Global Nano and Micro Satellite Market

Description

The term ‘Nano Satellite’ or ‘Nanosat’ and ‘Micro Satellite’ or ‘Microsat’ is generally applied to an artificial satellite with a wet mass ranging from 1 to 100 KG (1 to 220 lb.). More specifically, Nano Satellite can have wet mass up to 10KG and satellites with weight more than that of Nano Satellites and less than 100 KG fall under the category of Micro Satellite. This convention, however, is not unified and the term ‘Small Satellite’ or ‘Smallsat’ is often used to refer to both the categories.
More often than not, the design of the mission requires multiple smallsats working together forming a ‘Swarm’. A Swarm usually requires a bigger parent satellite to communicate amongst themselves as well as to communicate with ground controllers and docking systems.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) defines one more class of nanosatellites termed as ‘Cubeset’ which has standard size of 10 x 10 x 10 cm or ‘1U’ or ‘one unit’. They are also extendable to larger sizes of 1.5, 2,3,6 and 12U.

End-user/Technology

Due to the reduced weights, the small satellites cannot afford to have solar panels installed for power requirements. Thus, all the small satellites are equipped with DC power source which is lesser than 250W.

Market Dynamics

The smallset market segment is the one of the most rapidly growing segments of the satellite industry. The major growth driver for this segment is growing use of smallsets in weather, communication, military and defense applications. The requirement for such satellite swarms is increasing on daily bases as the requirements for real-time weather, flights and surveillance data increases along with the higher bandwidth requirements.These satellites have proved to be an important resource for modern military forces which operate under extreme environments and time bounded situations.
Following are the reasons for the increase in the requirements of smallsets:
• As the size reduces, the production cost reduces and it is further reduced by efficient project management procedures.
• Increasing availability of modern, power efficient electronics with higher accuracy then traditional high power consuming devices.
• Because the smallset have lower per unit cost, it becomes easier to implement and deploy swarms as they have high operational flexibility with rapid response.
However, following are some of the reasons because of which the market would not grow as expected:
• For larger and ambitious missions, the DC power requirements and computational power required is incompatible. i.e. complex computations cannot be done efficiently due to lower power available in smallsets
• Implementations of smallsets require new business strategies and management procedures along with innovative thinking which comes with higher risks.

Market Segmentation

The global market can be segmented on the following criteria:
• Application
o Remote sensing
o Science and R&D segment
o Communications
• End-use sector
o Military and Defence
o Commercial
o Civil and Government

Regional/Geographic Analysis

Europe, Middle East and Africa together contribute the maximum to the nano and microsatellite market. According to forecasts, the trends seem favorable for them for the future too. From these, Europe comprises the largest telecommunications satellite market. However, North America is expected to grow to become one of the key players in the market. This growth can be attributed to the high demand of satellites from NASA, US’s civilian space program agency, as well as the US Department of Defense. That combined with the demand in the telecommunication sector can fuel NA’s growth formidably.

Key Players

• Axelspace
• Dauria Aerospace
• Lockheed Martin
• Planet Labs
• SpaceWorks
• SpaceX