I was at the first-ever UK Space Power event in mid-September and it struck me how elevated the conversations around space defense have become now. It is a conversation that dominates space events and there are a number of new communities rising up talking sovereign space and what needs to happen for countries to have effective space defense strategies. It is literally THE topic right now in our industry.
Europe is at the heart of these conversations with countries across Europe en masse realizing that standing still is the same as going backwards. Whether it is Germany adopting a huge new space defense budget, or the U.K. setting up a squadron responsible for the security of space assets, we are seeing a number of interesting announcements at play. There is a lot of talk about hybrid warfare, which will inevitably have a space component. This edition takes a deep-dive into the European space defense market with a look at whether major programs are moving fast enough by Tereza Pultarova; the investor perspective by Laurence Russell; and a piece I wrote focusing on Germany’s momentum.
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While this edition has a lot of focus on the European defense market, we are also celebrating the 10-year anniversary of CyberSat, an event that we launched 10 years ago that changed the whole conversation around satellite security. When CyberSat first launched it was ahead of its time and brought together professionals for the first time to talk about the intersection of cybersecurity and satellites. Shaun Waterman, one of our longtime freelance writers and someone who has been to CyberSat many times, looks at how the nature of this conversation has changed, as well as some of the highlights from CyberSat’s action-packed 10 years.
We have had a number of big editions of Via Satellite and this one is following in that line. We have some great columns in this edition with thought-provoking pieces from Helena Correia Mendonca, Lina Pohl, and Marcin Mazur who look at some different aspects of recent developments in European space.
We had some great conversations at World Space Business Week in Paris and we look forward to continuing these conversations around Europe, defense, and space throughout the rest of the year.
