[Satellite News 06-09-11] The satellite industry will launch more than 1,600 satellites — $250 billion in spacecraft — in the next 15 years at an average of 110 satellites launched per year, according to an NSR market research report, “Global Satellite Manufacturing and Launch Markets.”

            The report, released June 8, said that the stability of GEO ComSat replacements, government contracts and a steady stream of science and navigation missions will help push the satellite industry to another peak in 2016, crossing $20 billion annually.

            NSR Senior Analyst Prashant Butani also credited what he calls “the Ka-band/HTS ‘me too’ syndrome” for pushing more business into space. “To launch over 1,600 satellites by 2025 is a significant increase over the last 15 years, which saw a total of slightly over 1,500 satellites at an average of about 100-plus satellites per year,” said Butani. “However, one big challenge facing the industry is the limited number of launcher options available to operators, which should see some unusual launch contracts being announced soon.”

For the past few years, the satellite launch market has been trying to get a read on how much penetration European and Russian launch providers will get into the U.S. market during the next decade. The slow, but steady build-up of the domestic U.S. space launch industry also has provided an area of intense focus — especially with the rebirth of Sea Launch out of bankruptcy and the growing strength of SpaceX in both public and private markets.

            “These are trends to monitor closely in the next several years. We’re forecasting a total of over 1,000 launches over the next 15 years, again significantly higher than the years gone by. The manufacturing and launch industries are doing their best to cope with the pressure on margins, incremental growth and capital-intensive processes,” said Butani.

            North America and Western Europe account for more than 50 percent of the launch market and while NSR said it expects this statistic to remain in place for some time, it noted in the report that significant growth opportunities for the next decade may arise in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

            According to the report, NSR found manufacturers struggling to work around “bottlenecks” associated with Traveling Wave Tube Amplifiers (TWTAs) for commercial GEO ComSats. “At the same time, they have to respond to powerful clients that are increasingly demanding for them to share the risks. The manufacturing industry’s recent moves towards service provisioning may seem like an adequate response, but we question whether this trend has more to it than meets the eye,” said Butani.

            Another noteworthy trend that is cited in the report is increased activity by domestic operators, which have stepped up their pace of adding volume to order books. Butani said that to keep up the pace, manufacturers and launchers would have to study individual markets while dealing with regulatory challenges.

“As the industry settles down after the recent spate of MSS sector capital expenditure, most providers will look to rely on fixed satellite FSS, HTS and government satellites for the next decade. These will come, almost in equal measure, from international and domestic satellite operators,” said Butani.