NSR's Top Takeaways and Trends from SATELLITE 2022

The space and satellite industry was back together in force at SATELLITE 2022, with greater international participation than recent years. Topics like in-orbit servicing, software, and the commercialization of IoT took center stage. Here are NSR's top takeaways from the event.

1. Talent Acquisition and Management are on Everyone’s To-Do List: Almost all organizations present were looking to hire staff, but nobody seems to find enough of the right stuff, especially for highly technical jobs. Is space really too hard for the talent pool or are we looking to fill jobs with unrealistic expectations without proper incentives? We’ll know soon enough if the appeal of a space career is still sky high, or if it’s come down to Earth.

2. In-Orbit Services are Really Here … or Not? At the current rate of technology demonstrations and changing business models, this market will see some more pivots before getting on solid footing. Consolidation is imminent and collaboration is multiplying to close business cases and help solve regulatory challenges for sovereign asset protection.

3. LEOs are Not Ready for Prime Time … Yet. Despite the massive hype around Starlink and OneWeb, the truth is that their impact in the market is still minimal today. Many in the industry were concerned about their disruption potential, but constellations are facing multiple challenges. From managing the supply chain (Telesat Lightspeed manufacturing costs and schedule revision, Starlink inflation), geopolitical and regulatory challenges (OneWeb/Soyuz launch situation, Starlink struggles in India), immature/expensive flat panel antenna technology, or the lack of clear service level agreements and transparent pricing makes NSR believe the impact from LEOs will be modest for the next two to three years.

4. Launchers and Manufacturers Change Gears: Recent events have given confidence to well-established players such as SpaceX. But small launchers that are just around the corner will start competing and push prices further down (after inflation just pushed up prices). These launchers will have to prove themselves and show they can compete with rideshares —not just on quality but also on customer satisfaction, while proving reliability. Partnering with last-mile delivery services and building in-house manufacturing capabilities could address the short-term revenue challenges associated with a diversification of the revenue pool brought about by smaller platforms.

5. Space is a Software Industry: Software is becoming more and more the core of the space industry’s drive for flexibility and agility. New innovations in edge computing and onboard storage abound. Through these, operators have the option of reducing mass and power trade offs while building satellite solutions that can be modified to meet changing market demand and dynamics in Earth observation, IOT and broadband communications. This will require a lot of demonstrations to prove it is efficient and the incoming wave of constellation systems will be a perfect showcase to assess if the drive to the “softwarification” of the space market is possible at a large scale.

6. More Awareness of Space Situational Awareness: Sovereignty in space brings a potential Kepler Syndrome effect into the limelight, one that would render the orbital environment too dangerous to operate. There were contradicting statements with regards to space debris mitigation and space traffic management, between too much or too little regulation, with a clear split depending on the country. But global harmonization has a solid path forward to make space a safer place. For key solutions providers, early collision avoidance detections, monitoring of conjunction events and identification of threats are growing in demand. To expand the footprint of the market, products and services are becoming more flexible with a possibility to customize offerings for each satellite operator, while standard solutions such as launch and early orbit phase tracking provide an entry door for more advanced solutions.

7. A Floor Filled With Flat Panel Antennas: The exhibition hall was filled with antennas including flat panel antennas from the likes of Hanwha Phasor, Isotropic Systems, Inster, Ball Aerospace, Thinkom, Intellian, Hughes, etc… with plenty of announcements made during the week. This may mean the show and tell period will give way to more more demonstrations, and finally have products in operation in the coming year, given how long they have been in development.

8. Commercialization of IoT: Smallsat IoT has been long talked about as a game changer for low data rate applications across a broad array of verticals; however, this year at SATELLITE, smallsat IoT constellations finally promoted their commercial service and their thousands of orders. Satellite launches are continuing; however, chip shortages are restraining demand. It was also noticeable the smallsat IoT companies that weren’t at the show, bowing out of the constellation game altogether. Also of note was the funding challenges that continue to be mentioned – so expect a smaller IoT gang next year.

9. Unifying Networks: It was interesting to note the level of talk around satellite’s increasing aggressiveness in adapting 3GPP IoT and data protocols such as LTE-M and NB-IoT. This has the potential to allow terrestrial devices to roam onto satellite networks, for both IoT and consumer use cases. Business models of an extra $4 per month for satellite add-on connectivity were touted, although this is not expected to be a super deep or wide market. Also, despite hype at SATELLITE, the technology is still yet to be proven, so watch out for more demonstrations in the coming months and the next SATELLITE.

10. It's Not About Satellites! Several ground segment vendors presented their next evolution of their baseband platforms during SATELLITE. It is a defining moment for these companies as the industry embraces virtualization and cloud and integration with terrestrial networks. But operators must also understand that the value is shifting from satellites to networks, and it is more important than ever to have a holistic strategy.

11. Verticalization Takes Off: Be it the need to keep access to sales channels, enter new markets, avoid price commoditization or enhance offers for specific target segments, the truth is that satellite operators keep going down the value chain in a year that has been extraordinarily active with operations like Intelsat/Gogo, Viasat/RigNet and announced during the show SES/DRS GES and Hispasat/Axess. VS

Claude Rousseau is a research director for NSR and has more than 25 years of experience in the space and satellite sector.