New Space EconomyBusiness, Technology, and Trends

In 2025, emissions trading systems generated about $80 billion in revenue, according to ICAP 2026. At the same time, Sylvera 2026 says 2025 retirements were 168 million credits and total spending reached $1.04 billion. Satellite services for carbon markets sit between those financial flows and a hard practical problem: a market can only price what it can observe, measure, and defend under audit.

Tory Bruno’s December 2025 space-war scenario begins with a loss of communications over Taiwan and the Strait of Malacca, followed by unresponsive intelligence satellites, disrupted missile-warning coverage, and intermittent Global Positioning System service over the Pacific. In Bruno’s phrase, “We are blind.” That phrase captures the central risk in any discussion of how the U.S. is vulnerable to space attack: American military power has become deeply dependent on orbital systems for command, timing, warning, targeting, logistics, weather, communications, and deterrence.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in May 2026 that a national missile defense system broadly consistent with the January 2025 Iron Dome for America executive order would cost about $1.2 trillion to develop, deploy, and operate over 20 years, measured in 2026 dollars. That estimate does not describe a confirmed Department of Defense deployment plan. It describes CBO’s notional architecture, built from the capabilities named in the executive order and from public information about missile defense systems, space sensors, interceptors, and supporting command networks.

On May 12, 2026, Payload reported that Fenix Space completed a week-long flight-test campaign of its Fenix alpha prototype, including four flight tests that demonstrated separation from a tow aircraft and autonomous flight maneuvers. A Fenix Space company profile begins with that milestone because the company is still closer to development than routine operations, yet it has moved beyond slide-deck promises into public prototype testing. Payload also reported that the company expects commercial launch operations to begin in 2028, with early work focused on hypersonic testing and small payload delivery to low Earth orbit.

Star Catcher Industries, Inc. is a Jacksonville, Florida space infrastructure company founded in 2024 to build what it describes as the first power grid in space. Its business is centered on the Star Catcher Network, a planned system of orbital Power Nodes that collect solar energy, concentrate it, refine it into wavelengths suited for spacecraft solar panels, and beam that energy to satellites or spacecraft already using standard solar arrays. As of May 12, 2026, the company remained pre-operational at commercial grid scale, but it had reported major financing, customer agreements, ground demonstrations, one on-orbit subsystem demonstration, and a planned 2026 orbital optical power-beaming demonstration through its company news releases.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft carries four astronauts because it was designed for a different era of lunar exploration than the Apollo Command and Service Module. The difference is not simply that Orion is newer or larger. The more important reason is that Orion belongs to a different mission architecture, one built around longer missions, modern automation, international participation, lunar orbit operations, and eventual preparation for deeper space exploration.

The argument that orbital data centers are “really an Earth observation business” is understandable, but it is too narrow. The original point, made in TerraWatch’s Earth Observation Essentials: May 11, 2026, is that Starcloud’s near-term commercial path depends on selling on-orbit processing power to Earth observation satellite operators before broader hyperscale economics become viable. That is a reasonable interpretation of the first workload, but it risks mistaking the opening market for the entire business category.

Released on 12 January 2026, NASA’s 2026 Civil Space Shortfalls document lays out a broad set of civil-space technology needs, and its sequence says almost as much as the entries themselves. It opens with lunar spacesuits, crew ingress and egress, surface mobility, power, thermal control, landing accuracy, construction, and in-situ resource utilization before it turns to Mars transportation, science systems, servicing, debris, and industrial resilience. That ordering mirrors the structure of NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture and the agency’s Artemis campaign.

The World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company framed the 2024 space economy around a two-part structure: the space backbone and the space reach. The World Economic Forum space economy study projects that the global space economy could grow from $630 billion in 2023 to $1.8 trillion by 2035, with growth based heavily on satellite communications, positioning, navigation and timing, and Earth observation.

SpaceX conducted Starlink missions on May 1 from Cape Canaveral, followed by additional flights on May 3 and May 6 from Vandenberg. This rapid sequence underscores the company’s trajectory toward more than 150 launches in 2026. People turn to Google for live schedules, webcast links, and payload details because each mission directly affects global internet coverage through the Starlink constellation.

On October 14, 2025, the African Risk Capacity Group announced a combined parametric insurance payout of just over $5.4 million to support Mozambique after the 2024/25 drought season and Tropical Cyclone Chido. The payment went to the Government of Mozambique and to the World Food Programme as an ARC Replica partner. That event shows the basic promise behind Earth observation for parametric insurance: money can move because an agreed measurement crossed a contract threshold, not because a loss adjuster completed a slow site-by-site review.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 briefly drew public attention in early 2025 because early observations showed a small chance of Earth impact in 2032, yet later observations led NASA to conclude that it posed no significant impact risk to Earth in 2032 and beyond. That episode shows how media alarmism and the space industry intersect: the science can be real, the uncertainty can be legitimate, and the headline can still give the public a distorted sense of danger.

On February 25, 2020, the Northrop Grumman subsidiary SpaceLogistics docked Mission Extension Vehicle-1 with Intelsat IS-901, a commercial communications satellite that had launched in 2001 and was near the end of its fuel-limited service life. That event did not make IS-901 repairable in the full sense. It did show that satellite repair and refueling architecture is no longer a theoretical topic reserved for future spacecraft. A servicing vehicle can approach, capture, dock with, and maneuver another satellite if the client spacecraft has usable structural features and if the servicing mission has enough navigation, control, propulsion, and operations support to make the encounter safe.

The WEF space economy market size report, published with McKinsey & Company in April 2024, forecasts a global space economy of $1.8 trillion by 2035, up from $630 billion in 2023. That headline number does not measure only rockets, satellites, spacecraft manufacturing, ground equipment, launch services, satellite communications, navigation, Earth observation, mission operations, or other direct space-sector revenues. It combines “backbone” applications with “reach” applications, meaning revenues in other industries where space technology helps companies generate revenue. McKinsey’s public summary states that backbone applications accounted for $330 billion in 2023 and reach applications accounted for $300 billion.

On May 1, 2026, NASA described the NASA STORIE mission as a space weather investigation designed to study Earth’s ring current from a new viewing position outside the International Space Station. STORIE stands for Storm Time O+ Ring current Imaging Evolution, with O+ referring to positively charged oxygen atoms. The mission’s core purpose is to study the charged particles trapped in a doughnut-shaped region around Earth and to help scientists understand where those particles come from, how they build up, and how they change during solar storms.