New private actors and the miniaturisation of electronics have shaken up access to space. The market has switched quickly from “custom-built” satellites worth more than €100 million with an operational lifespan of 15 years to mass-produced satellites made each week, costing just tens of thousands of euros and lasting between 3 and 5 years.

Since 5 years, the launch of nano/micro satellites has increased: in some years, more than 1000 satellites are sent into orbit. These figures are still in progress, some companies are planning to send several tens of thousands of satellites into orbit. It’s the race for mega-constellations! 

Challenges:

• Implement serial production of satellites
• Triple the frequency of launches
• Avoid the risk of collision in orbit
• Manage constellation replenishment
• Preserving the space environment and addressing the problem of space debris

Launching a satellite can account for nearly a third of the overall cost. In this context, reducing launch costs is a key factor of competitiveness in the space sector.

While Ariane 6 promises 40% lower costs compared to Ariane 5, Europe wants to go further by developing a reusable liquid oxygen engine demonstrator (Prometheus) to divide the cost of current engine production by 10. On the American side, SpaceX aims to reuse a launcher within 24 hours and to halve the cost of the mission.

Challenges:

• Speed up time to market of new launchers
• Set up a production system clocked and in series
• Study the solutions of reusable launchers / micro-launchers

As one of the largest collectors of environmental and climate data, the space sector wants to share and make accessible its data and above all monetise it by creating new services with added value (i.e. agricultural harvest predictions).

Challenges:

• Master new IT technologies (Cloud, Big Data, AI, etc.)
• Transform the industrial and economic model
• Rethinking the ground segment’s IT architecture
• Make data easily accessible to end users