Opinion

What do soil moisture, Russian yachts, hurricanes, and GNSS jamming all have in common? These are all detected and monitored from space using a little-understood category called radio frequency (RF). Thanks to a booming space sector and the regular use of satellite images in the news, satellite data has entered the public consciousness. But it...

An estimated 18,500 smallsats will launch between 2022 to 2031, yet the smallsat market presents a growing number of challenges such as limited market addressability, difficult profitability, oversupply, and concentration of the commercial market by a handful of established players. In Euroconsult’s eighth edition of the report, Prospects for the Small Satellite Market, the firm anticipates...

It’s a paradox: the satellite industry is booming, yet the latest International Telecommunication Union fact and figures report indicates that only 13% of the Africa population are connected. Strong satellite broadband supply and massive demand in Africa should be a recipe for business success and rapid deployment across the continent. However, the reality is not...

The Ukrainian crisis has shed light on the criticality of space assets for military operations, with the hacking of Viasat’s KA-SAT numbing the ability of the Ukrainian armed forces in the early hours of the conflict. This episode illustrates how satellites transitioned from being supporting capabilities for ground operations to strategic warfare assets of their...

Buying a new battery for your car will set you back around $100. If you need to buy one for a small airplane, you’re easily looking at $500 for the same sort of battery. Why? If a plane falls from the sky the impact is much bigger than when a car breaks down by the...

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” So wrote the Lebanese poet and artist Kahil Gibran. I was of a generation that read his book “The Prophet” in my teenage years, when I thought it profound, and threw it away in my college years, finding it treacly and...

ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing has become mainstream and is now estimated to account for more than one third of the $51 trillion of U.S. assets under management. The rise of ESG has being driven by a growing urgency for individuals and corporations alike to tackle one of the world’s most pressing problems, climate...

The world’s energy consumption is increasing and will continue to grow. According to a report by the University of Oxford, current global energy consumption is more than 160 billion megawatt hours per year, of which solar energy today contributes only 0.58 billion megawatt hours. Despite increases investment in renewable energy solutions, more than 80 percent...

Until recently our industry thought that it could make money by connecting the unconnected. As a result, Non-Geostationary (NGSO) operators and startups have been struggling to find profits and diverted strategic plans from providing rural broadband to supporting government and military applications and connecting businesses and cruise ships. SES’ O3b and OneWeb are perfect examples...

The in-flight connectivity (IFC) market is one of many verticals disrupted by the proliferation of satellites in Non-Geostationary Orbits (NGSO). While the aviation industry is still in the early stages of a recovery from the impact of the pandemic, NGSO operators, notably OneWeb, SES, SpaceX, and Telesat, remain focused on building a business around the...