadership è generoso.

Distribuzione capillare

“Una caratteristica distintiva del settore spaziale italiano è la distribuzione capillare delle imprese su tutto il territorio nazionale”.

La distribuzione capillare su tutto il territorio:

Forse non ci stiamo intendendo, io e il libro bianco, sulla differenza tra “numero di addetti” e “distribuzione capillare delle imprese”. Ma se per validare un’affermazione è necessario chiedere chiarimenti all’addetto stampa del Mimit, forse qualche responsabilità comunicativa c’è anche a monte.

Non è tanto il sovraccarico retorico a preoccuparmi. È la scarsa sensibilità verso il dato. Meno di 300 addetti in una provincia significa, nei fatti, che quell’industria in quel territorio ha un peso economico marginale e non sposta l’ago della bilancia della produttività a livello macro.

Non sto dicendo che queste mini start-up non abbiano diritto di esistere o di crescere. Ma trasformare la “capillarizzazione” (frammentazione?) in un punto di forza senza distinguere tra presenza simbolica e massa critica rischia di essere una lettura indulgente del dato.

E quando si parla di un documento strategico redatto da un ministero, un minimo di rigore nell’uso delle statistiche non è eccesso di zelo ma il minimo sindacale.

Legge quadro

“Di grande rilievo per questo settore è stata la legge quadro sull’economia dello Spazio, una normativa organica che ci pone all’avanguardia in Europa”.

La legge è un passo importante. Tuttavia, in assenza dei decreti attuativi e con diversi rinvii alla normativa europea, parlare di avanguardia è prematuro.

Governance ESA

“Va inoltre sottolineato il ruolo centrale dell’Italia nella governance ESA, in quanto secondo Paese contributore all’Agenzia spaziale insieme alla Francia”.

Secondo i dati ufficiali ESA, la Francia è il secondo contributore (3,675 miliardi di euro, 16.58% del budget), l’Italia il terzo (3,495 miliardi, 15.76% del budget). Non è che se arrivi terzo di poco ti danno comunque la medaglia d’argento.

Il punto centrale: riallineamento alla difesa

Il documento insiste — undici volte in dieci pagine — sull’allineamento tra industria spaziale ed esigenze delle Forze Armate.

“Si deve favorire un maggiore allineamento tra la politica industriale della difesa e i piani di sviluppo delle imprese comparto e la pianificazione strategica delle esigenze operative delle Forze Armate.”

È il vero asse strategico del documento. Non un’espansione autonoma della Space Economy, ma un suo riassorbimento funzionale nella difesa.

Sebbene non sia contraria a queste frasi, bisogna comunque notare che questa è una posizione reattiva più che proattiva (ed è davvero tardi per iniziare a muoversi oggi…), e che una reazione al quadro geopolitico attuale non può diventare una giustificazione per l’assenza di una strategia a lungo termine per la filiera.

Cosa faremo quando queste tensioni si allenteranno, o se la situazione cambierà di nuovo?

Una strategia non può essere scritta sull’onda dell’urgenza del momento. Eppure, leggendo queste pagine, si ha l’impressione che l’orizzonte temporale non vada molto oltre i prossimi dodici mesi.

Strategia industriale o delega all’industria?

“Un ulteriore elemento di debolezza riguarda l’orientamento strategico dei finanziamenti in ricerca, sviluppo e innovazione, che dovrebbe essere maggiormente focalizzato sulle esigenze di lungo termine dell’industria”.

Qui il documento scivola.

In uno Stato sano, industria e governo si bilanciano. Se però in un documento ufficiale si afferma che i finanziamenti pubblici debbano essere allineati alle esigenze “a lungo termine dell’industria”, sembra che l’industria definisca le priorità e che lo Stato si limiti ad adeguarsi.

Una strategia di lungo periodo nel settore spaziale non può essere delegata interamente al mercato. L’industria è un attore fondamentale, ma non può essere l’unica regista. È lo Stato che dovrebbe indicare la direzione, soprattutto quando si parla di infrastrutture strategiche e investimenti pluridecennali destinati a incidere sulla sicurezza, sulla competitività e sul benessere del Paese.

Se la regia strategica si sposta interamente verso l’industria, il segnale che passa non è di cooperazione, ma di indebolimento della funzione di indirizzo pubblico. E questo, in un documento firmato dallo Stato, pesa più che in qualsiasi manifesto di categoria.

Materie prime critiche

“Temi emergenti sono quello dell’approvigionamento costante e sicuro di input produttivi, in primo luogo di materie prime critiche”.

Non so bene come prendere questa frase. Da un lato concedo che il tema delle “materie prime critiche” sia talmente complesso da meritare un documento a sé solo per iniziare a trattarlo. Do quindi per scontato che questo non fosse il luogo adatto per affrontarlo in modo esaustivo.

Detto questo, vale la pena osservare una mappa dei minerali critici stilata dalla commissione europea nel 2023.

Le materie prime critiche non sono un tema emergente, e forse non sono nemmeno un tema che possa essere “risolto” in senso stretto. L’Italia semplicemente non ne dispone in misura significativa. Non è una novità recente: non le avevamo ai tempi delle guerre puniche, e non le abbiamo oggi.

L’approvvigionamento “costante e sicuro di input produttivi”, nel nostro caso, è e resta soprattutto una questione diplomatica. Verso quali interlocutori debba orientarsi questa diplomazia, la mappa lo suggerisce con una certa chiarezza.

New Space

“Sul pianto industriale va monitorato lo sviluppo di nuovi segmenti di mercato appartenenti alla cosidetta “new space economy” che include attività come il turismo spaziale, la manifattura spaziale e l’estrazione di risorse extraterrestri, ovvero segmenti che l’Italia dovrà presidiare.”

Lungi da me scoraggiare investimenti ad alto rischio che potrebbero farci diventare il nuovo Lussemburgo tra 600 anni. Ma dove vogliamo andare se non abbiamo nemmeno un lanciatore in grado di sostenere le esigenze istituzionali, e se la nostra filiera della “new space economy” si conta sulle dita di una mano?

Io sono una grande fan delle follie imprenditoriali — purché inserite in un contesto semi-realistico. Prima di scrivere certe cose sarebbe onesto ricordare che la maggior parte delle start-up che cinque anni fa avevano ottenuto finanziamenti per lo space mining oggi sono state assorbite da industrie che non c’entrano nulla nè con lo space nè con il mining. Compagnie come Planetary Resources e Deep Space Industries, at tempi supportate da Google, oggi non esistono più, e l’umanità è molto lontana da esplorare commercialmente anche un solo asteroide.

Inoltre queste imprese appartenevano a Stati con una stabilità politica e una capacità finanziaria tale da potersi permettere investimenti ad alto rischio: Stati Uniti, Giappone, Lussemburgo, Cina, gli Emirati.

Qui parliamo di un Paese che dal ‘45 ha cambiato 69 governi e che solo tra il 2018 e il 2022 è riuscito ad inanellarne 4 di fila.

Ambizione sì. Ma almeno la lucidità di misurare la propria statura relativa nel contesto internazionale.

Lanciatori

A pagina 140 c’è il primo (di tre) accenni alla situazione lanciatori.

“Va inoltre superata l’attuale dipendenza dall’utilizzo di piattaforme di lancio extra-UE, oltre che incrementare la frequenza dei lanci effettuati”.

La tiratura di orecchie più gentile che uno Stato potesse rifilare a una propria industria. Non si può certo dire che manchi il senso della diplomazia.

Diversificazione geopolitica

L’unica nota che non mi aspettavo.

“Oltre che con i partner UE… è strategico rafforzare il rapporto con il Regno Unito e con partner non europei come i Paesi del Golfo e quelli Asiatici. Risulta, infatti, indispensabile perseguire a livello europeo un’autonomia strategica “aperta”, da costruirsi gradualmente ed evitando pericolose interruzioni di linee di approvvigionamento”.

Da un lato non mi aspettavo la Gran Bretagna nella lista (a livello di spazio civile sono oggettivamente più indietro di noi), ma a questo punto viene da pensare che il documento ragioni soprattutto in termini di difesa e aeronautica, più che di spazio in senso stretto.

Non mi aspettavo nemmeno una menzione ai Paesi asiatici — anche se la vaghezza geografica del termine non aiuta l’analisi.

Il passaggio finale, però, è forse il più interessante dal punto di vista metapolitico: la linea pubblica del Governo, apertamente allineata agli Stati Uniti, potrebbe non coincidere del tutto con le riflessioni strategiche interne. La formula dell’“autonomia strategica aperta” lascia intravedere una tensione: diversificare senza rompere, emanciparsi senza dichiararlo apertamente.

L’Italia sembra suggerire qualcosa del tipo: dobbiamo progressivamente ridurre la dipendenza dagli USA, ma senza trasformarlo in un atto di rottura.

Come gestire questo equilibrio sottile — il classico piede in due scarpe — è una questione che appartiene a livelli decisionali più alti del mio.

Strategia spaziale pura

“È fondamentale consolidate la presenza italiana nelle attività di osservazione della Terra, puntando allo sviluppo della più grande costellazione di satelliti”.

Immagino si riferisca a IRIDE? Niente da dire: a differenza di alcuni detrattori, io sono favorevole a IRIDE. Chi sostiene che “c’era già Sentinel” non ha mai provato a utilizzare Sentinel per qualcosa che non fosse uno studio scientifico a bassa risoluzione su larga scala. Ben venga l’alta risoluzione e un tempo di rivisitazione più basso. Su questo, poco da obiettare.

“Parallelamente, è necessario investire nella realizzazione di prototipi di lanciatori di nuova generazione, caratterizzati da tecnologie a basso impatto ambientale”.

L’Italia sta già investendo — con tempi non rapidissimi — nello sviluppo di nuovi lanciatori. Resta da vedere quale sarà l’esito concreto di questi investimenti. Vedi qui per un approfondimento.

“La creazione di enti di comunicazione satellitari governative sicure costituisce un altro obiettivo prioritario. Altri ambiti rilevanti in cui progredire sono i sistemi di navigazione, posizionamento e timing, i sistemi di sorveglianza e difesa planetaria, strumenti per la meteorologia spaziale. Il carattere duale del dominio spaziale impone che lo sforzo industriale nel settore soddisfi adeguatamente le esigenze militari”.

Qui siamo al catalogo completo: osservazione della Terra, comunicazioni, lanciatori, PNT, debris, meteo spaziale, sistemi duali. Tutto.

Il problema è che quando una strategia include ogni possibile priorità, il rischio è che non ne selezioni davvero nessuna. E in questa lista piuttosto democristiana nella sua inclusività manca una posizione chiara su un tema che altrove sta tornando centrale: la Luna.

Conclusione

Il documento si chiude ribadendo ciò che aveva già chiarito:

“In conclusione, un rapporto più stretto tra industria civile e industria militare è necessario per recuperare il divario nelle capacità di produzione”.

Non dite che non vi avevano avvertiti.

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Who are the most successful European space start-ups? And how do we measure that success in quantitative terms?

With about 1B$ raised in equity, the year 2025 confirms that there is still private equity appetite for European space ventures, even though the European “newspace” environment remains structurally much less conducive to raising equity than its US counterpart that clocked in at over 9B$ the same year.

The US fundraiser context in 2025 was marked by a few mega rounds (>500M$) mostly focusing on the domain of launch with Relativity, Rocket Lab, Firefly and Stoke Space leading the game, but the European startup scene confirmed in 2025 its capacity to attract large funding rounds (>100M$), as it already did in 2024 with a more diversified range of activity than in the US. In Europe the bias towards launcher development is not as strong as in the USA, and the investing environment is more balanced and leans more towards the building up of satellite and constellation capabilities.

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All together, Eurospace estimates that European new space start-ups [1] have created more than 16000 new jobs in the European space sector in the past decade, while raising a total of 11B$ in equity [2].

While the startup segment in Europe is composed by a majority of microscopic businesses, with 500 companies having total employment of less than 30 employees, the European space start-up scene has also proven its capacity to bring into the industrial landscape new actors able to reach a critical mass of capital and workforce, with some of them already boasting operational systems and capabilities.

So, who are the most successful European space start-ups? And how do we measure that success in quantitative terms? Let me share here my (hopefully as objective as possible) roster of the most relevant and significant players based on size and capabilities.

The most significant players on the European scene

Today’s most immediate measure of success for any start-up is the total equity raised. In Europe, differently than in the US, space start-ups have yet to achieve unicorn status (i.e. raising more than 1 billion in equity), with the notable exception of Oneweb that raised close to 6B$ in equity over its somewhat troubled life until its acquisition by Eutelsat.

But equity cannot be the sole measure of success, we also need to assess the level of operational success, and the development of industrial capabilities to deliver systems and services to customers.

Equity-wise Europe showcases less than 20 largish players that raised more than 100 M$ in equity, with the largest closing in towards 600M$ in capital raised. This small group collectively grabbed almost 4B$ in equity over the decade and has created employment opportunities for more than 3300 European workers. They are today’s driving force behind the European newspace.

One common feature of these top players in the European newspace is that they have invested market segments that were not pursued by large legacy companies.

They are led by best-in-class SAR constellation operator from Finland ICEYE, which has recently made headlines in Europe for both massive fundraising activity in 2025 (closing one of the largest equity rounds in the European space) and a flurry of government contracts to provide a mix of satellites and intelligence services to military forces in Europe and abroad.

ICEYE brings a unique combination of operational capabilities with close to 50 satellites launched since 2021, a growing workforce exceeding 800, and established industrial ventures spanning out of Finland to Poland and Germany. The Finnish outlier has demonstrated that you could grow a serious industrial capability at scale starting from literally nothing in less than a decade.

The runner-up position is slightly more difficult to determine, but with the variety of metrics involved, the best candidate is probably D-Orbit, that brings under the same roof a growing array of capabilities, a steady state of realisation with more than 70 payloads delivered through their “last mile” orbital service, and 20 ION spacecraft successfully deployed in just 5 years.

The company that originally positioned itself as an in-space logistics solutions provider has raised more than 200M$ in equity, has a workforce in excess of 400 and operations in Italy and the UK. With the recent acquisition of Planetek, D-Orbit is unfolding a new strategy towards the downstream, to accelerate its power play in the European space.

To complete the podium, among many possible contenders [3] (such as historic/mature cubesat players like AAC Clyde, ISISpace or Nanoavionics) I believe the third position has to be shared between two similarly sized players, both with flight proven expertise and both venturing towards the USA, while entrenching their core capabilities in Europe: the Belgian Aerospacelab and Bulgaria’s own Endurosat.

Aerospacelab is building from scratch an industrial capability to compete with established actors in Europe, with a small-satellite factory boasting the capacity to integrate small to medium size satellites in series up to a few hundred satellites per year. The company garnered the second largest fundraiser round of 2025 (110M$, for total equity now in excess of 160M$), has deployed 8 of its own demonstrators mostly in the in the 100-200 kg class, and is about to go live in 2026 with its brand-new integration plant.

With about 300 employees, Aerospacelab is no longer an SME, and is no more the large fish in a small pond: the company was pre-selected by the SpaceRise consortium for the LEO component of EU’s IRIS² programme, where it competes with Airbus.

Endurosat is the Bulgarian lightweight contender who has recently been punching way above its class by securing the largest equity rounds of 2025 (for a total 165M$) in Europe. This large capital influx propels the company on a positive growth path and gives Bulgaria a unique space capability, while the country is not yet an ESA member state (despite being a PECS signatory for more than a decade now).

With nearly 20 satellites launched since 2021 (mostly cubesats in the 20 kg class) and more than 250 employees, the company was able to be selected as a potential vendor by no less than the US Missile Defence Agency within the SHIELD (Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense) programme.

In the top pool of heavily funded new space startups we also find a few very well-known players that have yet to reach operational capabilities, whether they are developing small launch systems, in the guise of ISAR, RFA, Orbex, and Maiaspace, or developing the building blocks of LEO human orbital infrastructure like The Exploration Company. With equity levels ranging from 150 to 460M$, and employment levels that often exceed the 250 mark, these companies are progressively outgrowing the SME status and are moving fast towards becoming prominent midcaps players in the European industrial landscape. All of them are now participating to major ESA or national space programmes, with varying levels of involvement, and are accelerating their path towards achieving a minimum viable product and start delivering operational systems and services to their customers.

Small launcher companies are on the hottest seat, with many maiden launches announced for 2026, starting with the next ISAR Spectrum launch as soon as March.

Unlocking demand

Unlocking actual demand is probably the most difficult step to grow for European newspace players.

Eurospace’s analysis of actual spacecraft deployed by European space start-ups shows that they deployed about 800M$ worth of satellites by the end of 2025, with half of that capacity to provide operational services to their customers funded out of their own resources. Players seeking revenues selling spacecraft to third party customers have found some level of success, particularly with European institutional programmes that procured almost 180M$ worth of spacecraft according to our estimates.

A lot of companies’ Capex (about 200M$) was directed towards funding demonstration missions to gain credibility with potential investors and customers. Aerospacelab has been particularly prominent in this area, with 8 self-funded demonstration missions so far.

Of course, the road to success and durability is still a rocky one to trod. And there have already been losses on the way. Mynaric, once among the most promising European space startups, trading on NASDAQ (USA) and FRA (DE), entered a “restructuring plan” in 2025 and was de-listed, seeking a way out of debt, with dire consequences on the original shareholders. Orbex had to close its Danish subsidiary the same year, citing heavy losses and negative equity as the root cause, while the UK mothership is seeking to be recapitalised through its acquisition by The Exploration Company as announced in January 2026.

Other players have also folded in the past, such as Astrocast, Swiss Space Systems, SpaceAble, Spark Orbital, or Kleos Space to name a few. The fate of some very prominent actors, like Rivada Space that claimed billions in funding from unnamed backers, is very uncertain.

The way ahead

For the survivors the way ahead is still full of headwinds and obstacles, starting with the struggle to secure customer revenue and achieve profitability of operations. The recent Eurospace profit survey, relying on open-source filings of accounts of a growing set of European space start-ups (25 start-ups are included), shows similar trends for these companies: the majority has yet to secure any significant revenue, while still bleeding cash over product development and validation, with resulting negative profit rates in excess of two, sometimes three digits.

It is reassuring though to note that those with revenues exhibit a growing trend, reaching a total of 1B€ at end 2024 within Eurospace sample. With such levels of revenue coming on top of the fundraising activity, and despite the heavy cost of personnel associated to growing their capabilities, the largest and best funded European space start-ups have probably a few years of operations ahead of them.

And to conclude this short feature with a positive tone, there are a few companies in the Eurospace sample that are already posting profits. Interestingly they are not the largest or the best funded in the lot, but they obviously managed to navigate the development and validation route smartly to secure enough business to cover their costs in recent years. They are really worth a mention here: Open Cosmos (UK/Spain/Greece), Argotec (Italy), Officina Stellare (Italy), and Space Inventor (Denmark). There may be others, but we have yet to find them.

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Pierre Lionnet is an economist with more than 30 years of experience in the space sector. He is a well-known expert of space markets and technology trends and the Research and Managing Director of Eurospace, the leading trade association of the European space industry.

[1] The Eurospace newspace observatory includes a watch-list of 1300 start-ups, mostly space pure players, having emerged in the past two decades. It focuses on upstream and midstream players, i.e; companies in the business of developing and deploying spacecraft and space launch systems. Pure players in the downstream are not on the list.

[2] This total includes the near 6B$ raised by Oneweb.

[3] I had a lot of thought considering Loft Orbital for the position, because they are developing fast their capabilities in France, but since their mothership is US-based it was hard to identify them as purely European.

A strong agreement emerges from the 18th European Space Conference: space has secured budgets, and now it is time to deliver.

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Billions will (likely) be injected into the space industry, coming from the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework, the ESA Ministerial Council 2025, and national budget announcements (including Bundeswehr €35 billion commitment). While many countries have set 2029 as a red line to close key capacity gaps, the pitfalls identified by Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta’s Reports are looming on the horizon: division on priorities, lack of interoperability of future systems, duplication of capabilities, and most alarmingly the absence of a clear agreement among the EU27 on a European space preference.

The effort now needed in capitals is to broaden the perspective from purely national to European, and from tactically short-term choices to long-term strategic decisions. The lessons learned have shown how European vulnerabilities and divisions can be exploited, and EU countries must build the freedom to use assets the way they decide. This would mean procuring space capabilities and services that European industry is able to develop, deliver, operate and improve in a non-dependent manner and – given the scale of funding required – creating jobs and security for European citizens.

Despite the open discussions on the EU preference, the latest is not enshrined in the proposed EU Space Act nor in the European Competitiveness Fund (which contains the future components of the EU Space Programme, under the “Space” window), but even if the European Institutions will be able to secure it for EU-owned assets, the last word is in Member States’ courts, considering the amount of national budgets spent to procure launchers and future constellations.

The priorities on the table are many, and the sense of urgency is shared among all stakeholders, at least in their discourses. To serve future needs, Europe will need capabilities such as Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) monitoring, independent Space Surveillance and Tracking capabilities including a pathway to integrate commercial providers, and the development of a strong “security-defence backbone” including connectivity through IRIS², navigation through Positioning Navigation and Timing Capacities (PNT) in low earth orbit, and high/revisit high resolution earth observation service for governmental services (EOGS), of as well as emerging topics such as space-based early warning missile-defence and in space operations and services (ISOS). This clearly requires a ramp-up, the integration of commercial players’ capacities, and a broad transformation: speed to deliver and space-defence integration. Complementarity and synergies will be crucial for this, and ESA and the European Commission are at the forefront of this commitment, with the role of federating Member States’ efforts through an incremental approach on existing and future capabilities.

Moreover, as the Commission has stepped in with the proposed “Space Shield” Flagship, there is a new opportunity to capitalise on the defence components of the EU Space Programme, and federate the future national capabilities, while also developing a coherent R&D roadmap for the future. Defence instruments, such as the new financial instrument supporting loans (Security Action for Europe, SAFE) and possibly the European Defence Project of Common Interests framework (EDPCIs), can be used for common procurement of space assets and services.

Nevertheless, institutions must keep in mind that when industry asks for EU preference, it is not asking for a favour, but to be treated as other spacefaring nations treat their national industrial players. Only “made in Europe” contracts and predictability will create true European sovereignty and build a strong European industry.

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Ilona Zabrytska joined Eurospace as Policy Officer in 2025, where she is dedicated to reinforcing cooperation between European institutions and the space industry. She focuses on building relations with key stakeholders in Brussels, particularly with the European Parliament.

Vega-C is currently being bypassed by both industry and institutional missions. Is Avio — and Europe through Avio — trying to fix a temporary misalignment on the way to a new, competitive launcher strategy, or quietly sustaining a system whose relevance may never be recovered?

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The current situation of Vega-C

At the most recent ESA Ministerial, Italy emerged as the dominant supporter of Vega-C, covering roughly 70% of its programme support. Following the transfer of Vega-C operations from Arianespace to Avio, the launcher has become, in practical terms, an almost entirely Italian industrial endeavour.

Yet in 2025, Italy did not launch a single institutional mission on Vega-C. All 14 IRIDE satellites currently in orbit — Italy’s flagship Earth-observation programme — were launched aboard Falcon 9. The COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation satellite launched in January 2026 followed the same path. Overall, Vega-C flew three times in 2025, launching ESA’s Biomass mission, Airbus’ and CNES’ CO3D and MicroCarb satellites, and South Korea’s KOMPSAT-7.

Italy’s choices are defensible on practical grounds. Vega-C is effectively overbooked until an unspecified future date (its portfolio lists more than 15 flights already booked, which, assuming the current cadence, would imply a schedule filled until around 2030). IRIDE is financed through the PNRR (the European Recovery Fund), with very strict timelines requiring all satellites to be in orbit by 2026. Since Vega-C experienced a two-year hard stop and Italy could not risk losing the funds, the country was pushed to procure launches aboard Falcon 9. Mission timelines, orbital requirements, mass, and cost all matter.

Taken together, however, these decisions expose a structural contradiction: Italy is heavily financing a launcher it does not itself use, even for missions that nominally fall within Vega-C’s performance envelope. The problem is not a lack of orders, but execution speed.

The issue therefore becomes structural — and political. A launcher that flies three times a year is functionally unavailable, and cost compounds the problem. It appears that Avio is not prioritising the fact that this is no longer an era defined solely by institutional missions. It is an era of aggressive competition, primarily from the United States, in which the market has alternatives and speed of execution matters. A publicly supported launcher that remains expensive, slow to book, and inflexible in scheduling will be bypassed — not out of preference or lack of loyalty, but out of necessity.

This raises a legitimate question: what trade-off is Italy implicitly accepting by continuing to fund Vega-C today?

Vega-C and the commercial sector

While Europe continues to promote Ariane 6 and Vega-C as pillars of European launcher sovereignty, the commercial market has already made its choice. European startups and mid-sized operators overwhelmingly rely on Falcon 9 — and, to a lesser extent, Rocket Lab — not out of ideological preference, but structural compatibility.

High launch frequency, flexible scheduling, and predictable pricing now define the launch market for light-to-medium payloads. Vega-C, in its current configuration, does not meet those requirements*.

Even ESA has begun aligning its programmes with this new logic. Beyond the European Launcher Challenge — explicitly aimed at supporting emerging commercial actors with lighter, high-frequency launchers — the agency has launched initiatives such as Moon with Small Missions, designed around lower cost, faster development cycles, and higher mission frequency. Similarly, the Scout missions within ESA’s Earth-observation programme follow an “extremely agile and low-cost development process.” It is not coincidental that the first Scout mission, HydroGNSS, was launched aboard Falcon 9.

The state of the strategic game

Beyond launch choices by operators and institutions, recent strategic decisions at the European level suggest that Vega-C’s marginalization is increasingly being built into the launcher ecosystem itself.

For example, the European Space Agency has announced that responsibility for the liquid-oxygen turbopumps used in Ariane 6’s Vinci and Vulcain 2.1 engines — historically a core Avio competence — will be transferred to ArianeGroup by 2029.

In parallel, Arianespace has recently flagged its intention to replace Ariane 6’s solid-fuel boosters with reusable boosters developed for MaiaSpace. Both the PC120C and the PC160C boosters, shared by Ariane 6 and Vega-C, are currently manufactured in Colleferro, Italy, by Avio for Europropulsion, a French-based joint venture between ArianeGroup and Avio. Arianespace has also stated that it intends to lower the minimum payload capacity of Ariane 6 and its successors to around one tonne, in an effort to increase flexibility and improve economic sustainability — a move that would place Ariane 6 squarely in Vega-C’s traditional performance range.

Furthermore, ESA has indicated that the PC160C will initially be produced exclusively for Ariane 6, reflecting the priority given to increasing Ariane’s payload capacity to meet new commercial commitments, such as Amazon’s Leo constellation. Vega-C, by contrast, does not currently require an immediate performance upgrade for its anticipated missions, and the use of the PC160C on Vega-C Block II (the successor to the current Vega-C Block I) has been deferred until at least 2028. This could translate into maintaining Vega-C largely “as is” for another two to three years.

At this point, the question is no longer whether Vega-C is being bypassed. That is observable. What remains unclear is whether this misalignment is temporary — or structural.

A push to adapt and compete, or to exit?

This is not to say that Avio is technologically stagnant, or that it is not investing in Vega R&D. The misalignment could, in principle, be temporary if Vega-C were being actively repositioned to address these constraints. The difficulty is that current industrial and programmatic signals within Italy suggest a complex, sometimes discordant, and certainly slow dynamic.

On the one hand, Avio appears to be investing heavily in future-oriented technologies. The company is developing new liquid-propulsion methalox engines (MR10 and MR60), financed through European Recovery Funds and ESA contracts. The MR10, which completed a successful static fire test in October 2025 and is currently part of Avio’s FD1 rocket demonstrator, is intended to power Vega-E — the evolution of Vega-C originally expected for 2026 and now pushed to 2027. The MR60 is a more powerful engine, delivering 60 tonnes of thrust, designed to become the building block of Vega-Next, currently expected around 2032 and potentially conceived with a reusable upper stage in mind. Avio’s ESA contract to test a reusable upper stage in 2025 further supports this strategic vision.

These efforts suggest not only an awareness that the launcher market has changed — and that adaptation is unavoidable — but also a desire by Avio (and Italy through it) to break the liquid-propulsion monopoly. In particular, they appear aimed at preserving liquid-propulsion skills that could otherwise be lost following the transfer of turbopump responsibilities to France, and at competing more directly with Arianespace through heavy investment in methalox engines. In principle, this could allow Vega to become competitive in the small-to-medium lift category.

On the other hand, Vega-E and Vega-Next — intended to represent Vega’s evolution toward higher payload capacity (up to three tonnes) and reusability — remain delayed. There is no clear timeline for when, or even whether, they will materialise as operational systems. Meanwhile, while France is investing in a light reusable launcher through MaiaSpace, Italy has chosen not to participate in ESA’s European Launcher Challenge programme, avoiding further fragmentation of investment. As a result, the burden rests almost entirely on Avio. Whether the company can deliver on time remains an open question.

Complicating the strategic picture further is Avio’s growing investment in the U.S. defense missile market. The company’s increasing reliance on U.S. defense contracts for solid-fuel rocket engines, as reflected in its annual reports, points to a parallel hedging strategy: reducing dependence on Vega as a primary revenue source while preserving industrial continuity elsewhere. This is a rational corporate response — but it raises a critical question. Is maintaining solid-propulsion capabilities and pivoting toward airborne defense a Plan A, or a Plan B? And does it risk diverting resources from the rapid evolution of Vega-C toward liquid propulsion and reusability?

Avio appears to be pursuing two parallel paths: one oriented toward future launch technologies, and another aimed at reducing dependence on Vega altogether through U.S. defence work. Whether these paths are meant to converge into a renewed launcher strategy, or to manage a gradual exit from Vega, is impossible to determine at this stage.

Funding, innovation, and the status quo

This ambiguity matters because Vega-C is not a purely commercial project. It is sustained by significant European and national public funding, explicitly justified in the name of sovereignty, autonomy, and strategic access to space. At what point does it stop making sense to continue funding a launcher whose present relevance is weak and whose future progress appears too slow to compete?

Giulio Ranzo, Avio’s CEO, has stated that “maximum efficiency and independence from public support” could be achieved if Vega-C were to reach five to six launches per year. At its current cadence of three launches annually, Vega-C therefore represents a substantial burden on Italian and European taxpayers.

If, however, Avio can bring Vega-E and Vega-Next into operation within a reasonable timeframe and increase launch cadence to at least five launches per year, Vega could become economically sustainable, supportive of European sovereignty, beneficial to the Italian economy, and genuinely competitive within the European launcher market. The question is how long this will take**. It has become a race against time.

Preserving industrial capacity and local expertise is not an illegitimate objective; any country would do the same. But preserving the status quo is only viable as long as competitors do likewise. Once the rules of the game change — as they did with the arrival of Falcon 9 — systems designed primarily around industrial continuity can rapidly lose relevance. A launcher built to protect manufacturing capacity may ultimately fail to protect it at all if it cannot keep pace with external change.

Vega-C risks a similar fate — not because it lacks technical capability, but because it may have been asked to sustain an existing industrial structure rather than adapt aggressively to a launch market now defined by cadence, flexibility, and cost. Will Vega-C raise the bar, evolve, and keep pace — or will it quietly be replaced by a more flexible and efficient Ariane 6? The next five years will tell.

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**This article benefited from background interviews with few European commercial space companies, conducted to better understand the constraints and considerations startups face when selecting launch providers. The author thanks Exolaunch, D-Orbit, and other two anonymous startups for their valuable insights.

**Avio was contacted by email and phone on three occasions to request an interview, but did not respond.

In February 2025, three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and in response to Commissioner Andrius Kubilius’ call to assert Europe’s independence in security and defence, the critical role of the European space industry in shaping the future of space and defence integration in Europe was laid out.

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Alignment of visions? Space, security and defence have been brought together under a single policy window within the European Competitiveness Fund, issued by the European Commission in July 2025. The proposed 131B€ budget covering the three sectors appears, at first glance, to respond to the space industry’s June 2025 call for an envelope of 40 to 60B€ for the EU Space Programme under the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework. In 2026, work will continue to ensure a firm commitment to stable funding (covering acquisitions, operations, and upgrades) and to industrial considerations, as outlined in the April 2025 Position Paper “Why Europe needs to devise an Industrial Strategy for Space”.

The EU Space Act is another file that will carry over into 2026. Three months after the European Commission published its proposal at the end of June 2025, Eurospace got into full gear with the publication of its Position Paper. Widely promoted, especially in the European Parliament, what first and foremost matters for the European space industry is that this regulation increases safety and security in space in a harmonised way at European level, while acting as a catalyst for innovation and new markets.

And to ensure that the future EU Space Act can be implemented quickly and with a minimal level of cumbersomeness, it is key not to reinvent the wheel and to use - and improve - what already exists; for instance, the ECSS standards have recently undergone major improvements. These much-welcomed changes, aimed at making the standards easier to use and updating them to reflect modern industry practices, call for continued support from all actors involved in the process (as emphasised by Eurospace in June 2025).

How can 2025 be referenced without mentioning ESA’s Council at Ministerial Level 2025? The largest financial commitment in ESA’s history (€22.3 B) reflects Eurospace’s July 2025 letter to ESA Member States, calling on them to safeguard the industry’s ability to act, thrive, and secure a sustainable future through substantial commitments to ESA. Such a budget increase will inevitably raise questions about the industry’s ability to respond to an expanded portfolio of programmes and ensure timely delivery; yet, addressing these questions primarily depends on European institutional actors placing their trust in the European space industry to deliver European systems and services.

Recent U.S. policy shifts underscore the urgency for Europe to strengthen its own space capabilities. With the Executive Order “Ensuring American Space Superiority”, the Trump Administration notably turns to the idea of a fee-based Space Situational Awareness (SSA) system to help foster a market for U.S. commercial SSA service providers. This paradigm shift in the approach to space safety highlights the urgent need to strengthen European SSA capabilities (all the more critical given Europe’s current reliance on U.S. data) as will be underlined in a forthcoming Eurospace Position Paper in Q1 2026.

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Charles Galland is Policy Director at Eurospace, representing the European space industry at the heart of EU and ESA decision-making. He specialises in shaping space policy and fostering dialogue between institutions and industry.

“Buten un binnen, wagen un winnen”, literally “outside and in, risk it and win,” was historically a call for Bremen’s merchants to take calculated risks both at home and abroad to secure prosperity. The Bremen motto also resonates with the decisions taken at CM25.

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The largest financial commitment in ESA’s history (22.3B€) reflects Europe’s willingness to assume responsibility and strategic risk: strengthening technological leadership and resilience internally, while projecting capability and credibility externally.

The package proposed by ESA was ambitious and carried significant risk, but it largely paid off, securing strong commitments from Member States. The only exception was the exploration programme, which some, including Director Daniel Neuenschwander, acknowledged may have been overly ambitious given the circumstances.

At a time described by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher as a “perfect storm” for Europe, marked by heightened security threats and mounting economic pressures, Member States’ commitments underscore a broader reality: in today’s geopolitical and economic context, space is no longer merely a driver of scientific progress. It has become a pillar of sovereignty, innovation, and economic strength.

Notably, the rise in contributions from European emerging space countries (e.g., +277% for Poland, + 160% for Lithuania, +134% for Hungary, +132% for Estonia, +130% for Slovenia, +100% for Latvia) illustrates how the benefits of space increasingly extend across all of Europe - an evolution that Eurospace is proud to support through its European Space Ecosystems Integration Summits.

Today, 70% of industry’s turnover depend on the European institutional demand, with ESA procurement alone representing more than one third (44%) of industry revenues. This means that ESA procurement policy has a very strong influence on the industry’s financial sustainability and on its ability to invest in the future, to finance R&D or to retain talents. Industry profitability has been a concern for several years (see here), and, at the same time, the size of the accessible demand for European space systems is increasingly shrinking compared to that of other major space powers.

In this regard, the success of ESA CM25 offers a valuable opportunity to begin acting more collectively, with greater determination, and greater ambition. The European space industry is growing, diversifying, and actively preparing to absorb increased funding and workload, with the agility to adapt rapidly to institutional and commercial market demands. The new agreed programmes are therefore essential in keeping all segments of the industry sufficiently tasked to maintain momentum and fully realise its potential: ensuring that public authorities have unrestricted and sovereign access to the space-based infrastructure needed to implement policies and deliver essential services.

By providing a critical mass of activities, ESA programmes will be key in fostering the robustness of the European space industry and supporting its further industrialisation, scalability, and ability to deliver at pace and volume. In the spirit of Bremen’s motto, the European space industry is ready to take calculated risks and transform these investments into capabilities that strengthen sovereignty, innovation and European leadership. Even in the midst of the “perfect storm” facing Europe, the sector has the agility, expertise, and determination to turn ambition into results. As we often hear, ESA delivers, but so does - and will - its domestic industry.

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Since 2018, Charles Galland has served as Policy Director at Eurospace, representing the European space industry at the heart of EU and ESA decision-making. He specialises in shaping space policy and fostering dialogue between institutions and industry.

Budgets rarely lie, and ESA’s 2025 Ministerial made its macro-political signals clear enough. Germany stood steady, Italy protected its gains, while France and the UK exposed internal fractures—France looking increasingly inward, and the UK emerging as the lone member state to cut its ESA contribution.

But these top-line movements only tell part of the story.

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Behind them lie subtler indicators—numbers that hint at shifting alliances, eroding monopolies, and an emerging political geography of space in Europe. And no department exposes these dynamics as sharply as ESA’s Space Transportation System directorate.

Launchers: Europe’s Political Seismograph

If we want to understand where Europe is heading, we must study the launcher portfolio, where the power play unfolds.

Follow the money and the picture sharpens: France between 2019 and the latest ministerial covered more than half of Ariane-related activities, while Italy financed around 70 percent of Vega-C. For decades, this duopoly suited everyone. ArianeGroup and Avio dominated the market, and the industrial returns aligned neatly with national priorities. There was no alternative, so the political question never arose.

But the market has changed. The centre of gravity has shifted to LEO; commercial customers prefer smaller payloads; and the rise of mega-constellations requires reusability to make launch costs economically sustainable. Heavy, government-oriented rockets like Ariane 6 and Vega-C remain essential—Europe still needs them for institutional missions—but they cannot carry the ambitions of a scalable, commercial “space economy.” Something else is required.

Enter the European Launcher Challenge (ELC).

The European Launcher Challenge: Fragmentation or Renewal?

Created in Seville in 2023, the ELC allows ESA to behave less like a traditional design authority and more like NASA did with SpaceX in its early days: a strategic customer providing funding, not dictating service specifications.

The first cohort—Isar Aerospace (Germany), MaiaSpace (France), Orbex (UK), PLD Space (Spain), and Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA, Germany)—was selected in mid-2025. Around them, a wider ecosystem is rising: Latitude, HyImpulse, Sirius Space Services. Europe suddenly has more launch startups than launchpads (literally).

Depending on one’s perspective, the ELC is either a waste of resources that slices an already thin envelope into fragments too small for any company to truly break through, or a clever political manoeuvre to dismantle a decades-old monopoly and foster a multi-polar, diversified, commercially competitive European launch market.

These new rockets will not take anything to GTO, nor to the Moon. They are built for feeding the only space economy we can hope for —LEO communications and PNT. Lightweight, high-cadence, cheap access to LEO is the missing link, and the market knows it.

The Ministerial subscription breakdown confirms this shift. Countries that never invested in Ariane or Vega—and never took part in the traditionally closed launcher market—are now placing their bets: Spain poured €169 million into PLD Space, the UK committed €144 million to Orbex, and Norway allocated €29 million to Isar Aerospace, not out of industrial generosity but because Isar is the main customer of the Andøya commercial spaceport. The monopoly is cracking, and countries are beginning to act accordingly.

The Spaceports Story

Launchers are only half of the equation. Spaceports are the other half—and they mirror the same political shift.

Since 1964, Kourou has been the only official European spaceport—despite being located in South America. It is currently financed by the member states for roughly €140 million per year, with additional, larger contributions from France.

But Kourou’s centrality is now being challenged by new contenders: Andøya in Norway, the Azores in Portugal, and SaxaVord and Sutherland in the UK. These are commercial spaceports, openly positioning themselves as complementary—or outright alternatives—to Kourou.

The real question is whether ESA and the member states will support the growth of this competition, or continue to prioritise Kourou alone. It is a dilemma that mirrors the broader trend we see in the Ariane ecosystem.

A Monopolistic System Under Strain: France, Germany and Italy at a Crossroads

While smaller nations push for a geopolitical reorganization of Europe’s launcher landscape, the question becomes: what are the three traditional launcher powers doing? As always, the money tells a clearer story than the speeches.

France is under pressure. For Paris, launchers are not merely an industrial and military asset—they represent decades of investment, workforce stability, sovereign expertise and geopolitical leverage. And although France remains the primary investor in Ariane 6 and continues to lobby for a centralized, vertically integrated launcher monopoly, it is also hedging. MaiaSpace is the obvious indicator, but emerging players like Latitude hint at a broader strategy: keep the heavy architecture alive while quietly cultivating light, alternative launch options. France appears determined to preserve its leadership, but also to avoid being cornered by its own legacy.

Germany is financing both sides of the chessboard—propping up Ariane while simultaneously heavily investing in startups that could one day erode Ariane’s dominance. If this isn’t a source of tension with France, it soon will be. Berlin’s dual-track approach gives it leverage in any future configuration of the European launcher market.

Italy, meanwhile, is doubling down on Vega and behaving as if the ELC ecosystem does not exist. Unlike France—which invests in small launchers through MaiaSpace—Italy has made no comparable move. And this is strategically difficult to justify. Italy has just opened four factories dedicated to lightweight satellite manufacturing but lacks a national launcher suited for low Earth orbit. Vega-C is not a low-LEO, high-cadence rocket. For Europe’s third-largest spacefaring nation, failing to invest in at least one reusable, small-launch option is a gap in strategy. Does the silence at the Ministerial reflect a political instinct to protect Avio, or simply limited budgetary room for Italy to enter the small-launcher segment at this stage?

Taken together, these choices mark a deeper geopolitical shift. Europe is moving away from the familiar triad of France–Germany–Italy, with Brussels as coordinator, and toward a constellation of mid-sized and smaller nations asserting real influence. Spain’s €1.871 billion, Belgium’s €1.117 billion and Poland’s €735 million signal this shift clearly, as do the strategic ambitions behind Portugal’s €205 million and Norway’s €297 million.

And at the centre of this new geometry sits Germany. With the financial weight to tilt the system in whichever direction it chooses, Berlin can resurrect the old order, empower the emerging distributed ecosystem, or—intentionally or not—unleash fragmentation.

ESA’s recent moves—exploring new centres in Norway and Poland and preparing a visit to Portugal—suggest an institution attempting to reflect this changing political geography while still maintaining equilibrium with the traditional heavyweights. Balancing these forces will define the next decade.

And the next years will be interesting.

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[1] Vega-C elements include high-thrust engine development, the CM25 Vega-C product-adaptation subelement, CM25 Vega Exploitation Accompaniment, and Vega-C SEATS. Ariane elements include the Ariane 6 product-adaptation element, the CM25 P120C product-adaptation element (a booster shared by Vega-C and Ariane 6), the CM25 Ariane 6 Exploitation Accompaniment, and the Ariane 6 SEATS. The budgets per nation represent the totals published in the 2025 final official ESA document and include contributions made available in 2025 as well as from previous years. They should therefore not be interpreted as funding allocated exclusively for launcher activities in 2025.

The article was edited to correct the annual funding destined from ESA to Kourou spaceport.

It all started in April 2024 when one of the biggest of Eurospace members, Airbus Defence and Space, was about to release its first profit warning on their space systems business. Airbus was about to register a 900M€ loss on its 2023 space revenues, an amount so large (worth 11% of the whole European space sector’s final sales) that it raised serious concerns on the overall sustainability of the industry. If Airbus was struggling, who wasn’t?

To find out, Eurospace launched first an examination of its member companies, asking them to complete an ad hoc survey disclosing the actual profits they registered on space activities, then the survey was enlarged focusing on European pure space players with published annual accounts.

Eventually Eurospace built up a representative sample of European space companies composed of 61 companies representing about 70% of the total European space business, for which we collected two very basic indicators: the total space systems sales, and the resulting EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) for 5 consecutive years (2019 to 2023). We also collected data for 2024, but due to the low process of publishing and formally filing accounts, the 2024 body of data is not as complete and thus less representative than the other years.

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Winners and Losers

The European space sector is highly concentrated with 4 large players (Airbus, Thales, Safran and Leonardo) controlling close to 60% of total industrial capabilities. Airbus D&S is the largest of them all (worth 18% of total European space workforce). As a consequence when Airbus posts unusually large losses on space systems, there is a high chance that this will affect the whole sector economics, and indeed we found that the total losses posted by Airbus were large enough to heavily tilt the scale towards negative profit indicators for the sector as a whole. But that is not the whole story.

What we found is that in Europe space systems development and manufacturing is hardly a profitable business for the majority of companies in the sector, and for the rare instances where the bottom line is positive, the profits are clearly following a decreasing trend.

The chart below provides an overview of the annual space sales and related total profit made on the space segment (measured by EBIT: Earnings Before Interests and taxes) for the companies in the sample. In 2024, the sample losses (in gray) were worth 1,5B€ for a total space sales (in red) of 8,3B€.

In 2023 we found that out of the 61 companies in the dataset, only 19 had a positive bottom line^[1]. Even when setting aside the 21 startups of our dataset, whose abysmal level of losses makes their rendering into a chart very complicated, we find that on average, segment by segment, the situation doesn’t look good. In fact, when compiling the unweighted^[2] profit rate of all companies (but start-ups) we registered an overall 4,6% average loss for the 40 companies in our sample. Even for the companies with a positive outturn in 2023 (see figure 2), the profit rates were not very high with only 4 companies in the sample posting profits above 10%. Net losses above 10% are, in contrast, very frequent, affecting 13 other companies in the sample (and the 21 start-ups too).

The situation is globally more difficult for Large groups^[4] (avg. unweighted loss of -4,6%) and SMEs (avg. unweighted loss of -1,3%) than for Midcaps (avg. unweighted profit of +0,4%).

For the majority of start-ups in the dataset, the financial information shows extreme variations, with the majority of companies being pre-revenue and thus registering very high losses every year. Moreover only a handful exhibit sizeable revenues.

In aggregate, meaning all the companies included in the survey over the past 6 years, the sector recorded a total net loss of €2.4 billion on €56 billion in sales (–4.3%) (see Fig. 3). Excluding start-ups, the result improves slightly, with total losses of €1.5 billion (–2.7%).

When looking at profit rates in the sample, we notice a clearly receding trend, affecting Large Groups, Midcaps and SMEs.

The first striking point is that within all groups, and for all years, the profit rates have been very small at best and strongly negative at worst. The situation of SMEs in the sample is particularly concerning, with negative profits being the rule, and not the exception. Start-ups are not even pictured due to their profit rates being in the higher two to three digit negatives. We also notice that in all groups the situation is not getting any better with time (Fig. 4). The Midcap group in particular sees its profit rate receding (except in 2024, but the reference data is less representative^[5]). It cannot be overstated that such a situation is not viable in the long term.

The Cost of Unsustainable Business

The reality of the day is that the European space sector is facing increasing challenges with the growing pressure on prices applied by its historic customers on one hand, and the growing competitive pressure on the supply side on the other hand, as many newcomers have entered the market in recent years (to the point that employment is growing at a much faster pace than sector revenues).

The sector is also experiencing the dramatic transformations affecting the commercial side of the business, and in particular the receding demand for large geostationary satellites, where the European space industry enjoyed comfortable market shares in both satellite and launch. The results are lower profit margins and unsustainable economic conditions for most of the European space industrial sector.

When looking back in time for just the largest players in Europe we find profit rates navigating between 3% and 7% in the years 2014-2018. A previous survey performed by Eurospace with its members in 2002 revealed that individual profit rates were usually between 2 and 6%, with an average sector rate of 3,6%.

Looking at the wider Aerospace sector, a survey carried out by ASD in 2005 revealed that operating margins (that are usually higher than EBIT, or real profit) in the aerospace sector between 1985 and 2004 were rarely above 6% and averaged at 3,6%.

The association of European Space SMEs published the results of their own survey revealing that for SMEs active in European space programmes the return on investment is generally receding, from an average slightly above 4% in 2015 down to 3% in 2023, and for most of these companies space systems are only a small share of their total business.

The European space industry clearly suffers from a global profitability problem, with consequences potentially spreading throughout the whole sector, especially because when the large prime contractors suffer a profit crunch they may increase the pressure on their suppliers, with cascading consequences in the supply chain. Low and negative profits also mean that the customers are not paying the full value of the products they are buying, but while this can enhance the perceived competitiveness of the sector it is not viable in the medium to long term.

When looking at the situation across the Atlantic, and putting things in a longer term perspective, we find that going back to 2014 the larger US players in the segment have experienced globally receding profits, dropping from a hefty 12-13% in the years 2014-2015 down to 8% in 2021 and posting globally negative profits (-4%) on space systems as early as 2022. Here again the situation of one key player (Boeing) deeply affects the whole, but still.

The segment reporting for major players has progressively removed the details that would enable to identify the profit dynamics specific to the space segment, so we are now left to conjectures were it not for the financials of a few small space pure players trading on NASDAQ (of the infamous space SPAC wave of 2020-2021). For this group the situation is bleak. Even the best in the group like Rocket Lab have yet to close a profitable exercise after 19 years in operations, and have accumulated close to 1B$ in losses despite annual revenues in excess of 400M$ in 2024 (and growing). The others (such as Terran Orbital, AST Space Mobile, Planet, Momentus etc…) are not faring any better as shown by their detailed financial statements, not mentioning those that were delisted or went belly up (Astra, Virgin Orbit e.g.).

We are regularly served with an extremely optimist narrative that the space economy is growing (faster than the rest of the economy) and that the space business is huge (with hundreds or thousands of billions in revenues), fueled by the ‘fat profits’ enabled by the lavish spending of governments’ space programmes soon to be topped with the massive opportunities offered by new commercial applications. However, this is not verified by observable facts. Space is hard, they say, and making a profit in this sector is probably even harder, particularly within the critical segments of space systems manufacturing and launch.

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[1] These 19 companies posted 170M€ in profits out of 3B€ in sales (5,6% profit rate), while the rest of the sector suffered from 1,1B€ in losses.

[2] Profit rate for the sector can be unweighted, i.e. the simple average of each company’s profit rate, irrespective of each company size, or weighted, where companies with larger sales proportionally weight more than smaller companies.

[3] Start-ups not included for chart readability. Of the 21 start-ups included in the dataset, only 4 have positive EBIT, while the majority in the lot has losses exceeding two or 3 digit percentage of sales.

[4] Within a single group the profit situation can be very different depending on the subsidiary considered, with some posting profits and other suffering losses, resulting in low or negative profits at group level.

[5] The data for 2024 is not as representative as with previous years, in particular in the Midcap and Newspace groups we note that the relative size of the sample is much smaller: about 60% for Midcaps and 40% for Startups. The 2024 indicators for these groups may not be comparable to the ones of previous years.

Pierre Lionnet is an economist with more than 30 years of experience in the space sector. He is a well-known expert of space markets and technology trends. He is the Research and Managing Director of Eurospace, the leading trade association of the European space industry.

Under the Danish Presidency of the Council, Europe is raising its shields once again. Not to conquer new worlds, but to protect its own space.

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There is something fitting about this moment. The land of the Vikings, once recognised and feared for its warriors and their round shields, now presides over a European Union determined to defend its place in orbit. Announced as part of the Communication on the Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030, the European Space Shield is one of four pan-European Defence Flagships “that no Member State can build alone, and that will protect all of Europe”, as Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius put it during the Space for European Resilience Conference on October 28th.

Designed to complement existing EU dual-use capabilities (Positioning, Navigation and Timing with the Galileo Public Regulated Service, geospatial intelligence through the Earth Observation Governmental Service, and secure communications with IRIS²), the European Space Shield aims to incentivize Member States to jointly develop sovereign capabilities. Something that the EU is “outstandingly successfully” doing for European space projects, and “with less success for defence” - Commissioner Kubilius in his own words. The Space Shield is scheduled for launch next Summer. With it, the continent aims to turn a symbol of its past into an instrument for its future.

Protection, however, is not only about technology or regulation (aspects that, in the industry’s view, the EU Space Act in its current form only partially addresses), it is also about means.

With a proposed Ministerial package of slightly below €22 billion, the European Space Agency seeks to safeguard Europe’s autonomy in access to space, strengthen its excellence in Earth observation, navigation, or science, and preserve the industrial capabilities across the 22 optional programmes that will be submitted to ESA Member States for subscription. If Denmark has already earmarked around 160M€ (1.2 BDKK) to boost its voluntary contribution to the European Space Agency over 2026–2028, uncertainties and questions remain over some of the major contributors to ESA; some with deep pockets, others with little to spare, some tempted to follow a national path, and others motivated to act collectively as Europeans.

If, as acknowledged by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher at the recent Eurospace’s Council on October 30th, it is unlikely that all projects will be funded at their desired levels, tough choices will have to be made. ESA Member States will need to balance national priorities with the collective European ambition, ensuring that the most strategic programmes receive the resources required to maintain Europe’s technological autonomy and competitive edge.

In other words, ambition must be matched by collective means: the shield Europe seeks to raise in space cannot be built on intentions alone.

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Since 2018, Charles Galland has served as Policy Manager at Eurospace, representing the European space industry at the heart of EU and ESA decision-making. He specialises in shaping space policy and fostering dialogue between institutions and industry.

Airbus, Leonardo and Thales have signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at combining their respective space activities into a new company. The new entity will focus on both manufacturing and services, spanning a portfolio of “complementary technologies and end-to-end solutions, from space infrastructure to services (excluding space launchers).” The newly formed mega-company also intends to serve as the partner for national sovereign space programmes.

The possible merger of three among the largest European space corporations has been discussed for years, but it gained momentum in 2024 after both Airbus and Thales Alenia Space reported heavy losses in their satellite business. The project, called “BROMO” after an Indonesian volcano, has been modelled on the missile maker MBDA, which is owned by Airbus, Leonardo and BAE Systems.

The new company will encompass Airbus’s Space Systems and Space Digital businesses from Airbus Defence and Space, Leonardo’s Space Division including its shares in Telespazio and Thales Alenia Space, and Thales’s shares in Thales Alenia Space, Telespazio, and Thales SESO. Ownership will be shared with Airbus holding 35%, while Leonardo and Thales each take 32.5% stakes. The company is expected to become operational in 2027.

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Does Europe Need a Giant Single Company?

Guillaume Faury, Roberto Cingolani and Patrice Caine declared in a joint statement that “This proposed new company marks a pivotal milestone for Europe’s space industry” and it aligns with “the ambitions of European governments to strengthen their industrial and technological assets, ensuring Europe’s autonomy across the strategic space domain.” The language reflects familiar themes—strategic autonomy, competitive presence, stronger Europe. Yet questions remain about whether consolidation addresses Europe’s underlying challenges.

“The industry has long anticipated the Airbus–Thales–Leonardo merger with both interest and concern,” said Dr. Agnieszka Łukaszczyk, Founder & CEO of hiALtitude Consulting in Brussels. “In another geopolitical context, this would raise serious competition questions. Today, it reflects Europe’s push for strategic autonomy — but consolidation alone doesn’t guarantee innovation or efficiency. Merging large companies with existing efficiency and financial challenges won’t automatically create a stronger, more innovative entity.”

Where Is the Market?

The financial context is significant. In 2024, Airbus registered a €900M loss on its 2023 space revenues and announced plans to cut up to 2,500 positions. Thales Alenia Space shed 15% of its workforce in 2024 after a zero-profit year. These companies are consolidating from a position of financial pressure, which raises questions about the merger’s ability to deliver on its ambitious promises. If they were struggling to attract customers individually, how does combining them change the fundamental market dynamics?

Furthermore, the merger has often been described as an attempt to compete against SpaceX, but there are no current hints that the BROMO project will target international markets. It appears oriented primarily toward the European domestic sector, but how will it gain something out of this?

After the reassessment of the GEO market in favor of the LEO market, institutional customers have become the main source of income for European space players. Will ESA, national space agencies, or European defense ministries receive better products, faster delivery, or more competitive pricing from this consolidated entity?

There are also questions about the work force. The MoU states the new company will employ 25,000 people and “create new opportunities for employee development.” However, Airbus Defence and Space alone currently employs 40,000 people. Will workforce adjustments may be part of the consolidation process?

Potential winners

The political dynamics add another layer of complexity. Leonardo, supported by Giorgia Meloni’s government and addressing previous concerns about its shares in Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio, may play a significant role in shaping this merger. However, where and how the new company will be effectively controlled (particularly between Italy and France) will likely influence strategic decision-making going forward.

Meanwhile, Germany’s OHB remains outside the agreement, potentially positioning itself as an alternative European provider. As Łukaszczyk notes, “The silver lining is that a merger of this scale could open doors for smaller, more agile companies. Europe can’t afford a monopoly—and diversity in ideas and players will be our true competitive advantage.”

The BROMO merger represents a significant restructuring of Europe’s space industrial base. Whether it proves to be a path toward renewed competitiveness or primarily a response to financial pressures remains to be seen. The merger alone doesn’t resolve the fundamental questions: where will the growth come from, and what will make European space capabilities more attractive to customers in a competitive global market in which the European providers are effectively at loss?

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Europe’s Regulatory Ambition

There is an old maxim often repeated in Brussels corridors: “The US innovates, China replicates, and Europe regulates.” For critics of the European project, it is meant to capture an uncomfortable truth about Europe’s position in the global technological race. While this may reflect reality at times, it should not be seen as a weakness. Regulation, when done well, can provide stability, predictability, and trust; qualities that are essential for investment and long-term growth in the space sector, as well as for ensuring fairness and accountability in the space sector.

It is with this aspiration in mind that the European Commission published its proposal for a Regulation on a European Space Act at the end of June. What first and foremost matters for the European space industry is that this regulation does not act as a brake, but as a catalyst. In this regard, much remains to ensure it delivers on its ambitions.

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Opportunities and Obstacles Ahead

The EU Space Act marks an important step towards European leadership, strengthening safety, security, and sustainability of space operations through measures such as debris tracking, risk management, and explicit cybersecurity rules. This answers a long-lasting call for a European approach to Space Traffic Management, and could be seen as a driver for innovation and new markets, particularly in areas like In-Space Operations and Services (ISOS) or Space Situational Awareness (SSA).

But yet, as no text is flawless, refinements are needed if its full potential is to be realised — especially as concerns grow across Europe about an entry into force and implementation schedule that may be too slow, financial and procedural costs that may be too high, administrative burdens that may be too heavy, governance that may be too complicated, derogations and equivalence decisions that may risk granting undue advantages to non-EU operators and undermining the EU preference principle, and a proliferation of exemptions and regulatory easements that may weaken the very coherence the Act is meant to provide.

Labels, Incentives, and Global Influence

The ball is now in the co-legislators’ court to address these challenges. The European Parliament, setting itself in motion around Rapporteur E. Donnazzan, aims to shape its position by mid 2026 — an ambitious timeline in itself.

But if “Europe regulates”, this is only part of the picture; it could usefully be complemented by non-binding measures to make the EU’s approach to space safety, security, and sustainability fully effective.

As discussed by Eurospace during a Workshop on STM organised by the European Commission mid-September, voluntary, non-binding measures can be very useful tools to complement regulation, provided they are designed in a way that is practical, attractive, and beneficial for those who implement them. Proposed as part of the EU Space Act Regulation, the establishment of an EU Space Label can promote best practices, reward responsible actors, and strengthen Europe’s reputation. For the label to be meaningful, applicable, and motivating for industry, incentives are key. European institutional actors could therefore very much reward labelled operators and infrastructures with bonus points in tenders, and use the label in economic diplomacy to actively promote European companies abroad.

The EU Space Act gives Europe the opportunity to “innovate” not just in technology, but in the rules of the game — rules that, as space is global, the EU will actively promote in its relationships with other space powers, with the ambition of seeing them “replicated” worldwide.

Since 2018, Charles Galland has served as Policy Manager at Eurospace, representing the European space industry at the heart of EU and ESA decision-making. He specialises in shaping space policy and fostering dialogue between institutions and industry.

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In October 2025 Maxar Intelligence became Vantor, while Maxar Space Systems rebranded as Lanteris. What lies behind this change of name, and what does it reveal about the Earth Observation and satellite manufacturing sector?

To understand Maxar’s journey, we need to start from Voyager – and then walk our way back.

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Voyager 1 and 2, both launched in 1977, are now about 25 and 29 billion km from Earth. Both still beam data home thanks to their high-gain antennas - built not by NASA, but by Ford Aerospace in Palo Alto. The same Ford that makes F-150s. Imagine ordering a truck and getting a deep-space antenna as a free upgrade.

But the story starts even earlier. Philco, an electronics company out of Philadelphia, built the first active repeater satellite in 1960 (Courier 1B) and ran NASA’s Mercury tracking stations. Fun fact: in 1906, when it was still the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company, Philco made batteries for electric vehicles—basically, the OG Tesla.

Ford bought Philco in ’61, spun up Ford Aerospace, and those folks built Voyager’s antennas. Loral Electronics Corporation, a defense contractor founded in 1948 in New York making radar and sonar for the US navy, snagged Ford Aerospace in 1990 and rebranded it Space Systems/Loral (SSL).

Meanwhile, across the Bay in Oakland, WorldView Imaging Corporation was founded in ’92. After a game of corporate musical chairs—which included Ball Aerospace, EarthWatch, DigitalGlobe, and a GeoEye acquisitions —the satellite imaging company became EarthWatch Incorporated in 1995, and eventually DigitalGlobe in 2001.

In 2012, Canadian firm MDA bought SSL for $875M, and in 2017, MDA and DigitalGlobe merged into MAXAR for $2.4B, betting heavy on U.S. government contracts. The Canadians however promptly peeled MDA back out in 2019 for $756M, while Advent International scooped up Maxar in 2023 for $6.5B.

Now MAXAR has rebranded the old pieces again: DigitalGlobe’s side is “Vantor,” SSL’s side is “Lantris.” Corporate branding consultants everywhere rejoice.

So what’s next? I expect that Advent will eventually spins them out—Vantor to the public markets, Lantris to whoever wants a satellite factory. But here’s the thing:

● Selling pixels has a ceiling. There are only so many government contracts, and commercial demand never lived up to the hype.

● Selling satellites isn’t limitless either. The mega-constellations (Starlink, Kuiper, Planet, etc.) build their own. Everyone else needs a handful, not hundreds.

The real question, if we want to read between the lines and truly analyze the direction of the market, is why the EO industry pivoting away from data and toward hardware—satellites as the “new hot thing”? It’s being spurred on by government money and a dash of market FOMO. But I think there’s a hangover coming. Once the small-sat buzz wears off, reality will hit: there aren’t that many buyers of buses (especially commercially).

In the end, Maxar’s history isn’t just corporate churn—it’s perhaps a mirror held up to Earth observation and satellite manufacturing as a whole: brilliant tech, government-heavy revenues, endless rebrands, and hard ceilings.

So maybe the real question isn’t about Maxar—it’s how does this industry finally break free of its own gravity well?

Stay tuned.

Tushar Prabhakar is an entrepreneur who resides with his family in San Francisco. He previously worked at SSL prior to founding Orbital Sidekick (OSK). At OSK he’s been focused on making inroads into the commercial market with hyperspectral data. His background is in Aerospace Engineering, loves aviation and space, an avid F1, Cricket and (American) College Football fan.

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The GNSS and Satellite TV Economy

Every year, consulting firms, financial groups, and independent entities release assessments of the global space economy. For 2024, these figures range between $400 and $600 billion, with projected annual growth between 3 % (BryceTech) and 7.8 % (The Space Report). In most accounts, satellites are presented as the principal driver of this expansion. BryceTech estimated that $293 billion, 71 % of the sector, derived from satellite-related revenues.

Similarly, The Space Report valued the global space economy at $613 billion in 2024, of which $480 billion came from commercial infrastructure, products and services—roughly 78 % of the total.

Within the satellite domain, two categories dominate: ground equipment ($155 billion) and satellite services ($108 billion). Yet these categories are themselves highly uneven. In ground equipment, most revenue comes from GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) related equipment - $118.9 billion. In services, the lion’s share comes from consumer services like satellite TV, radio, and broadband ($85.2 billion), and in particular Satellite TV (DBS/DTH) services ($72.4 billion).

According to the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) 2024 EO and GNSS Market Report, smartphones and wearables account for up to 90 % of GNSS device sales, worth about €70 billion in 2024. When apps that rely on GNSS (mobile banking, tourism, gaming, etc.) are included, the total figure of GNSS revenues rises up to €260 billion per year.

Similarly, satellite TV services major revenue comes specifically from sales representing the final step of the Satellite broadband value chain, when consumers buy subscriptions from providers such as DirecTV.

In short, the largest “space economy” revenues do not come from rockets or satellites. They come from chips inside smartphones and satellite-TV subscriptions.

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Where Does the Money Go?

Both GNSS devices and satellite broadcasting fall into what is called the consumer-end terminals, or sometimes the reach segment (see for example the terminology used by the World Economic Forum Space Economy Report 2024). These are markets enabled by space infrastructure, but they are not part of the core space systems infrastructure. That infrastructure is generally defined as the hardware backbone: launch vehicles, spacecraft (satellites, probes, capsules, etc.), ground infrastructure such as uplink and downlink stations, launch sites, production and transport facilities, and mission data transmit/receive terminals.

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis defines the space economy broadly, including any goods or services that depend on space inputs. By that measure, counting smartphones, chips and TV subscriptions is legitimate. However the problem is not semantic but practical. One can distinguish between space systems—the core industrial activities—and the broader space economy, the benefits those systems enable. The trouble begins when policymakers, investors, or the public blur the two.

For parts of the sector, this blurring is convenient: it allows to present a booming “space economy” when in fact much of the growth is occurring in the mobile economy or the media sector. The fascination with the word “space” helps make the case of investing in the space business more compelling. But there is a crucial distinction between revenues enabled by space and revenues earned by the space sector itself.

EUSPA’s list of top GNSS companies illustrates the problem. The value chain includes Apple, Samsung, Ford, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Hardly firms that belong to the space sector. These companies profit from GNSS-enabled services. But how much of this revenue actually flows back to the satellite manufacturers and launch providers at the core of the industry?

Eurospace data collected through the past decade shows that while ground equipment sales are booming, revenues from launch services and satellite manufacturing remain flat. That suggests there is little evidence that smartphone-driven growth translates into significant gains for the upstream space sector.

Even apparent growth in satellite manufacturing is uneven. BryceTech reported a rise in 2024, but the increase was concentrated in the United States. Outside the U.S., revenues actually fell from $9.3 billion in 2023 to $6.3 billion in 2024. The available data do not specify the cause, but given the scale of SpaceX’s Starlink deployments, it is reasonable to hypothesize that much of the U.S. growth is attributable to that single program.

Commercial Market or Government Market?

Industry reports frequently describe the commercial sector as the engine of growth. But two issues complicate that picture.

First, there is the risk of double counting. When NASA pays Rocket Lab to launch a satellite, the same expenditure can appear twice: once as part of the government budget, and again as Rocket Lab’s commercial revenue. This overlap may give the impression of a larger, more diversified market than actually exists. It also difficult to understand how these revenues were calculated for the lack of methodology.

Second, there is the question of who the customer really is. In many cases, the sole purchaser of those commercial services is the government itself. For example, BryceTech notes that 82 % of U.S. satellite manufacturing revenues in 2024 come from government contracts. That distinction matters: a commercially procured service, paid for by government funds, is not the same as a commercially financed market in which private buyers drive demand. In fact, data show that between 2020 and 2024, governments worldwide financed $252 billion in space infrastructure. Private entities contributed just $48 billion, two-thirds of it in telecommunications.

Starlink remains the notable exception: a private company selling services directly to consumers. Yet it is an outlier, not the rule. Without Starlink, the industry remains overwhelmingly dependent on public funding.

The result is a sector where private companies provide services, but governments remain the primary customer. This distinction between commercially procured and commercially financed is often blurred in reports, giving the impression of a self-sustaining private market that does not yet exist.

Why Inflated Numbers Matter

Painting the space economy as a booming private market has consequences. It can encourage investors to pour money into ventures that appear promising on paper but remain structurally dependent on government spending. Reports that emphasize consumer-driven revenues risk presenting a trillion-dollar future that belongs more to telecoms than to aerospace.

For investors, the true opportunities today may lie not in rockets or satellites but in applications and devices that integrate space-based services into consumer products. For space companies, the lesson may be to follow SpaceX’s model with Starlink—controlling the value chain from manufacturing to end-user sales, and build a mobile app you can charge for.

A narrative of expansion

The global space economy is substantial, and its contributions to other industries are undeniable. But the headline figures, $400 billion, $500 billion, even $600 billion, should be treated with caution. They reflect the economic impact of space technologies on consumer markets, not the financial health of the space sector itself.

The winners today are companies like Apple, Samsung, Google, and Facebook, firms that rely on space signals but operate outside the traditional space industry. Meanwhile, the backbone of the industry, launch providers, satellite manufacturers, and space agencies, remains reliant on public budgets.

Reports that blur this line are certainly useful for arguing the sector’s relevance to governments, but they risk misleading investors and obscuring the very real need for continued public support. Without transparency, the conversation shifts from how to strengthen the upstream industry to a narrative of expansion that rests more on perception than on reality.

All data from Bryce Tech/Satellite Industry Association, unless specified.

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The Lunar Rush and the Information Gap

Lunar exploration is accelerating. More than 100 payloads are expected to reach the Moon by 2030, making it one of the most active frontiers in space. Governments and private actors alike are preparing missions, deploying orbiters, landers, and experiments. But while launch manifests grow, the tools for tracking and coordinating these activities remain scattered and outdated.

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In just the past three years, South Korea's lunar orbiter had to perform four collision avoidance manoeuvres. These near-misses offer a preview of a problem that will only grow: without reliable, accessible, and timely information about what is happening on and around the Moon, missions face safety risks, duplication of effort, and even potential conflict. The current information-sharing system is not keeping up with the pace of lunar activity.

Fragmented reporting practices and the absence of common standards are affecting lunar transparency. What can be done to address it? Based on bilateral consultations conducted by the Lunar Policy Platform with over 70 representatives from 45 organisations, the Lunar Policy Platform has identified core principles and emerging practices that could help bridge the lunar information gap, captured in an innovative document called Lunar Information Sharing 101 (LIS 101).

While avoiding collisions and operational interference is the immediate need, lunar information sharing can serve three further purposes:

• Peace: In a politically sensitive space environment, transparency helps reduce the risk of misinterpretation. It fosters confidence, particularly where tracking capabilities are limited.

• Sustainability: Coordinated missions can reduce redundancy and environmental impact. Data sharing enhances scientific value and encourages investment.

• Equity and Capacity Building: Open access to mission data helps democratise lunar exploration, enabling participation from actors with fewer resources.

The absence of shared standards risks creating a fragmented lunar order, one where only a few well-positioned actors benefit from available data while others remain in the dark.

The Status Quo: Fragmented and Inconsistent

Let’s be clear: sharing information about space activities is a legal obligation. Under Article XI of the 1967 Outer Space Treaties, States agree to share information on the nature, conduct, locations and results of their activities in outer space and celestial bodies. And most information is indeed shared – the problem is how.

Currently, lunar mission data is shared through a patchwork of channels: press releases, scientific publications, note verbale (a diplomatic document) to the United Nations and presentations at COPUOS. As such, information is scattered and vary widely in quality and format, missing a centralized, single and reliable platform.

This approach worked when lunar missions were rare. It is not suitable for a future where multiple landings may occur within the same week, or where commercial operators with minimal international obligations are deploying assets without clear notification practices.

The Mistrust Problem: A Lunar 'Fog of Intent'

Information sharing is not just about preventing technical mishaps; it is also about reducing strategic ambiguity. Despite geopolitical tensions, both the Artemis program and the International Lunar Research Station offer unparalleled opportunities for international cooperation.

However, in this increasingly multipolar environment, the lack of standardised information sharing may fuel suspicions and foster misinterpretations. Without streamlined and open access to timelines, landing coordinates, or mission objectives, lunar activities can be misread in many different ways. This 'fog of intent' could complicate diplomatic relationships and undercut future opportunities for cooperation and collaboration.

Principles for a Modern Transparency Framework

Consultations with space actors highlight the need for a more predictable, structured approach to lunar information sharing. These insights have been compiled into the Lunar Information Sharing 101 (LIS 101), the first document to consolidate emerging principles and streamlined practices for enhanced lunar transparency.

Five key principles stand out:

1. Minimum Disclosure: At a baseline, missions should disclose who is conducting the activity, where and when it will happen, for how long, and what will be left behind.

2. Preferred Channels: Three main avenues can support transparency: UN notifications under Article XI of the OST, space object registration under the Registration Convention, and direct publication online by operators.

3. Common Templates: Standardised reporting formats would streamline both the submission and use of data.

4. Accessible Platforms: Two proposed repositories could anchor a reliable information-sharing infrastructure:

   • A Lunar Registry, hosted by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), focused on public transparency and capacity building. This would evolve from the current Article XI submissions index, pursuant to recent discussions within the Working Group on the Status and Application of the Five UN Treaties of the COPUOS Legal Subcommittee.

   • A Lunar Database, managed by a neutral technical entity, designed to support operational coordination, risk avoidance, and mission planning. This is currently being prototyped by the Open Lunar Foundation under the name Lunar Ledger.

5. Timely Sharing: Transparency should follow a clear sequence: initial details announced a year ahead, mission hazards and end-of-life plans shared six months before, technical updates one month out, and post-mission results published in the months that follow.

Together, these tools could provide a layered, accessible system to meet the needs of diverse stakeholders.

The Realpolitik of Lunar Governance

Even as technical solutions are developed, geopolitical considerations remain a significant barrier. Differing interpretations of transparency, national security concerns, and competition for lunar resources all complicate the creation of a unified framework.

While both the Artemis Program and ILRS promote openness and peaceful uses, the States taking part in them are often times at the opposite sides of political discussions. With no shared forum dedicated to discussing lunar operations, the Moon risks to be ready primarily through the lens of power politics.

To address this issue, COPUOS has recently established an Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultations (ATLAC) to discuss these issues and consider diplomatic venues for policy and technical alignment. ATLAC’s mandate includes exploring whether an international mechanism for lunar consultation and coordination is feasible. Its success may hinge on whether it can navigate both technical harmonisation and geopolitical tensions.

No Rules, No Trust, No Moon Economy

Lunar transparency is not an abstract legal ideal; it is a prerequisite for safe, sustainable, and inclusive lunar exploration. As more actors prepare for missions, the lack of a shared reporting standard creates avoidable risks.

The good news is that the path forward does not require new treaties. It starts with common sense practices: standard templates, reliable repositories, and a commitment to share basic information in a timely manner.

We are at a critical juncture. In a time when everyone talks about the importance of transparency, the Lunar Information Sharing 101 aims to help stakeholders move from theory to practice. Through its dedicated Lunar Template, actors can now refer to a globally shared standard for streamlining their information sharing practices. Through its proposed UN Registry and Lunar Ledger, the community would finally gain clarity on where to find information about lunar activities. And last but not least, thanks to its information sharing timelines everyone would be able to predict when information on upcoming lunar activities would become available.

But policy development is just half of the equation. It is only through implementation that policies begin to impact the real world and deliver on their intended purposes. To this end, in 2026 LPP is planning to conduct dedicated case studies and table-top exercises to implement lunar information sharing within specific operational scenarios, such as high-stake surface operations (e.g. nuclear power plants), identified areas for collisions (e.g. lunar orbits), and sensitive missions (e.g. space resources prospecting). As the say goes, the devil is always in the details, so it is about time that we get to the specifics.

Whether the Moon becomes a theatre for cooperation or contention may hinge on whether we can see clearly what is happening there. Transparency won’t solve every problem—but without it, most problems will be harder to solve. The choice is ours.

Dr. Antonino Salmeri is a space lawyer specialized in the governance of lunar and space resource activities. He holds four advanced degrees in law and currently works as Director of the Lunar Policy Platform (LPP).

Samuel Jardine is a geopolitical consultant, with expertise in strategic competition, governance, and geopolitical risk in space, the polar regions and the seabed. Currently, Sam is the Policy Specialist at the Lunar Policy Platform and is Head of Research at London Politica, Senior Advisor at Luminint, and a Research Associate for Oxford University and CHACR’s Climate Change & (In)Security Project.

More about LIS 101

Readers further interested in the LIS 101 may rewatch the Launch Event that was hosted by LPP on August 19^th, and discover more on LPP’s webpage on lunar information sharing. Any organization interested in partnering with LPP on the implementation of lunar information sharing is warmly invited to contact LPP’s Director to discuss possible terms of collaboration no later than October 1^st 2025.

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On July 25, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. President Donald Trump signed a long-awaited trade agreement, touted by the White House as a milestone that “positions the United States as the world’s preeminent destination for investment, innovation, and advanced manufacturing.”

For the European Union, however, the deal reads more like a concession than a win. Beyond the political spin, the agreement obliges the EU to accept flat tariffs on exports, commit to vast purchases of U.S. energy, and pledge billions toward U.S. technologies, all of which raise serious questions about the Union’s ambitions for technological sovereignty.

Let’s take a closer look at what the deal contains -and what it risks- for Europe’s space ambitions.

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Tariffs, Promises, and Purchases: What’s at Stake?

At its core, the trade deal imposes a 15% flat tariff on 70% of EU exports to the U.S., and maintains a steep 50% tariff on core industrial metals like steel, aluminum, and copper. While these metals may not be exclusive to the space sector, they are indispensable for the large-scale structural components of rockets, satellites, and launch infrastructure. The EU’s official communication suggests tariff quotas will be established “at historic levels,” but the White House contradicts this, stating tariffs remain unchanged. The discrepancy leaves European manufacturers in limbo.

Meanwhile, the aircraft industry escapes largely unscathed. Commercial jet production and deliveries will proceed tariff-free, a mutual nod to the transatlantic interdependence of aerospace giants like Airbus and Boeing. Beyond aviation, however, the deal becomes murkier and more concerning for Europe’s strategic autonomy.

Military Hardware and Strategic Ambiguity

One of the most opaque sections of the agreement relates to military procurement. The White House fact sheet claims the EU has agreed to the purchase of U.S. military equipment. Yet the European Commission’s own communications are notably silent on this point. No official figures were released, and no concrete commitments have been acknowledged by Brussels.

Nonetheless, Europe’s dependency on U.S. defense hardware is well documented. A 2023 report on EU competitiveness by Mario Draghi revealed that 78% of the €75 billion spent by EU countries on defense between June 2022 and June 2023 went outside the bloc, with 63% flowing directly to the U.S.

Whether or not the trade deal formalizes this military reliance, it underscores a broader vulnerability: the continued outsourcing of strategic sectors, including those increasingly entangled with space and defense.

$750 Billion in U.S. Energy—and €40 Billion in AI Chips

Among the most significant concessions is the EU’s commitment to buy $750 billion in U.S. energy over three years—roughly $250 billion annually. For context, the EU imported €375.9 billion ($442 billion) worth of petroleum, LNG, and gas in 2024. This new deal commits Europe to importing over half of that figure from the U.S. alone, tilting the transatlantic energy relationship in Washington’s favor.

To be clear, this does not necessarily establish a new dependency—it merely reflects the fact that Europe is already not autonomous in its energy provisioning. At this point, it is less a question of “if” Europe is dependent, and more a matter of whom it chooses to depend on.

Even more problematic for the space sector, however, is the EU’s promise to purchase €40 billion worth of U.S.-made AI chips.

Space has historically faced constraints in AI deployment due to radiation, bandwidth, and power limitations. But that’s changing fast. Emerging AI chips allow satellites to perform real-time image analysis, adaptive navigation, and task prioritization without needing to downlink raw data -a massive efficiency leap. AI chips are no longer peripheral to space infrastructure; they are becoming its neural spine.

And yet, with this deal, the EU agrees to become a customer—not a producer—of these vital technologies (Europe currently does not produce AI-chips on large scale). Worse, it does so while accepting a 15% export tariff on European-made semiconductors heading to the U.S. In effect, the EU is buying into dependency while simultaneously limiting its own export competitiveness.

Semiconductor Tariffs: Undermining Strategic Autonomy?

The agreement sets a 15% tariff ceiling on semiconductors exported from the EU to the U.S., including those covered under Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act, which regulates goods deemed critical to national security. While this may appear as a harmonizing measure, it arguably protects the U.S. semiconductor market more than it levels the playing field.

This is particularly paradoxical given the EU's own ambitions laid out in the European Chips Act, which aims to double Europe’s share of global semiconductor production from 10% to 20% and build a more sovereign tech ecosystem. The deal throws a wrench into that vision, placing European sovereignty and space-sector resilience profoundly dependent on the U.S. supply chains.

A One-Sided Investment Picture?

The final figures reinforce the asymmetry: the EU pledges $600 billion in corporate investment into the U.S., while committing to energy, AI chip, and potentially military procurement. While these may generate diplomatic goodwill, they erode the EU’s long-term strategic position—particularly in sectors like energy security and aerospace technology, where autonomy has been a guiding principle.

The cost of stability

The EU-US trade deal may offer stability in transatlantic relations, but it does so at the cost of Europe’s long-term technological and strategic autonomy.

These reforms (investment in nuclear energy, chip sovereignty, and autonomous defense capabilities) should have begun twenty or thirty years ago. In their absence, Europe is left navigating alliances rather than building alternatives.

For the space sector, the implications are severe: increased dependence on U.S. chips, exposure to high metal tariffs, and ambiguous defense procurement promises. In a geopolitical landscape increasingly defined by technological self-reliance, the EU has agreed to terms that weaken its own footing. In choosing short-term diplomatic wins over long-term sovereignty, the EU may have signed a deal that limits its ability to compete in space—precisely when the global space race is accelerating.

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Italy's parliament approved a new Space legislation in June 2025, just weeks before the European Commission announced plans for a unified European Space Act. The timing reflects a delicate balancing act: establishing national authority over space activities while leaving room for the broader regulatory framework that Europe desperately needs.

The Italian law, formally titled "Disposizioni in materia di Economia dello Spazio" (Provisions on Space Economy), was first proposed in September 2024. Its approval comes as Europe grapples with the challenge of harmonizing space regulations across 27 member states, 12 of which have already established their own frameworks.

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Europe's Regulatory Patchwork

The European Space Act aims to create unified "rules of the road" for space actors operating within or launching from EU territory. The legislation would address critical gaps in safety, cybersecurity, environmental sustainability, and traffic management, all areas where fragmented national approaches have created regulatory confusion.

The challenge lies in harmonizing existing national frameworks without overriding member state sovereignty. A March 2025 briefing from the European Parliamentary Research Service highlighted skepticism from several member states about ceding authority to Brussels.

Finland and Sweden expressed concerns in March 2025 about the legal basis for EU intervention, arguing that the dual-use nature of most space technologies should prevent the EU from intervening in such a way as to create any impediment to national competence. Conversely, France has consistently supported EU-level legislation, while Germany, Slovakia, and Italy backed the initiative in December 2024, but with the caveat that it should focus on commercial activities and exclude sovereign space applications.

Italy's Approach

Italy's new space law appears designed to thread this needle. The 18-page statute, divided into five sections (titoli) and 31 articles, establishes a framework for the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to manage commercial space activities while avoiding detailed operational guidelines. The first four sections create a working framework for operational needs—registering space objects in an online registry, procedures for launch authorization, and liability frameworks—while the final section focuses on support and funding for the emerging space economy market.

The 2025 law builds on Italy's previous space legislation from 2018, which established the Interministerial Committee for Space and Aerospace Research Policies (COMINT, Comitato Interministeriale per le Politiche relative allo Spazio e alla Ricerca Aerospaziale) to coordinate national space strategy and oversee the Italian Space Agency. But that earlier framework predated the commercial space boom and left significant regulatory gaps. The 2018 law didn't address orbital debris, environmental sustainability, or radio spectrum management, issues the new legislation tackles head-on.

The evolution reflects changing priorities: the 2018 framework focused on national coordination and long-term strategy, while the 2025 statute addresses the regulatory needs of an expanding commercial sector and growing international coordination requirements.

The new law covers authorization procedures for space activities, a registry for space objects, liability frameworks for damages, and incentives for the emerging commercial space sector. Notably, it includes provisions for a "riserva di capacità trasmissiva nazionale", a satellite-based emergency communication network that would be purchased exclusively from EU operators or Atlantic Alliance members, potentially opening the door to services from companies like Starlink during national emergencies.

However, the law's most significant feature may be what it doesn't include. Critical operational details will be deferred to future "decreti attuativi" (implementation decrees), leaving the current legislation as more of a declaration of intent than a practical guideline.

The Startup Dilemma

The 2025 Space Economy law targets the commercial sector, but its compliance requirements illustrate the cost concerns plaguing the industry.

"The mandatory third-party liability insurance coverage requires €100 million in coverage, with possible reductions to €50 or €20 million depending on company size," explains Matteo Cappella, Head of Regulatory Affairs at Leaf Space, an Italian ground segment provider. "These are among the highest requirements in the world. The costs could be substantial—not just financial, but also in human capital needed to negotiate such complex coverage.”

The insurance burden reflects broader industry concerns about regulatory overreach. In a 2023 position paper, ASD-Eurospace warned that excessive compliance costs could undermine European competitiveness rather than enhance it. The organization called for adequate transition periods and transparent stakeholder consultation processes.

Leaf Space echoes these concerns, advocating for "an adequate transition period so that satellite operators can adapt their planned or upcoming systems and the competent authority can, in collaboration with industry, develop the necessary processes and expertise." The company also emphasized the need for transparency and dialogue, noting that "the US system is incredibly complex and costly for operators, but it remains unmatched in terms of transparency and the ability to foster bilateral exchanges between operators and regulators."

Waiting for Brussels

Italy's cautious approach reflects the reality that the EU Space Act remains under negotiation. The European Commission expects Parliament and Council discussions to conclude by year-end under Denmark's rotating presidency, which runs from July through December 2025.

Italy's strategy appears calculated to avoid conflicts with the forthcoming EU legislation while ensuring the country has the basic legal infrastructure to participate in European space governance. The law mentions environmental sustainability, cybersecurity, and radio spectrum use but deliberately avoids taking the lead on operational guidelines.

The Path Forward

Implementation in Europe involves multiple stages of regulatory decrees, often extending across several years and legislative cycles. The success of Italy's approach will depend on how well it adapts to the final EU Space Act and whether the country's commercial space sector can compete effectively under the new regulatory framework.

Key questions remain: How will other European countries respond to the EU Space Act when finalized? How will the industry prepare for new regulations, and what support will Europe provide? Most critically, will Italy's implementation decrees help or hinder its companies against European and international competitors?

The answers will ultimately determine whether Italy's measured approach successfully balances national sovereignty with European integration in the rapidly evolving space economy.

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To go deeper:

1. Italian Space Law (DDL) presented September 10, 2024

2. Italy’s Parliamentary dossier, October 29, 2024

3. Legislative tracking page

4. Approved law, June 11, 2025

5. European Parliamentary Research Service briefing

6. UN Repository of Space laws

7. ASD-Eurospace position paper

8. EU Space Act official page

9. EU Space Act regulation proposal

On June 20, 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron paid a highly symbolic visit to ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher during the International Paris Air Show.

A sitting President meeting the ESA Director General speaks volumes. It signals not just support for ESA but a clear intent: France is positioning itself as the leader of Europe's space sector. For comparison, during the International Astronautical Congress in Milan last October, Italy sent its Minister for Made in Italy, Francesco D’Urso—who notably does not speak English—to represent the country’s space sector. It says a lot about priorities.

The timing wasn’t coincidental. The visit came just 24 hours after France announced it would inject €717 million into satellite operator Eutelsat, leading a €1.35 billion capital raise that will push the French state's stake to an unprecedented 29.9%. This move makes the French Government the company’s largest shareholder, surpassing India’s Bharti Space Limited at 18.7% (also participating in the capital raise) and dwarfing the UK’s holding, now diluted to 7.9% (Brexit keeps giving).

The French Government’s decision to back Eutelsat carries different weight depending on whether you look at it through a strictly operational lens—or through the wider geopolitical long game.

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A €1.35 Billion Question

Operationally, Eutelsat needed the funds to rejuvenate its aging constellation. In 2024, Eutelsat ordered 100 satellites from Airbus Defence and Space to start replenishing its OneWeb LEO constellation. A second tranche of 340 satellites was already planned, provided Eutelsat could secure the necessary cash flow. The estimated capex for this operation is €1.2 billion.

So, strictly speaking, the France-Bharti cash injection is about keeping the constellation afloat, not giving it a competitive edge against Starlink. Every time European LEO constellations receive public support, it's declared as a move to create competition for Starlink. The truth is less flattering.

Eutelsat isn’t a commercial rival to Starlink. It predates Starlink by decades—founded in 1977—and today operates 35 geostationary satellites and, via OneWeb (which merged with Eutelsat in 2023), 648 LEO satellites. That’s a modest fleet compared to Starlink’s 7,800+ and counting. Moreover, Starlink enjoys a built-in economic advantage: SpaceX launches its satellites in-house, slashing costs. Eutelsat, like OneWeb and Amazon’s Kuiper, depends on third-party launch providers—often SpaceX itself.

“Starlink is beyond competition reach,” says Pierre Lionnet, Research Director at ASD-Eurospace. “It has blanketed the B2C and B2B markets for satellite broadband. At end-2024, our most conservative estimate puts Starlink's total Capex between $10 and $12 billion for space infrastructure. On top of that, Starlink has likely spent $6 to $8 billion on terminal production, partly recouped through sales. We’re talking upwards of $20 billion invested—the largest commercial space infrastructure project ever. The total Capex associated with OneWeb is about $6 billion.”

But maybe size isn’t everything.

Eutelsat's Geopolitical Weight

Direct commercial competition may not be the point. The EU's IRIS² constellation, where Eutelsat holds a stake, will dedicate only 20-30% of its network to secure government communications.

“OneWeb,” adds Lionnet, “is increasingly focused on providing a B2G solution—filling a niche for governments that don't want to work with Starlink.”

This strategy reflects geopolitical realities beyond Europe. Countries like Taiwan, Vietnam, and India have voiced concerns about over-reliance on U.S. satellite services. Though, in India’s case, the strategy is classic: invest in Eutelsat, negotiate with Starlink, keep options open (see Airtel's dance with both).

For sensitive military or government applications, a smaller, European-controlled constellation might suffice—assuming European governments trust European technology more than American alternatives. That remains an open question.

Why France Cares About Eutelsat

Beyond rescuing national industry, why did France decide to save Eutelsat? The answer lies in France’s broader ambitions—and its well-documented discomfort with dependence on U.S. infrastructure for critical services. Ongoing geopolitical uncertainty—from the Ukraine war to fluctuating transatlantic relations—has only reinforced that stance.

In that light, building a robust, France-backed satellite network for secure connectivity—nationally, and potentially for other European governments—makes strategic sense.

Today, Eutelsat-OneWeb represents Europe’s only viable alternative to Starlink and Kuiper. Both those constellations are commercially competitive, but they ultimately fall under U.S. private (and therefore political) influence.

Was it worth bailing out Eutelsat? From Paris' perspective, absolutely. British frustrations over OneWeb shifting from an Anglo-French venture to a French-dominated one? Not France’s problem. German passivity, post-Merkel, in space matters? France filled the void. Meloni’s discomfort with Macron? Not a deterrent.

Regardless of the economics, France is playing the long, strategic game.

A Space Leadership Built on Decades of Investment

France's Eutelsat investment is the latest chapter in a strategy decades in the making—back when spending billions on Space technology was considered visionary, not desperate.

The French space agency CNES operates with an annual budget of €2.37 billion, comfortably outpacing Germany's DLR at €1.876 billion (2023 data) and Italy’s ASI at €1.2 billion.

Since 2010, Paris has steadily funded innovation in strategic sectors. CNES alone received €609.5 million under the “Programme d'Investissements d'Avenir” (PIA) to foster 18 new space technology projects. During the pandemic, an additional €365 million supported the sector. The 2021 France 2030 plan earmarked €1.5 billion for space, targeting reusable launchers, constellations, and key industrial segments.

Space is just one facet of a broader autonomy strategy. France has pursued energy sovereignty via nuclear investments (EDF, Framatome), nationalized EDF to regain control of critical infrastructure, backed semiconductor production (STMicroelectronics), and aligned with EU-level efforts like the European Chips Act, IRIS², and the EU Battery Alliance.

France’s approach isn’t flawless. Critics argue it prioritizes national industry over European collaboration. The country's vigorous defense of the Ariane 6 launcher back in the early 2010s, despite questions about its commercial competitiveness, has drawn criticism from European partners who suspect France prefers protecting its aerospace workforce to winning in international markets.

But uncomfortable truths remain: France invested where others hesitated. And now, it's reaping geopolitical leverage.

What Success and Failure Look Like

The success or failure of France’s Eutelsat gambit will ripple through European space policy. Success could stimulate demand for European launch services, potentially helping address the classic chicken-and-egg problem facing the rocket industry: prices are too high because volume is too low, and volume is too low because prices are too high.

Failure, on the other hand, would be spectacularly expensive. A struggling Eutelsat would drag down IRIS² development, erode confidence in European alternatives to U.S. services, and cost France serious political capital.

The Takeaway: Like It or Not, It’s France

Love them or hate them, the French have done the math, taken the risk, and placed their bets. Eutelsat is now the test case for Europe’s strategic autonomy in space.

And if this is France’s moment? So be it.

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“But the whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret!”
— Dr. Strangelove

In Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, the world ends not in a blaze of villainy, but in a cascade of human error, bureaucratic rigidity, and misplaced confidence in deterrence logic. Nuclear war begins with silence, unfolds through miscommunication, and ends with a plan to survive underground in mine shafts: an absurd, chilling, yet all too believable scenario.

Today, that same fragile logic is drifting into orbit.

No state has deployed a nuclear weapon in space. And yet, the growing suspicion that one might—the ambiguity, the silence, the refusal to reaffirm long-standing norms—is already revealing how unprepared we are. The taboo that once kept space free from weapons of mass destruction is weakening, and with it, the illusion of stable governance. Once again, we are watching the lights blink red on systems we believed were safe.

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The Stakes: Why Nukes in Orbit Still Matter

The threat of detonating nuclear weapons in space is not new. All nuclear-armed states have long had the ability to place warheads in orbit. During the early years of the space age, both the United States and the Soviet Union conducted nuclear tests in space. The 1962 Starfish Prime test, in particular, demonstrated just how devastating such a weapon could be to all satellites, and to the space environment itself.

A thermonuclear bomb detonated 400 kilometers above the Pacific—roughly where the International Space Station flies today—produced an electromagnetic pulse that immediately disabled eight of 24 satellites in orbit and debilitated orbital regions with radiation that lasted for months.

Today, with more than 11,000 active satellites—over 7,000 of them in low Earth orbit—the consequences of such a detonation would be exponentially worse. Communications, GPS, financial transactions, emergency services, and early warning systems would all be at risk. Astronauts aboard the ISS or China’s Tiangong station could be exposed. The physical damage would be accompanied by cascading effects: orbital debris, radiation hazards, and a high risk of escalation on Earth.

In short, a nuclear detonation in orbit wouldn’t just target satellites—it could dismantle modern infrastructure, sow worldwide confusion, and tip us into global war.

So why is one of the clearest red lines in space being openly debated again?

Because two familiar rivals — the United States and Russia — are trading accusations and denials while trust unravels in real time. The rest of the world watches, with no clear way to verify the truth or defuse the tension. It’s a reminder that space security still runs more on assumptions than on the practical systems needed to protect them.

What We Think We Know (But Don’t)

In early 2024, the United States revealed intelligence suggesting that Russia was developing a “space-based nuclear weapon” capable of destroying large numbers of satellites in a single blast. Analysts initially assumed the threat referred to a nuclear-powered jammer or directed energy system, which fit with existing open-source intelligence. But U.S. officials later clarified: they believed Russia was preparing a system designed to detonate a nuclear device in space.

Attention focused on a satellite launched in 2022—Cosmos 2553—launched into a rare orbit at the very edge of LEO, currently used as a graveyard for defunct missions. The U.S. pointed to signs of radiation testing and later stated the satellite carried a “dummy warhead.” Russia confirmed the satellite was conducting radiation experiments but denied any connection to weapons development, calling the accusations “baseless.” Since then, Cosmos 2553 has reportedly begun tumbling out of control.

Whatever the truth, here’s the problem: we have no clear way to verify either story. No mechanisms to inspect, no rules to compel disclosure, and no crisis response tools if something goes wrong.

Nukes and Space: The Long Shadow

While no weapons have been placed in orbit, nuclear logic has always been close at hand. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union tested a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) capable of launching nuclear warheads into partial Earth orbit and dropping them for surprise attack. Although never armed, the system was deployed, tested, and briefly operational. In 2021, China reportedly demonstrated a similar capability combined with a hypersonic re-entry vehicle. These weapons fall into legal grey zones: they don’t remain in orbit long enough to violate the letter of the Outer Space Treaty, even if they shatter its spirit.

More broadly, space has become deeply entangled with nuclear deterrence on Earth. Space systems now provide the backbone for nuclear command and control—communications, early warning, targeting. Any interference with these assets, even accidental, could be misinterpreted as a prelude to nuclear war and trigger a catastrophic response.

At the same time, both the United States and Russia maintain doctrines that allow for the use of nuclear weapons in response to “significant” non-nuclear threats—including cyberattacks or in space. Add to that a steady decline in arms control agreements and rising strategic competition, and you have a dangerous mix: ambiguity, high alert, and mutual suspicion.

In this context, the real danger may not be a nuclear weapon in space, but the strategic ambiguity surrounding what counts as a threat—and the absence of tools to de-escalate if something goes wrong.

A Breakdown of Governance

When I was first interviewed for my role at Project Ploughshares, I was asked how I stay motivated working on issues that can take decades to show progress. At the time, I had no idea how prescient that question would be.

Space governance is not just stalled—it’s in retreat.

Despite the principle of “peaceful uses” being a cornerstone of space law, few states are willing to accept meaningful constraints. The UN’s Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) agenda has lingered for more than four decades without real advancement. Recent processes have only confirmed the impasse: the 2023 Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats (OEWG) failed to adopt a report—or even to report back to the General Assembly that it did indeed meet. A new OEWG aimed at combining behavioral norms with legally binding instruments remains stuck before it has even begun, with states unable to agree on an agenda, while Russia refuses to meet without one. It’s hard not to think that at least some states want the process to fail.

In this context, the existing legal ban on nuclear weapons in space stands out as one of the few clear, longstanding, and widely accepted limitations. But even that foundation is beginning to crack.

Dueling Resolutions, Dueling Accusations

The breakdown of governance catapulted the issue of nuclear weapons in space all the way to the UN Security Council in 2024. The U.S. and Japan introduced a resolution at the UN Security Council reaffirming the Outer Space Treaty’s nuclear ban and calling on all states to refrain from developing such weapons. Russia vetoed the resolution and proposed its own, calling for a ban on all weapons in space.

Both proposals reflect laudable goals. But both failed.

Why? On the one hand, these resolutions reflected dueling accusations: while the U.S. accuses Russia of developing a nuclear weapon capability intended for orbit, Russia likewise accuses the U.S. of arming outer space with (non-nuclear) weapons. But crucially, both visions fundamentally lacked any mechanisms to ensure implementation. How do you prove a state isn’t developing a capability it could someday deploy in orbit? How do you agree on what even counts as a weapon in space—let alone clearly identify one among thousands of satellites, many with dual-purpose capabilities? Neither resolution answered these questions. Without practical ways to verify or enforce these promises, both drafts were destined to remain just that: promises.

Technology Can’t Save Us

Some argue we should simply focus on resilience—on building satellites that can withstand attack, or systems that can clean radiation from orbit. The U.S. has explored both. But these approaches won’t prevent immediate destruction. And as the threat of a nuclear detonation in orbit reminds us: there are limits to resilience.

Others argue for yet more weapons. President Trump's "Golden Dome" is a proposed $175 billion (an incredibly conservative estimate) missile defense system designed to protect the U.S. from advanced missile threats, including those launched from space. The plan envisions a network of satellites equipped with interceptors to detect and neutralize incoming missiles. Critics, however, argue that the system is unlikely to work as advertised, and may provide a false sense of security, and could trigger a new arms race, as adversaries may develop countermeasures to bypass the system.

If the logic sounds terrifyingly familiar, it should. It’s Dr. Strangelove all over again: deterrence without shared understanding, technology without accountability, escalation by default.

From Mine Shafts to Mars

In Dr. Strangelove, when nuclear war becomes unavoidable, the solution is not peace, it’s survival in mineshafts: a ten-to-one female-to-male ratio is proposed to repopulate humanity underground. It’s absurd, and intentionally so.

Today, we call that Plan B “Mars.”

But as inspiring as off-world colonies are, they’re no substitute for sound governance here and now. If we can’t maintain stability 400 kilometers above Earth, we are not ready to govern another planet. The solution isn’t to escape; it’s to accept responsibility.

What Needs to Happen

We don’t need another empty declaration. We need to turn the principles of space security into practice. That means:

• 1. Define the threat clearly.
  States should agree, at least in broad strokes, on what counts as a nuclear weapon in space and what kinds of development or testing cross the line. No definition will be perfect, but thresholds can guide accountability and shape how new rules apply to emerging technologies.

• 2. Make transparency routine through behaviour.
  Encourage voluntary pre-launch notifications for satellites in sensitive or unusual orbits. Share information about radiation-related missions or other activities that might raise suspicion. Shared explanations of intent don’t solve everything, but they build confidence step by step.

• 3. Build real crisis tools before we need them.
  Create hotlines, information-sharing protocols and trusted third parties who can help clarify incidents when something goes wrong. These tools exist for other nuclear risks; space should not be an exception.

• 4. Rebuild diplomacy, wherever it can gain traction.
  Formal UN groups may be stuck, but regional forums, expert networks and civil society initiatives can keep momentum alive. Even small steps like joint statements, scenario workshops or informal talks reduce the space for misunderstanding.

• 5. Shift the logic away from ambiguity.
  Strategic ambiguity has become a shield for bad behaviour. In orbit, ambiguity breeds mistrust. We need doctrines and agreements that reward openness and restraint, not secrecy.

• 6. Back it up with monitoring and practice.
  Develop independent ways to track suspicious activities. Run joint exercises to test crisis plans and communication channels. Habits hold under pressure better than slogans do. If we want the principle of “no nukes in space” to mean something in 2025, we must stop assuming it enforces itself. It never did.

Because We Still Haven’t Learned

The nuclear threat in space is more than a security issue—it’s a stress test for our institutions. Right now, the results are not encouraging. Rhetoric and secrecy are outpacing diplomacy and cooperation. The systems designed to uphold peace are proving shallow in the face of the tensions they must carry.

Dr. Strangelove ends with a series of mushroom clouds, set to Vera Lynn’s haunting refrain: “We’ll meet again.”

In orbit, there are no clouds. But the consequences could be just as final.

Let’s make sure that refrain doesn’t become the last message we send.

Because the real danger in Dr. Strangelove isn’t one rogue general pressing a button: it’s a room full of people failing to speak up until it’s too late.

Jessica West is a researcher and writer focused on space security and the messy intersection of technology, trust, and global peace. She works with Project Ploughshares and thinks a lot about what keeps us safe—and what doesn’t. To read more on this click here.

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