As 2025 wraps and 2026 begins, defense priorities are reshaping markets, commercial constellations are scaling faster than ever and sovereignty has become a central organizing principle for governments worldwide.
Read our top four takeaways from our conversation looking back at 2025 with Chris Quilty, co-CEO and president of Quilty Space, and Caleb Henry, director of research, or listen to the full episode.
Takeaway 1: Golden Dome has reoriented the global space and defense landscape
Golden Dome emerged in 2025 as one of the most consequential space-defense initiatives in decades. While inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome, its scope and budget signal a fundamental shift in how the U.S. and its allies think about space-enabled defense.
“Golden Dome has reoriented the entire U.S. space sector and defense sector,” Henry said. “There’s $25 billion that’s proposed starting out, and then the shield program is a $151 billion program over 10 years. Those are huge sums of money.”
The program’s emphasis on proliferated architectures, integrating space-based sensors with terrestrial and interceptor systems, is already influencing defense strategies worldwide.
“When the U.S. kicks off a very big program, the rest of the world typically takes notice,” Henry said.
From Europe’s Odin’s Eye to Italy’s Michelangelo’s Dome, similar initiatives are emerging globally. Beyond missile defense, Golden Dome may act as a catalyst for broader space infrastructure, from orbital maneuvering to cislunar operations.
“Golden Dome was not on my bingo map,” Quilty said. “It has the potential to be a tent-pole project that pulls along the development of a cislunar economy.”
Takeaway 2: Hypersonic missiles have exposed critical space-based gaps
Hypersonic weapons, which are faster, lower-flying and more maneuverable than legacy missiles, are reshaping threat detection requirements and elevating the role of space-based sensing.
“Hypersonics typically fly closer to the edge of space,” Henry said. “That actually reduces the amount of time that ground-based sensors can see them.”
As a result, space-based sensors are becoming indispensable, not just for early warning, but for maintaining a viable response window.
“This makes space-based sensors more important because they need to provide that critical window where once a missile takes off, it can be spotted, tracked and targeted,” Henry said.
The rise of hypersonics reinforces the logic behind distributed, resilient architectures, another reason why governments are accelerating investments in space-layer capabilities.
Takeaway 3: Starlink’s scale is reshaping competition
Starlink’s growth in 2025 was unprecedented. “We have them hitting about eight million consumer subs at the end of this year,” Quilty said. “Viasat and Hughes maxed out at about 2.4 million subs after 15 years.”
The next inflection point hinges on Starship and the introduction of Starlink’s V3 satellites, which promise an order-of-magnitude increase in capacity.
“Those satellites are supposed to go from around 100 gigabits per second to 1,000 gigabits per second—a 10x increase,” Quilty said.
But Starlink’s dominance won’t go unchallenged. Amazon’s Kuiper constellation and other players are entering the market with competitive enterprise performance metrics.
“We’re going to see a continual series of check and checkmate over the coming years,” Quilty said.
Takeaway 4: Direct-to-device and sovereignty are redefining market power
One of 2025’s surprises was the rapid escalation of direct-to-device (D2D) economics, Quilty said, punctuated by SpaceX’s spectrum deal with EchoStar.
“If SpaceX is willing to pay $17 billion for the spectrum, they clearly believe that [D2D is] worth something as a service,” Quilty said.
At the same time, sovereignty has emerged as a defining theme, particularly outside the U.S.
“My understanding of sovereignty has changed this year,” Henry said. “We’re seeing American firms successfully pitching sovereign infrastructure to other countries.”
Instead of viewing foreign-built systems as vulnerabilities, governments are increasingly comfortable with models where infrastructure is built externally but controlled locally.
“They can hand over the keys and say, ‘We made this for you. It’s yours,’” Henry said.
This shift is opening new paths for collaboration while making sovereignty a core differentiator in telecom, Earth observation and defense markets.
From Golden Dome to D2D, 2025 marked a structural turning point for the space economy. Defense priorities are driving scale, commercial players are rewriting growth curves and sovereignty is reshaping how nations engage with space infrastructure.
For more, listen to the full episode.
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