Growth of the New Space Economy and Space Situational Awareness (SSA): Prof. Olivier de Weck

Launch Industry & Success Rates
📌 The overall success rate for orbital launches remains about 95%, meaning 5% of launches still fail, though these failures are often concentrated in smaller, less frequent launch vehicles.
🚀 Starlink has been a game-changer, launching over 2,000 satellites this year, bringing its total constellation size to over 8,000 satellites.
🛰️ The Starlink ground terminal exhibits a steady-state power consumption of about 100-110 watts, which is a significant factor for mobile applications.

Launch Vehicle Development Approaches
🐢 The New Glenn development, taking over a decade, validates the "go slow and get it right" approach for space systems development, exemplified by its successful second flight carrying twin Mars probes for Rocket Lab.
⚡ Conversely, Starship's 11th test flight embodies the "launch frequently, fail, learn, and redesign" methodology, with its next major challenge being in-orbit refueling demonstration.
🛰️ Starship is the largest rocket ever built, surpassing the Saturn 5, with a planned payload capacity to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) well north of 100 metric tons.

Evolution of CubeSats
📦 CubeSats have seen a trend toward larger sizes, moving from traditional 1U, 2U, or 3U (shoebox size) to 6U and 12U becoming a new standard, allowing for more complex instruments and propulsion.
📈 The cumulative launch curve for CubeSats showed slow growth until about 2013-2014, after which it accelerated rapidly, with over 2,000 launched to date.
⏳ The operational lifetime of CubeSats in 400 km orbits (like ISS) is short (a few months to a couple of years) due to drag, but insertion altitude is critical; for example, the SwissCube (launched to 750 km in 2008) is still in orbit after over 15 years.
🛠️ A robust, off-the-shelf supply chain for components now exists, exemplified by the Bulgarian company Endurosat offering a 6U CubeSat bus ranging in price from $153,100 to $284,400.

The Global Space Economy
💰 Estimates place the total global space economy size for 2024 at about $600 billion, encompassing satellite services, launch, PNT, manufacturing, and data services.
📈 The space economy exhibits a 5-year Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) between 7% and 11%, which is more than double the growth rate of the global aviation sector ($1.8 trillion).
🔮 Projections suggest the space economy will approach $1 trillion globally by 2033 based on current growth rates.
🔄 The industry is dynamic, as shown by the projected revenue crossover where Starlink's revenue (nearing $10 billion/year) is expected to surpass that of traditional satellite broadcast TV providers like DirecTV.

Launch Market Shifts and Geopolitics
🇺🇸 The Falcon 9 currently holds close to 50% of the global launch market, showcasing a shift away from older providers.
📉 European launch capacity has suffered, notably with the retirement of the Ariane 5, although Ariane 6 is now becoming operational.
🇨🇳 China is making significant progress, achieving uninterrupted human presence in orbit since 2021 and announcing plans to land astronauts on the Moon with a China-Russia lunar research station by 2030-2035.
📅 By 2027, it is predicted that there will be a launch to space every day, exceeding 300 launches per year.

Emerging Trends: In-Space Computation & Dual Use
💡 The launch of StarCloud 1, hosting an Nvidia GPU, signals the trend of delivering high-performance AI edge computing in space.
☀️ Space offers inherent advantages for computation: land is essentially free, and solar power availability (approx. 1,360 W/m²) is about 10 times higher than on Earth.
🇪🇺 ESA's upcoming ministerial council will address the critical need for indigenous European space capacity, potentially requiring a change to ESA's charter to incorporate dual-use (civilian and national security) technologies.

Space Traffic Management and Contestation
💥 The tracked Resident Space Object (RSO) population is growing rapidly, currently numbering about 30,000 tracked objects, driven by launches and debris creation from five historical anti-satellite (ASAT) tests.
⚠️ Research focuses on improving decision-making for collision avoidance by analyzing the marginal utility of new sensor data, ensuring maneuvers are made due to poor knowledge rather than being driven into a "diluted region" of uncertainty.
♟️ Space is becoming increasingly contested, visualized on a spectrum from symbiotic interactions (like the ISS) to hostile actions like the five ASAT tests (US, China, India, Russia).
🎲 Wargaming simulations in space are significantly more complex than traditional chess due to orbital dynamics (constant movement), simultaneous piece movement, and probabilistic outcomes.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ The industry is moving towards two distinct development models: slow, deliberate development (New Glenn) and rapid iteration (Starship).
➡️ Altitude of insertion is crucial for CubeSat longevity; higher orbits drastically increase operational lifespan beyond just a few months.
➡️ The space economy is currently one-third the size of aviation ($600B vs $1.8T) but is growing more than twice as fast.
➡️ Decision-making in collision avoidance must prioritize ensuring maneuvers are based on robust knowledge rather than large areas of navigational uncertainty.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Dec 15, 2025, 07:07 UTC