Space Investment and Orbital Debris: Space Research Round-Up for Feb. 5 

Views of the Milky Way. Photo: NASA

In this new round-up, Via Satellite looks at recent research reports in the space and telecommunications arena. This installment features a look at space investment activity in 2020, a report on NASA’s orbital debris efforts, and a look at satellite industry financials. 

Space Capital Catalogs Strong Space Investment in 2020 

Space Capital, one of the top space investment firms that also tracks industry investment (rebranded from Space Angels), recently released its Fourth Quarter (Q4) edition of Space Investment Quarterly for 2020, showing that the past year was another year of major activity in space investment. Space Capital reports $5.7 billion was invested into 80 space companies in Q4, bringing the full year total to $25.6 billion. Venture capital in particular invested $15.7 billion in 2020 overall into 252 space companies. 

Fears that the COVID-19 pandemic would dent space investment activity did not materialize, and Space Capital reported 2020 was the third-largest year on record for space investment. But there was a trend toward bigger, late stage deals, and 2020 saw the lowest number of rounds in six years — 359 rounds. A large portion of investment is concentrated in the top 10 companies, accounting for $16.5 billion, or 64% of total 2020 space investment. But early-stage deal activity remained healthy with 211 rounds. 

2020 was also a record year for companies that Space Capital considers “infrastructure,” those that build and launch satellites. Investment in this stack totaled $8.9 billion, and Q4 saw two major rounds with Blue Origin’s $1 billion self-capitalization, and Relativity Space’s $500 million Series D round. According to the report, U.S. companies lead global investment in this sector, but China is rapidly investing in space and launch companies. 

The report also highlighted Microsoft and Amazon’s ambitions in space in 2020, and predicts the activity will have an impact in 2021: “Working with a number of our portfolio companies, Azure Space and AWS Space are removing complexity across the value chain, making a global network of space-based communication and data collection infrastructure accessible to the tech community to innovate upon.” 

NASA Office of Inspector General Report Calls for More Orbital Debris Mitigation Work 

NASA needs to take more leadership on the issue of orbital debris, according to a Jan. 27 report by the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG evaluated NASA’s orbital debris mitigation efforts and the agency’s work with outside parties as well and found that “despite presidential and congressional directives to NASA over the past decade to develop active debris removal technologies, the agency has made little to no progress on such efforts.”

According to the report, the amount of orbital debris has increased exponentially over the last 60 years, and it threatens critical applications like telecommunications and GPS. The industry standard to mitigate orbital debris is to ensure that at least 90% of all spacecraft are removed from orbit within 25 years of the end of their mission, and at least five defunct spacecraft are actively removed from orbit every year. NASA’s compliance rate over the past decade has been 96%, but the rest of the world does not share the same urgency, and global compliance averages between 20% to 30%. Further, the U.S. operates the most spacecraft in LEO, and therefore is at the greatest risk to damage from collisions or orbital debris. 

NASA has focused on mitigation, but the report found the agency has “no viable, cost-effective option for active debris removal and no plans to establish an operational role in such efforts.” Taking no action will add to costs of tracking, monitoring, and modeling orbital debris, and performing maneuvers to avoid collisions.

The report issued seven recommendations to NASA including: lead global efforts to mitigate orbital debris; collaborate with partners to adopt national/international active debris removal guidelines; and prioritize obtaining data on millimeter-sized debris. 

NSR Examines Industry Reset in 2020 

The global satcom industry contracted by 2.7% in 2019, NSR reports in the 10th edition of its Satellite Industry Financial Analysis report, but a “hard reset” in 2020 industry bankruptcies and consolidation may have strengthened the industry moving forward. 

The NSR report identified pre-COVID trends that showed the industry was in need of a reset. These trends include Year-over-Year backlog decline with increase in short-term contracts; mixed top-line revenue decline as video revenues declined, with increased non-video revenues; and price pressures pushing a decline of Return on Capital Employed (ROCE). 

“Expect to see more acquisitions as declining backlog will force operators to the service business, thus pushing M&A in the industry. M&As will follow two major paths: geographical vs vertical. The geographical pathway will see big operators acquiring regional operators/SPs to gain domestic market shares. Examples already include Eutelsat’s acquisition of Noorsat and Arabsat’s acquisition of Greek-Cypriot satellite operator Hellas Sat. Intelsat’s acquisition of Gogo’s commercial aviation division further indicates a vertical approach,” analyst Joseph Ibeh wrote in The Bottom Line.