There’s no crisis in orbit
The Earth observation satellite market is booming. The forecasts from experts in the field
08 Sep 2009
Economic crisis? Nobody has heard about it in space, at least judging by the state of the market in Earth observation satellites. With a worldwide turnover that has already reached a billion dollars in 2009 and that, it is estimated, could quadruple within a few years, the sector continues to march on and is establishing itself as one of the principal boosts for re-launching global economic growth after the recession. Euroconsult is a market analysis company that specialises in the satellite services sector. They provide many of the forecasts and recently presented the “Satellite-Based Earth Observation, Market Prospects to 2018” report at the opening of the World Satellite Business Week summit in Paris from 7 to 10 September.
According to the company, about 260 new meteorological and terrestrial observation satellites will be launched in the next ten years, double the 128 satellites sent into orbit between 1998 and 2008. A turnover of 27.4 billion dollars is estimated for the decade to come, compared to the 20.4 billion in the last ten years. Profits of a billion dollars have been made from sales of data satellites alone in 2009 and the forecasts indicate that in 2018 profits deriving from the business in images will leap to 3.9 billion dollars, an increase of 16% every year. It is an encouraging situation that “reflects the development of a veritable commercial business based on terrestrial observation satellites, the growing number of governmental programmes concerned and an increase in investment in the programmes already under way,” comments Pacome Revillon, managing director of Euroconsult. “The growth in sales of commercial data will create earning opportunities for all the players involved: constructors, commercial operators, service providers and government agencies.”
From the report it emerges that governments are the principal investors in the sector, with about 93 (non-meteorological) observation satellites from the world’s principal space agencies on the launch pad in the near future. NASA, ESA, ASI, JAXA (the Japanese agency) and other bodies have recognised space missions for environmental monitoring and protection as being a priority and have planned ambitious programmes for the near future. An example of this is GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment & Security), the European Union satellite group for managing natural disasters, and for monitoring oceans, vegetation and the atmosphere.
In the meantime, new players are appearing on the scene. “Whereas governments have done the lion’s share so far, from now on the number of projects either in the hands of private industry or as the result of public-private partnerships will increase,” claim the specialists. In short, it is an attractive sector. Thirty-four nations will be involved in satellite observation programmes by 2018, compared with only eight in 1997. The images gathered by this huge number of satellites will find a wide variety of applications: primarily security and defence but also environmental applications, natural disaster management, climate change studies, and virtual mapping (on the Google Earth model) for civilian use.
The Paris symposium was attended by 95% of the international players in the field from 40 countries. They also received positive news regarding other uses of satellite technologies: predominantly terrestrial digital and high definition TV but also Internet connections and mobile telephones. Even though there is an economic crisis, these services are contributing to the expansion of the global satellite market. “Despite the crisis, the market in satellite data transmission from fixed networks intensified and grew by 10% in 2008,” said Revillon. Two thousand eight hundred new satellite television channels appeared in 2008, bringing the total number of channels to twenty-four thousand. Above all, new markets such as Venezuela and Vietnam are emerging that led to a network increase of over 70% in 2008. Twenty new satellites have been launched in the last18 months for terrestrial digital