New Space : the changing face of the space industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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