Massive growth of Space Industry ahead: check your sources


April, 2016 - Signs are coming in from many directions that the Space Industry is going to grow rapidly in the coming decade. Many consulting firms write about these prospects in high quality and deep diving reports that are typically issued yearly . Here is an overview of these reports:
An important source for accurate, reliable and up-to-date information about future space missions has now come to the market for these consulting firms to use for their future reports: Space Manifest

The information in the Space Manifest database is based on multiple sources such as websites, newsletters and social media. The unique selling points of Space Manifest are that the information is live and can be tailored to the user’s wishes. As such, the information is as up-to-date as possible. You don’t need to follow yourself, the global space industry on a day to day basis to retrieve information about the continuously changing plans in the world of space. You also don’t need to dive into voluminous documentation to search for the specific data that you really need. This saves a lot of time for business developers and strategy analysts so they can focus on what they do best, instead of searching. The Space Manifest database can be queried with the following search criteria:
  • Country/Region Of Mission Owner,
  • User Segment,
  • Primary Purpose/Application,
  • Launch Date (window),
  • Launcher, Satellite Class and,
  • Satellite orbit type. 

The Space Manifest database currently holds nearly 1200 future space missions with more than 27000 satellites and this is growing as we search for- and analyze more and more data. After payment of a small fee for the information of interest, customers of the Space Manifest database receive an excel sheet that contains the result of their query. In this excel sheet, they will find all relevant information of the future space missions that they searched for. In case the customer pays for the full Space Manifest database to download, an additional service is provided with monthly updates for their download, for an entire year.   At the moment, the scope of the information in the Space Manifest database excludes crewed (ISS related) and sub-orbital missions. The plan is to also include these in the course of 2016. .

Interesting trends can be derived from the information in the Space Manifest database. The trend of constellations of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) telecom satellites has clearly jumped out last year. There are currently 16 plans in the Space Manifest database, for LEO telecom constellations by operators from all over the globe. The current key question with investors is whether this is a repetition of what happened with Teledesic and Iridium around the year 2000, or whether there is really a new paradigm being set because of the internet connectivity drive of the world. There could be quite some overcapacity available in the coming years from geostationary telecom satellites, as can be concluded from the Space Manifest database. This will definitely challenge the upcoming LEO satcom constellation plans. The main advantage of the LEO satcom constellations over the GEO platforms is of course latency. The question is whether this is the game changer the world is waiting for, or that the LEO satcom constellations are being oversold.

Another trend that is clearly visible in the information from the Space Manifest database, is that more and more nations worldwide are going to be spacefaring, and the ones that already were, are remaining spacefaring. Earth observation for natural resources monitoring is one of those popular applications that drive many countries to such a spacefaring position.

A busy year is ahead for Space Manifest. First of all, the daily task of keeping the Space Manifest database as up-to-date as possible is further refined. Specific tools are deployed to automate the information gathering process from websites and social media. Also, further extensions and services based on the Space Manifest database are currently worked on. An effort will be made to also include currently operational satellite missions in orbit to the Space Manifest database. In addition, the system is also ready to include all space missions since Sputnik. In any case, Space Manifest is destined to become a solid reference source for business developers worldwide, and a dataset for policy and strategy analysts to chew on.

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