Protecting Sovereignty with SSA

From the booming satellite launch market to higher frequency of human activities, the space domain has never been of more important to all space-faring nations. NSR forecasts over 24,000 satellites are expected to launch over the next decade, creating a never seen before problem for operators. This boost in activity has led to a new market labeled Space Situational Awareness (SSA) which tries to help properly understand and monitor the correct use of space to make it safe, secured, and sustainable.

Operators whose aim is to provide global connectivity, and data providers that monitor the effect of climate change are at the helm of this problem. The increasing number of satellites is at the core of the problem tree, together with other events such as Russia’s ASAT test creating a debris cloud of about 15,000 pieces, along with SpaceX’ Starlink rising close conjunctions, and events such as geomagnetic storms. These highlight the need for solutions to observe, monitor and understand the space domain to help solve the problem of ensuring space safety.  But as it develops both on the ground and in space, the question will be: Will the commercial SSA market help support the protection of sovereign interests in space?

NSR’s In-Orbit Services: Satellite Servicing, ADR, and SSA 5th Edition  forecasts over 1,800 satellites with a need for SSA services over the next decade, generating over $3.6 billion in cumulative revenues. While many satellites include broadband communication, Earth Observation and IoT constellations, most government agencies and military organizations have expressed the urgent need to improve capabilities to detect dangerous objects, enhance current avoidance procedures and programs for the protection of space assets.

While the need from government has been identified, commercial SSA data providers are storming the market with novel solutions to address the rising need for data.

Overcrowding & Threats

As the growth of satellites launches addresses demand for more data, hundreds or thousands of satellites are being launched on a yearly basis at a variety of orbit shells completing full constellations. With Non-GEO orbits at the center of cases for satellite proliferation due to the increasing need to connect and observe via broadband communication and Earth Observation platforms, GEO satellites continue to launch, with some approaching end-of-life and potentially in need for other satellite servicing.

This growth has ignited a reaction from governments around the globe to protect their key national assets and interest in space – beginning with Earth Observation, connectivity to human exploration and science missions. Although, this seems to be one effect enabling governments to pay more attention towards the space domain – a critical element of surprise comes with the need to identify and monitor counterspace capabilities. The example of China’s SJ-21 satellite, a debris removal technology with a dual use could be perceived as a threat from other nations, could prompt a need to develop better surveillance capability which could have a multi-domain use.

The current sources of collected and assembled data from ground-based radars, sensors with a combination of government-owned and operated military satellites, track 6,100+ objects in low orbit. However, the drastic rise in satellite numbers has led to a recent request filed from NASA to the FCC, as the first preventative step from a government agency to ensure safety of orbits.

With this rise in space activity, leading to a doubling of the number of tracked objects in orbit to about 50,000 – a need for a reliable, validated and improved capabilities has accelerated the need to identify novel ways to understand and collect information on the space domain.

Diversify Business Models

Accurately measuring and characterizing the space environment is an essential step in understanding the current state of play in orbit and forecasting potentially hazardous or concerning interactions between satellites. Actionable SSA data help satellite operators identify close passes and conjunctions; this point of cooperation has led to the establishment of a domain for public-private partnership models to augment data from commercial space situational awareness companies into reliable platforms for all satellite operators to access. One such example is from the Office of Space Commerce in the U.S., where NOAA is looking for information on commercial sources of SSA data for its Open-Data Architecture Repository (OADR), designed to track satellites and debris in space. On the other side of the world, the EU in combination with EU-SST also aims to establish a feasible and sustainable sovereign ecosystem with rising cooperation from commercial companies.



Launch monitoring, satellite and debris tracking, protection, conjunction analysis, ad-hoc tasking, collision notifications, space object reentry are some of the primary operational needs enabling the growing SSA market.

Commercial SSA providers like LeoLabs, Privateer, SCOUT, NorthStar Earth & Space and many more are flocking to the market with new and improved business models adapting new business models; Much like the software-as-a-service industry, they offer annual subscriptions starting at the support of early launch operations and monitoring, deployment and commission phases for constellations to a cloud-based platform that can be accessed at anytime with alerts and notifications setup for the operators critical requirements for protection of assets.

Bottom Line

As the commercialization of LEO continues, and constellation operators continue to obtain licenses that will increase the numbers of satellites in orbits, interest in commercially operated Space Situational Awareness will continue.

While governments would like to build internal capacities for national security and interests’ purposes, creating an ecosystem with public-private partnerships is challenging. As governments try to get the handle on the market from mitigation to remediation – the reactive approaches are leading the commercial industry to offer services with innovation and through partnerships. This will require a higher collaboration between the public and private sectors, to keep the space domain safe, secure, and sustained for future applications.