The African continent can often be an afterthought in high-tech, capital-intensive industries such as space and satellite communications, but any way you slice it, the coming decades are going to see strong growth from this region. With a large and growing percentage of the world’s young people, dozens of fast-growing economies, and newly-established space agencies popping up every few months, Africa is a booming frontier market for the global space industry.

Strategic autonomy’ has long been an ambition of the European Union (EU). It refers to the capacity of the EU to act without being dependent on other countries in strategically important policy areas, such as defence. European Council President Charles Michel called it 'our new common project for this century' as well as 'the aim for our generation'. Now, amid global uncertainty, strategic autonomy has become a necessity.

Obstacles to Autonomy

The late American comedian Robin Williams joked that politicians need to be changed like diapers: frequently and for the same reason. You cannot trust a human being who holds and builds-up that much power or authority for too long.  Stuff that isn’t savory will inevitably accumulate.

Here they are: WWWWWM – the five Ws and the One H – it stands for those familiar questions: who, what, where, when, why and how. You can ask Google or ChatGPT to define these and you’ll get some pretty good generic answers. These are the standard questions that according to journalistic practice should be answered by any article, preferably the lead paragraph. For our industry, these simple questions are not simple to answer, whether as a business or as a strategy:

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the Kuiper-1 mission for Amazon’s Project Kuiper lifted off on April 28 at 7:01 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Kuiper 1 launch marks the beginning of full-scale deployment of the Kuiper constellation and a new chapter in the commercial launch industry as Amazon partners with ULA to deliver a majority of its advanced satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO).

Katalyst Space Technologies has announced its acquisition of Atomos Space, a strategic move to accelerate and expand its in-space servicing capabilities.

The company plans to continue operating the 20,000 square foot facility in Broomfield, CO, where Atomos builds and tests its flagship spacecraft, Quark. Key members of the Atomos team will join Katalyst following the transaction, including Atomos co-founder Vanessa Clark.

Space logistics and orbital transportation comapny D-Orbit, and Planetek Group, a provider of Earth Observation (EO), geospatial analytics, and mission software, announce a strategic business combination (merger) during an event held at the Sala degli Arazzi of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy, in the presence of Minister Adolfo Urso.

The April 2025 issue of the Satellite Executive Briefing is now available.  Featuring:

With all of the activity and associated hype of broadband LEO constellations, one wonders if there is anything left to say about GEO satellites and applications. I chose Old Faithful, that amazing geyser in Yellowstone National Park, as the theme for this article because it, like dependable geostationary platforms, can be relied upon to simply do its thing. Old Faithful is powered by natural causes much the way that a GEO converts sunlight into dependable services to and by fixed positions on the earth.

For 30 million years, the North and South Poles have been kingdoms of ice and snow.  But today, there is nowhere on Earth more at risk from climate change. The Antarctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Arctic temperatures are rising even faster.