Putting a Spotlight on the Work of Young Professionals

We’re back with our annual special edition — Via Smallsat — a rebranded Via Satellite geared toward the smallsat community. This year we are launching a new young professional nomination program, Via Satellite Rising Stars. We asked to hear about young professionals who are ones to watch for the impact they are making at their companies, and our community of readers delivered.

We received around 70 nominations and the result is an amazing cohort of young professionals 35 and under that are quickly making their mark. As a young professional myself, it was so inspiring to read the stories of how much these Rising Stars have accomplished. I am truly impressed! It has been an honor to pull this feature together. The Via Satellite team is so thankful to our readers for their contributions.

This edition comes with a side of summer fun — space movies!! We polled some of the most well-known names in the space industry like Peter Beck, Nobu Okada and Tina Ghataore about their favorite space movies. Maybe it will spark an idea for your next movie night.

We are also keeping up with 10 Smallsat Startups to watch, an interesting list of early stage companies from around the world. In our cover story, Tereza Pultarova talked to a number of smallsat manufacturers about trends in this market and what will influence the design and capabilities of smallsats in the future. And finally, I interviewed Aerospacelab CEO Benoît Deper about the company’s rapid rise.

If you’re reading this edition in print at the Small Satellite Conference in Utah, say hello to our Publisher Joe Milroy who will be walking the show floor. We hope you have a great rest of your summer.