How Do Economists and Industry Analysts Measure the Size of the Space Economy?

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Key Takeaways

• Global space economy estimates span $415 billion to $630 billion due to different sector boundaries.
• National satellite accounts track net value added to prevent double counting across supply chains.
• Separating direct supplier revenue from space-enabled activity improves investment and policy choices.

Why Global Space Economy Valuations Diverge by Hundreds of Billions of Dollars

In July 2025, the Space Foundation reported that the global space economy reached $613 billion in 2024, whereas BryceTech and the SIA placed the 2024 global space economy at $415 billion. A third prominent benchmark, published in January 2026 by Novaspace in its 12th edition, estimated the global space economy at $626.4 billion for 2025. Meanwhile, an April 2024 study from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company set the 2023 baseline at $630 billion and projected growth to $1.8 trillion by 2035. For investors, government officials, and corporate strategists, measuring the space economy requires understanding why credible analysts examining the same orbital domain arrive at headline totals separated by more than $200 billion.

The divergence does not stem from simple arithmetic errors or conflicting corporate disclosures. Instead, valuation gaps reflect fundamental disagreements over where the boundary of the space sector ends and where the rest of the terrestrial economy begins. Standard industrial classification systems used by national statistical agencies were designed decades ago to track traditional manufacturing, telecommunications, and public administration. Because space hardware and satellite signals act as enabling inputs across dozens of industries, analysts must decide which rings of economic activity belong inside the sector definition.

A structured approach to the space economy value chain divides the landscape into three concentric tiers of activity. Tier One encompasses core upstream manufacturing, launch services, propulsion, ground stations, and space agency research and development. Tier Two covers direct downstream satellite operations, including satellite communications, Earth observation data licensing, direct-to-home television, and positioning, navigation, and timing hardware. Tier Three extends outward into the wider space-enabled economy, where terrestrial businesses in ride-hailing, precision agriculture, maritime shipping, aviation, and financial services rely on orbital infrastructure to operate.

The table below outlines the three concentric measurement tiers that determine how narrowly or broadly an institution defines the space economy.

When a research organization restricts its tally to Tier One and tightly defined portions of Tier Two, the resulting figure reflects direct space-industry supplier revenues. When an organization expands its scope to capture wider consumer hardware, dual-use defense spending, or a share of Tier Three terrestrial applications, the headline number climbs rapidly. Understanding how each methodology constructs its boundary is the first step toward interpreting any market forecast accurately.

The International Statistical Standard in the OECD Handbook Framework

Efforts to harmonize international statistics on the space sector have been led for more than a decade by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) through its working format, the OECD Handbook on Measuring the Space Economy. First published in 2012 and updated in a second edition in July 2022, the handbook establishes the baseline conceptual definition used by national space agencies and statistical offices worldwide. It defines the space economy as the full range of activities and the use of resources that create and provide value and benefits to human beings in the course of exploring, understanding, managing, and using space.

Under the OECD space economy framework, economic activities are organized into two primary functional segments that correspond to different stages of the industrial value chain. The upstream segment comprises scientific research, technology development, spacecraft and subsystem manufacturing, launch vehicle production, launch operations, and ground segment systems required to place and control assets in orbit. The downstream segment encompasses space infrastructure operations and the delivery of space-related products and services to end users, such as satellite broadcast services, broadband connectivity, geographic information services, and navigation equipment.

A central contribution of the OECD methodology is its explicit treatment of statistical classification limitations. In international frameworks such as the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) and the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), only a handful of six-digit or four-digit industry codes refer explicitly to guided missiles, space vehicles, or satellite telecommunications. Software engineers writing flight control code, materials scientists fabricating radiation-hardened semiconductors, and insurers underwriting orbital launches are routinely classified under general computer services, electronics manufacturing, or financial services.

In its September 2026 synthesis, Space Economy at a Glance 2026, the OECD emphasized that thematic satellite accounting and coordinated industry surveys are making the economic footprint of space far more visible inside national accounts. Rather than publishing a single speculative commercial forecast, the OECD focuses on verifiable indicators including government space budget allocations as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), research and development intensity, patent filings, and international trade in spacecraft components. This statistical discipline enables sovereign governments to compare public investment efficiency without conflating upstream engineering budgets with speculative downstream consumer revenues.

National Input-Output Accounting and the U.S. BEA Space Economy Satellite Account

To solve the classification blind spots identified by international statisticians, the U.S. Department of Commerce developed a dedicated thematic framework through the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Known as the Space Economy Satellite Account (SESA), this statistical architecture operates alongside the core U.S. National Income and Product Accounts to isolate space-related production across every North American Industry Classification System sector. By applying detailed supply-use tables and input-output economic frameworks, the BEA separates the exact share of economic activity attributable to space from broader aerospace, defense, information, and technical services categories.

The defining methodological advantage of the BEA satellite account is its rigorous separation of gross output from value added. Gross output measures the total market value of space-related goods and services produced by all domestic entities, including intermediate inputs purchased from other suppliers. Value added, which represents the sector’s true contribution to GDP, subtracts those intermediate inputs so that a titanium tank sold to a propulsion vendor and later integrated into a launch vehicle is counted only once at each stage of value creation.

According to New Space Economy’s BEA analysis, the March 2025 BEA release covering 2012 through 2023 demonstrated the exact numerical difference between those two metrics. In 2023, the U.S. space economy generated $240.9 billion in gross output, up from $232.1 billion in 2022. When intermediate inputs were removed, the net contribution of the U.S. space economy to national GDP stood at $142.5 billion in 2023, representing approximately 0.5% of total U.S. GDP. In chained 2017 dollars, real GDP for the U.S. space sector reached $115.96 billion in 2023, marking a 0.6% real volume increase over 2022 after accounting for inflation.

The BEA framework also provides verified labor market indicators that commercial revenue roundups rarely capture. In 2023, private-sector space activities in the United States supported 373,000 full-time and part-time jobs and generated $57.9 billion in private employee compensation. A September 2025 BEA workforce working paper linking satellite account data with occupational statistics found that 56% of U.S. space economy positions in 2022 were science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) roles, more than double the STEM share of the overall American workforce. Software developers represented the single largest science and engineering occupation, followed by electrical and electromechanical assemblers in manufacturing.

Eliminating Double Counting Across Multi-Tier Supply Chains

In a vertically fragmented aerospace industry, a single satellite program generates revenue entries across multiple corporate income statements. A specialty materials firm sells solar cell wafers to a power-subsystem supplier, which sells completed solar arrays to a spacecraft prime contractor, which delivers the finished satellite to a commercial operator that sells bandwidth to an enterprise customer. If an analyst simply sums the space-division revenues of all four companies, the cost of the solar cell wafer is counted four separate times.

Supply-use tables inside the BEA Space Economy Satellite Account eliminate that distortion by tracking inter-industry commodity flows. Each producer receives credit in GDP solely for the difference between its sales value and the cost of its purchased intermediate goods and services. Although gross output remains useful for understanding total transaction volume across industrial suppliers, value added is the only metric that can be validly compared against national GDP or against other major sectors such as air transportation, broadcasting, or semiconductor manufacturing.

Tracking Own-Account Production and Inflation-Adjusted Output

National satellite accounting also addresses two measurement challenges that distort multi-year industry comparisons: inflation and own-account production. During periods of elevated price inflation, current-dollar revenue totals can rise by 5% to 8% annually even if the physical number of satellites manufactured or transponders leased remains flat. By constructing sector-specific price deflators and chained-dollar volume indices, the BEA distinguishes nominal price increases from real expansion in hardware output and service capacity.

Own-account production presents an equally important structural challenge in the modern commercial space era. Vertically integrated companies such as SpaceX design, manufacture, launch, and operate thousands of Starlink broadband satellites internally rather than selling those spacecraft or launch slots to external buyers on an open contract market. When a vertically integrated operator builds satellites for its own constellation, no external commercial sale occurs at the manufacturing or launch stage. National accountants and market analysts must impute or track capital formation and internal production capacity so that massive constellations do not vanish from upstream manufacturing and launch statistics prior to generating downstream consumer subscription revenue.

Bottom-Up Industry Revenue Models From BryceTech and the Satellite Industry Association

Whereas national statistical agencies work from top-down industrial tax and census records, commercial space intelligence firms build bottom-up revenue models from company filings, contract awards, and operator surveys. As documented in New Space Economy’s intelligence catalogue, the most widely cited public benchmark using this bottom-up method is the annual State of the Satellite Industry Report (SSIR), produced by Alexandria-based analytics firm BryceTech for the SIA. Because BryceTech distributes its visual snapshots and summary datasets free of charge, its figures serve as a foundational reference in congressional testimony, academic studies, and regulatory proceedings.

The BryceTech and SIA methodology divides the global space economy into two distinct pillars: the commercial satellite industry and the non-satellite space industry. Within the commercial satellite pillar, revenues are disaggregated across four clearly defined operational segments. In the 2025 edition covering calendar year 2024 data, BryceTech reported that the global space economy totaled $415 billion, with the commercial satellite industry generating $293 billion, or roughly 71% of the global total.

Within that $293 billion commercial satellite total for 2024, ground equipment represented the largest single segment at $155.3 billion, driven by consumer global navigation satellite system (GNSS) chipsets embedded in smartphones, automobiles, and aviation receivers, alongside network gateways and very small aperture terminals (VSAT) plus flat-panel user antennas. Satellite services ranked second at $108.3 billion, encompassing direct-to-home satellite television, fixed and mobile satellite broadband, and commercial Earth observation data services. Satellite manufacturing accounted for $20.0 billion, reflecting revenues earned from building commercial spacecraft, whereas commercial launch services totaled $9.3 billion.

The remaining $122 billion of BryceTech’s $415 billion global space economy figure for 2024 captured non-satellite space activities. That category aggregates civil and military government space budgets for human spaceflight, planetary probes, space science, and classified national security architectures, together with commercial human spaceflight and non-satellite orbital research. By restricting its commercial tally to direct revenues earned by satellite manufacturers, launch providers, ground hardware vendors, and satellite service operators, BryceTech avoids attributing general terrestrial business revenues to the space sector, yielding a conservative, verifiable baseline near the $400 billion threshold.

Broad Revenue and Budget Aggregation in Space Foundation and Novaspace Reports

Two other major global benchmarks, published by the Space Foundation and Novaspace, arrive at substantially higher totals in the $613 billion to $626 billion range by applying broader aggregation boundaries across international government budgets and commercial infrastructure. In July 2025, the Space Foundation announced in its second-quarter edition of The Space Report that the 2024 global space economy reached $613 billion, rising from $570 billion in 2023 and $546 billion in 2022. According to the Space Foundation breakdown, commercial space revenues accounted for 78% of the 2024 total, with global government space spending accounting for the remaining 22%.

Similarly, Paris-based consultancy Novaspace, formed through the merger of Euroconsult and SpaceTec Partners, reported in the 12th edition of its Space Economy Report in January 2026 that the global space economy reached $626.4 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $1.01 trillion by 2034. Novaspace draws on more than three decades of longitudinal tracking across over 90 national space budgets, estimating global government space spending at $138 billion in 2025 alongside commercial market segments spanning satellite communications, positioning and navigation, and Earth observation. In Europe, the European Space Agency’s 2026 report relies directly on Novaspace datasets to benchmark global public and private space expenditures outside European member states.

The table below compares the six principal institutional frameworks used to measure the space economy, highlighting their methodological approaches and recent valuation benchmarks.

Several specific accounting choices explain why Space Foundation and Novaspace report global figures roughly $200 billion higher than BryceTech’s $415 billion estimate. First, broader commercial aggregations include a wider band of positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) downstream device and service revenues, as well as commercial space infrastructure spending on spaceports, engineering support services, and financing activities. Earlier Euroconsult space economy estimates explicitly tracked both the upstream space industry and downstream markets where satellite signals are integrated into commercial hardware and location-based services.

Second, combining full government space budgets with total commercial space revenues in a single additive headline introduces an unavoidable overlap between public procurement and private sales. When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Space Force, or the European Space Agency spends tens of billions of dollars on launch contracts, spacecraft development, and commercial satellite communications capacity, a substantial fraction of those public budget dollars flows directly to private aerospace contractors as commercial revenue. Unless an aggregation model subtracts government procurement contracts from either the public budget column or the commercial revenue column, procurement dollars spent on private contractors are counted once as government expenditure and a second time as corporate revenue.

The Backbone Versus Reach Valuation Model Used by McKinsey and the World Economic Forum

The widest boundary in contemporary space market sizing was introduced in April 2024 when the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company published their joint study, Space: The $1.8 Trillion Opportunity for Global Economic Growth. Rather than confining their definition to organizations that build spacecraft or operate satellites, the authors divided the global space ecosystem into two distinct categories labeled “backbone” applications and “reach” applications. In their 2023 base-year estimate of $630 billion, backbone applications accounted for $330 billion and reach applications accounted for $300 billion.

In the McKinsey and World Economic Forum taxonomy, backbone applications correspond closely to the traditional space sector, covering satellites, launch vehicles, ground station hardware, broadcast television, and direct satellite operator revenues. Reach applications, by contrast, measure revenues generated in non-space terrestrial industries where satellite signals, orbital imagery, or space-based connectivity help companies create value or deliver consumer services. Examples cited in the framework include smartphone ride-hailing platforms, app-based food delivery, supply-chain logistics routing, agricultural yield optimization, and location-dependent retail operations.

As detailed in New Space Economy’s critique of the $1.8 trillion forecast, folding reach revenues into a headline space market size blurs the distinction between supplier revenue and enabled economic activity. When a passenger pays for a ride-hailing trip coordinated using smartphone GNSS chips, the fare is collected by the transportation platform, paid out to the driver, and taxed by municipal authorities. None of that passenger fare is earned by a satellite operator, rocket manufacturer, or ground station provider, whose hardware and chipset revenues are already counted inside the backbone segment.

A comparison with terrestrial cellular networks illustrates why combining backbone and reach revenues creates a category error in market sizing. According to the International Telecommunication Union, global mobile-cellular subscriptions reached 9.1 billion in 2024, supporting trillions of dollars in mobile e-commerce, digital banking, and streaming transactions. Telecommunications analysts still measure the cellular network market by operator service revenues and equipment sales, rather than claiming a percentage of every retail purchase made on a smartphone as telecommunications industry revenue. Treating downstream reach activity as space-enabled impact rather than direct space market size preserves analytical credibility and still recognizes the indispensable infrastructure role of orbital satellite applications.

Four Major Methodological Pitfalls in Space Sector Measurement

Analysts comparing global space economy studies encounter four recurring methodological pitfalls that can skew policy priorities and capital allocation if left unexamined. Each pitfall arises where complex aerospace supply chains, dual-use national security programs, or ubiquitous digital signals cross traditional accounting boundaries. Recognizing how different research groups handle these four areas allows decision-makers to adjust raw headline numbers before using them in financial models.

The first pitfall is the confusion between gross revenue and net value added across multi-tier supply chains. In commercial market studies that sum the top-line revenues of component vendors, subsystem manufacturers, launch providers, and satellite operators, intermediate hardware costs are counted multiple times as components move from factory floor to orbit. An Institute for Defense Analyses study on measuring the space economy noted that reconciling industry revenue surveys with national income accounts requires stripping out inter-firm purchases and adjusting for government transfer payments.

The second pitfall involves government budget allocation, dual-use research, and classified defense expenditures. Space activities are distributed across defense ministries, meteorological agencies, environmental departments, and civil space agencies, as documented in the OECD government budget analysis. In the United States, China, Russia, and several European nations, national security space architectures represent a major share of orbital investment, yet classified procurement budgets and dual-use missile or aerospace technologies are either omitted, estimated through proxy indicators, or reported at different levels of granularity across institutions.

The third pitfall centers on revenue attribution in global navigation satellite systems and downstream Earth observation data markets. Core global navigation constellations such as the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS), Europe’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS, and China’s BeiDou broadcast their primary positioning and timing signals free of direct user subscription fees. Because the orbital signal itself generates zero direct commercial subscription revenue, virtually all measured commercial value in the PNT sector comes from terrestrial receiver chipsets, navigation devices, and downstream location-based software. Depending on whether an analyst counts only the semiconductor chipset inside a phone, the entire navigation unit in an aircraft, or the downstream software subscription of a fleet management platform, PNT valuations can swing by hundreds of billions of dollars. A similar boundary challenge appears in Earth observation downstream segments, where raw satellite imagery sales represent a modest fraction of the broader geographic information systems (GIS) and climate risk analytics industry.

The fourth pitfall is the failure to separate nominal current-dollar growth from inflation-adjusted real output. Between 2020 and 2025, cumulative inflation in aerospace materials, specialized labor, and electronics significantly increased the nominal dollar cost of government programs and commercial hardware contracts. When an annual industry report announces that the global space economy grew by 7% or 8% in current dollars, a substantial portion of that gain may reflect price inflation rather than an expansion in real physical output. Cross-checking nominal revenue headlines against chained-dollar indices, payload mass launched to orbit, and active spacecraft counts prevents analysts from mistaking inflationary cost growth for commercial demand expansion.

Designing a Three-Measure Decision Framework for Investors and Policymakers

Rather than searching for a single all-purpose number to summarize the entire space domain, economists, venture investors, and public officials benefit from separating space statistics into three distinct, non-overlapping measures. Each metric answers a different strategic question and relies on a different evidentiary method. Keeping these three measures distinct eliminates the pressure to inflate market boundaries and gives full credit to the economic and strategic reach of orbital systems.

The table below summarizes how decision-makers can separate accounting metrics by definition and practical application.

The first measure in a disciplined framework is Core Space Supplier Revenue and Value Added. This tier is strictly bounded to organizations that research, manufacture, launch, insure, or operate space hardware and direct space services, paired with national satellite account measures of GDP value added. Venture capitalists, private equity investors, and aerospace executives should rely exclusively on this first measure when calculating total addressable markets (TAM), benchmarking competitor market share, or forecasting customer spending on launch capacity, spacecraft buses, ground terminals, and satellite bandwidth.

The second measure is Adjacent Space-Enabled Commercial Revenue. This category tracks revenues in terrestrial industries such as maritime transport, aviation, precision agriculture, parametric insurance, and mobile location services that depend materially on satellite signals, timing, or imagery. Reporting adjacent space-enabled revenue alongside, rather than inside, core space market size shows corporate strategists and technology vendors where satellite capabilities are driving enterprise adoption without pretending that agricultural crop sales or ride-hailing fares belong to aerospace suppliers.

The third measure is Broader Economic Impact and Infrastructure Dependency Exposure. Public goods generated by meteorological satellites, space weather monitoring, planetary defense, climate observation, and GPS timing synchronization produce societal benefits and avoided economic losses that dwarf the direct revenues of satellite manufacturers. A severe disruption to orbital navigation and timing signals would halt financial market synchronization, electric grid phase alignment, and aviation routing across national economies. Quantifying that dependency exposure through input-output disruption models equips defense ministries and infrastructure regulators with the exact evidence needed to justify sovereign investments in orbital resilience, backup timing architectures, and space domain awareness.

Summary

Measuring the size of the space economy requires matching the statistical tool to the specific boundary under investigation. Headline figures ranging from BryceTech’s $415 billion estimate for 2024 to the Space Foundation’s $613 billion total for 2024, Novaspace’s $626.4 billion valuation for 2025, and the World Economic Forum’s $630 billion baseline reflect deliberate differences in how analysts treat downstream hardware, government procurement overlaps, and space-enabled terrestrial commerce. Meanwhile, national accounting frameworks led by the OECD and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis demonstrate that isolating net value added ($142.5 billion in U.S. GDP for 2023) from gross output ($240.9 billion) is essential to prevent supply-chain double counting.

As low Earth orbit broadband constellations, direct-to-device satellite connectivity, and automated Earth observation analytics embed orbital capabilities deeper into everyday commerce, the gap between direct space-sector revenues and wider space-enabled economic value will continue to widen. Publishing core supplier revenues, adjacent space-enabled revenues, and infrastructure dependency impacts as three separate, clearly labeled metrics resolves the debate over market sizing. That methodological clarity allows investors to price commercial opportunities accurately and enables governments to protect the orbital systems that underpin modern economic life, national security, and global infrastructure resilience.

Appendix: Useful Books Available on Amazon

• The Space Economy: Capitalize on the Greatest Business Opportunity of Our Lifetime
• Space 2.0: How Private Spaceflight, a Resurgent NASA, and International Partners Are Creating a New Space Age
• Space Is Open for Business: The Industry That Can Transform Humanity
• The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility
• The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos
• Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age

Appendix: Top Questions Answered in This Article

Why Do Global Space Economy Estimates Vary From $415 Billion to Over $630 Billion?

Global space economy estimates vary because research organizations draw different boundaries around downstream and space-enabled activities. Conservative models such as BryceTech’s count direct satellite manufacturing, launch, ground equipment, satellite services, and government space budgets. Broader frameworks from the Space Foundation, Novaspace, and the World Economic Forum include wider navigation device revenues, commercial infrastructure, or terrestrial reach applications that rely on satellite signals.

How Does the OECD Define the Space Economy?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development defines the space economy as the full range of activities and the use of resources that create and provide value and benefits to human beings in the course of exploring, understanding, managing, and using space. Its handbook divides the sector into an upstream segment covering research, manufacturing, and launch, and a downstream segment covering satellite operations and end-user services.

What Is the Difference Between Gross Output and Value Added in the U.S. Space Economy?

Gross output measures total sales of space-related goods and services across all production stages, which totaled $240.9 billion in the United States in 2023. Value added subtracts intermediate inputs purchased from other suppliers to eliminate double counting across the supply chain. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that net value added contributed $142.5 billion, or 0.5%, to U.S. gross domestic product in 2023.

What Are Backbone and Reach Applications in the World Economic Forum Space Forecast?

Backbone applications represent core space-sector hardware and services, including spacecraft manufacturing, launch services, ground stations, and satellite operator revenues, valued at $330 billion in 2023. Reach applications represent revenues in non-space terrestrial industries such as ride-hailing, logistics, agriculture, and retail that use satellite signals or imagery to generate $300 billion in additional activity.

Why Do Analysts Criticize Including Reach Revenues in Space Market Size Headlines?

Analysts criticize including reach revenues in market size headlines because downstream revenues in transportation, banking, or retail are earned by non-space companies rather than space suppliers. Counting a share of ride-hailing fares or agricultural crop sales as space market revenue inflates addressable market estimates for aerospace startups and blurs the boundary between enabling infrastructure and customer spending.

How Does BryceTech Break Down the Commercial Satellite Industry?

BryceTech and the Satellite Industry Association divide the commercial satellite industry into four segments: ground equipment, satellite services, satellite manufacturing, and commercial launch services. In 2024, those four segments generated $293 billion out of a $415 billion global space economy, led by $155.3 billion in ground equipment and $108.3 billion in satellite services.

Why Does Combining Government Budgets and Commercial Revenues Risk Double Counting?

Government space agencies such as NASA and the U.S. Space Force spend a large share of their public budgets procuring launch services, spacecraft, and communications capacity from private companies. When an industry report adds total government space appropriations to total commercial space revenues without subtracting public procurement contracts, the same contract dollars are counted once as government spending and again as private revenue.

Why Is Global Navigation Satellite System Revenue Difficult to Measure Accurately?

Primary navigation constellations such as GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou broadcast positioning and timing signals without charging direct subscription fees to end users. Because the orbital signal itself generates zero subscription revenue, analysts must measure commercial value through terrestrial receiver chipsets, navigation hardware, and location-based software, where boundary choices create large valuation differences.

How Does Vertically Integrated Own-Account Production Affect Space Statistics?

Vertically integrated companies such as SpaceX build and launch thousands of Starlink satellites for their own internal broadband network rather than selling those spacecraft or launches to external customers. Because no external commercial sale occurs during manufacturing or launch, statisticians must track internal capital formation so that upstream production activity is not understated relative to downstream subscription revenue.

What Three Metrics Provide the Clearest Framework for Measuring the Space Sector?

A disciplined measurement framework separates statistics into core space supplier revenue and value added, adjacent space-enabled commercial revenue, and broader economic impact or infrastructure dependency exposure. Investors use core supplier revenue to size addressable markets, whereas policymakers use dependency and impact metrics to evaluate national security and essential infrastructure resilience.

Appendix: Glossary of Key Terms

Space Economy

The space economy encompasses all public and private actors involved in developing, manufacturing, launching, operating, and using space-related infrastructure, products, and services. Depending on the statistical framework applied, its boundary can be restricted to direct aerospace and satellite suppliers or expanded to include downstream terrestrial applications enabled by orbital signals.

Upstream Segment

The upstream segment covers the foundational scientific research, engineering design, component fabrication, spacecraft assembly, launch vehicle manufacturing, launch operations, and ground control systems required to build and deploy assets into orbit. It represents the capital-intensive industrial supply base that makes all subsequent orbital operations and satellite services possible.

Downstream Segment

The downstream segment comprises commercial and institutional activities that operate orbital infrastructure or convert satellite signals, imagery, and communications capacity into end-user products and services. Core downstream activities include direct-to-home television broadcasting, satellite broadband connectivity, Earth observation data analytics, and positioning, navigation, and timing user equipment.

Space Economy Satellite Account

The Space Economy Satellite Account is a supplementary statistical framework maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis that isolates space-related production across standard North American industry classifications. Using supply-use and input-output tables, it measures the space sector’s exact contribution to gross domestic product, gross output, private employment, and employee compensation.

Gross Output

Gross output represents the total market value of all goods and services produced by an industry during a specific accounting period, including intermediate components and services purchased from other suppliers along the value chain. Because it sums sales at every manufacturing stage, gross output always exceeds net value added.

Value Added

Value added measures the net economic contribution created by an industry after subtracting the cost of intermediate goods and services purchased from other businesses. In national income accounting, summing the value added across all domestic industries yields gross domestic product without double counting intermediate supply-chain transactions.

Own-Account Production

Own-account production occurs when a vertically integrated company manufactures capital assets, such as satellites or launch vehicles, for its own internal operational fleet rather than selling them to an external customer. National accountants track own-account production as internal investment so that unmarketed upstream manufacturing is accurately recorded.

Global Navigation Satellite System

A global navigation satellite system is an orbital constellation that transmits precise radio timing and ranging signals allowing terrestrial receivers to calculate geographic position, velocity, and synchronized time. Operational global systems include the United States Global Positioning System, Europe’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS, and China’s BeiDou constellation.

Backbone Applications

Backbone applications, as defined in the World Economic Forum and McKinsey valuation framework, encompass direct space hardware, launch services, ground stations, and satellite operator revenues. These activities represent the core industrial and service infrastructure of the space sector that directly supplies orbital capabilities to commercial and government customers.

Reach Applications

Reach applications refer to revenues earned by companies in non-space terrestrial sectors, such as ride-hailing, logistics, precision agriculture, and financial services, where satellite positioning, timing, imagery, or connectivity enables the underlying business model. Analysts debate whether reach revenues belong inside space market size or in a separate space-enabled impact category.