Satellite leaders at SATELLITE 2023’s Tuesday Opening General Session struck cautious optimism, debating multi-orbit strategy and space sustainability while assessing risks to the space economy.
David Wajsgras, CEO of Intelsat, framed demand broadly: “You have underserved and unserved populations. You have traditional markets growing substantially. You have new verticals like agriculture, energy — from everything I’ve seen, demand is continuing to outpace supply.” Eva Berneke, CEO of Eutelsat, agreed: “If we as an industry can make satellite connectivity at a cost level where we can start competing in the telecom world, the market is probably 1,000 times bigger.”
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Mark Dankberg, CEO of Viasat, added a geopolitical caution: “For a lot of countries, space is about national security, it’s about sovereignty. The notion that a very small number of dynamic companies are going to go into a country and say, ‘Here’s your answer, just let us use all the resources for space’ — that’s going to be hard.”
Tim Ellis of Relativity Space flagged a launch capacity crunch in 2024–2027: “Every company we talk to is very worried about medium to heavy lift.” He also noted that Amazon Kuiper’s bulk launch purchases are elevating market pricing.
When moderator Mark Holmes asked speakers to rate the industry’s progress on space sustainability from 0 to 10, scores ranged from zero to five. Wajsgras drew an analogy to cybersecurity: “As cybersecurity became a nation-state problem, people started to give it mindshare. Then it was an all-hands-on deck approach. I think that’s the same approach we need with space sustainability — but we’re not there yet.” VS
