Teal Group identifies 5,095 space payloads valued at $245 billion through 2035

Teal Group space analysts have identified 5,095 satellites, probes and capsules to be built and launched to earth or deep space orbits between 2016 and 2035, the Fairfax, VA-based firm announced March 16.  They estimate the value of these space payloads at more than $245 billion.

The payload count for 2016-2035 reflects a 10% increase compared to the 4,607 payloads identified last year for 2015-2034; 36% more than the 3,280 payloads in 2014 for the period 2014-2033; and 38% more than the 3,164 payloads in 2013 for 2013-2032.  The trend in the future market for space payloads continues upward, and it is being driven largely by the introduction of hundreds of small, nano and pico (mainly “Cubesats”) commercial satellites designed to provide everything from broadband and mobile communications to meteorological, imaging and position location & tracking services.

Teal analysts identify 662 payloads “proposed” for launch in 2016, followed by 760 in 2017, 652 in 2018, 632 in 2019, 553 in 2020, 453 in 2021, 159 in 2022, 169 in 2023, 124 in 2024, and 111 in 2025.

“Our mission model is a market forecasting tool,” said Teal Group senior space analyst Marco Cáceres.  “I first created it back in 1992 as a complement to our World Space Systems Briefing service to help us understand what the space market might look like over the next 20 years.”

Cáceres added, “We needed a way to do our own tracking of the market independent of the data we were seeing from the U.S. government and major aerospace and defense firms, and so conceived of a mission model that would include every proposed payload we could find around the world, regardless of its chances of actually being built and launched.  We wanted to have a starting point from which we could then develop our forecasts, based on our own assumptions of the programs, the companies, the market, and other factors.”

Teal Group publishes its detailed space payload numbers in a daily-updated online spreadsheet known as the Worldwide Mission Model Online.

In their latest update by spacecraft type, Teal analysts classified 3,036 of the payloads as commercial, 1,126 as civil (government non-military), 602 as military, and 331 as university and non-profit.

Of the payloads, more than 81% of them are proposed for low earth orbits (LEO), and the rest to geostationary, medium earth orbits (MEO), deep space, and elliptical.  “It’s going to get extremely crowded at LEO,” said Cáceres.  “During the 1990s, we started launching hundreds of mobile communications satellites to LEO, but that’s nothing compared to the potentially thousands of small LEO broadband satellites aimed at expanding Internet connectivity worldwide.”

Source: Teal Group