A New Center of Gravity: Why 2026 is a Milestone for Middle East Space Power

Array of large parabolic radio telescope antennas pointing upward against a brilliant night sky filled with stars and the Milky Way.

As 2026 unfolds, developments in the Middle East are redrawing the map of the global space industry. From Oman’s Etlaq spaceport to Saudi Arabia’s emerging geospatial dominance to the engineering ecosystems in the UAE and Türkiye, the road to space increasingly runs through the Middle East.

Ahead of the Middle East Space Conference in Muscat, Oman, there is growing momentum behind space as a driver of economic diversification and domestic capacity building for strategic autonomy. Nations are moving toward long-term goals of “technological independence,” “localizing space science and technologies” and strategies that fuel national sovereignty.

The approach to space sovereignty may differ by country or program, but all are aimed at a similar goal: leveraging space for the greatest national benefit.

“The key question we ask is not ‘Can we do this ourselves?’ but ‘Does doing this ourselves contribute to our long-term autonomy and knowledge base?’” said Can Bayraktar, a senior expert researcher at TÜBİTAK UZAY, Türkiye’s Space Technologies Research Institute. “If the answer is yes, we invest domestically. If not, we collaborate pragmatically.”

The Partnership Model

Collaboration has been a cornerstone of the Middle East space ecosystem since the Arab League launched Arabsat over 40 years ago. Since then, the growth of the Arab space sector has included state-to-state agreements, regional frameworks, international partnerships, technology transfer, joint missions and commercial contracts.

“The Middle East is positioned for space 2.0 where orchestration outweighs ownership and bridges beat barriers,” said Philip Brooks, CEO and Founder of Divergent Space Technologies, developers of a geospatial tasking and scheduling platform. “These countries are not wed to outdated contracts and modalities or traditional space systems that exist in siloes. There’s a greenfield opportunity for countries here, because regional cooperation isn’t an afterthought—it’s a starting position.”

The Arab Space Cooperation Group exemplifies this approach to regional partnership. Established in 2019 and chaired by the UAE Space Agency, the group now has 14 member states working toward “consolidating the strengths and capabilities of the Arab world in order to enhance its contribution to the global space sector and space science research and development.”

Last month, the group successfully launched Arab Satellite 813 onboard China’s Lijian-1 Y11 rocket. Satellite 813 marks the first Arab hyperspectral satellite designed and built to advance regional space capabilities and scientific cooperation. The platform was manufactured inside the UAE, leveraging local and regional talent and infrastructure for satellite design, manufacturing, testing and ground operations. In addition to building engineering and scientific capacity, Satellite 813 will directly support regional environmental and climate monitoring, water quality assessment, urban planning and disaster management, as well as mining and geological exploration.

Space exploration is a classic driver of strategic collaboration across governments and industry. This can be seen in Türkiye’s AYAP lunar research program, with the first phase, TLM-1 (Turkish Lunar Mission-1), scheduled for launch in early 2027. As Bayraktar explained, the mission is “not an end goal in itself,” but rather “a means to acquire deep-space mission experience” and the subsequent capabilities needed for future, more complex missions. Bahrain and Egypt have set their sights on the moon with a hyperspectral camera scheduled to be deployed on China’s Chang’e-7 mission to the lunar south pole. UAE is leading the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, slated for March 2028, with contributions from multiple nations.

From User to Owner

Sovereignty doesn’t always mean building systems from the ground up. It can also mean acquiring the right assets at the right time. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth-funded Neo Space Group (NSG) demonstrates this approach and is helping lead the Kingdom’s shift from being a consumer of downstream satellite services to a global provider.

Saudi Arabia has been strategically expanding its geospatial division, with NSG’s 2024 acquisition of the geospatial solutions company Taqnia ETS and its recent acquisition of UP42, Airbus Defence and Space’s cloud-based geospatial Earth observation platform. The estimated $100-180 million deal with the German-owned UP42 gave NSG ownership of UP42’s global digital marketplace, which provides data and analytics from more than 80 geospatial companies worldwide.

With a ready-made platform and an established global customer base, the acquisition amplifies Saudi Arabia’s role in the geospatial data and analytics market, which Novaspace estimates will grow from $5 billion in 2024 to more than $8 billion over the next decade. Value-added services will be responsible for the majority of that growth as geospatial consumers increasingly look beyond pixels for integrated intelligence and analytics. NSG’s geospatial acquisitions directly support KSA’s goals of economic diversification, positioning Saudi Arabia as a service provider capturing a significant share of the downstream market.

The shift from consumer to owner is also evidenced in the SpaceBelt KSA project, a strategic initiative under Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to build a sovereign, blockchain-enabled satellite constellation that will support data encryption, digital sovereignty and secure communications. In addition to ensuring secure, resilient data management domestically, SpaceBelt intends to build “data embassies.” Like a traditional embassy, data embassies would store data in a neutral area outside the physical borders of a country while remaining subject to its jurisdiction. There is no existing technical or legal framework for a data embassy, so Saudi Arabia is actively building the architecture.

Sovereign PNT

The trend toward technological independence is especially pressing in space-based position, navigation and timing (PNT). With growing concerns over GNSS vulnerabilities and more frequent incidents of intentional spoofing and jamming, nations must mitigate the strategic risks and multi-billion-dollar economic costs of losing satellite navigation.

Both Türkiye and the UAE are developing sovereign PNT systems. Türkiye is investing $2.8 billion into BKZS (Bölgesel Konumlama ve Zamanlama Sistemi), a constellation of eight CubeSats, featuring Türkiye’s first domestically produced rubidium-based atomic clock, developed by TÜBİTAK’s National Metrology Institute and the Turkish Space Agency.

BKZS and similar investments will modernize Türkiye’s role as a “technological bridge,” according to the 2030 Industry and Technology Strategy. The strategy describes BKZS, and the broader space program as a means to leverage the country’s growing aerospace and advanced manufacturing ecosystem and achieve the economic goal of tripling high-tech exports to $30 billion by 2030.

“Although having the capability to design satellites is important, operating them independently, maintaining and upgrading your know-how and continuous learning are what turn technology into strategic power for countries,” said Bayraktar.

The UAE’s National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) is collaborating with the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and multiple French industry partners on LEONAV-1, the first demonstrator satellite in the UAE’s sovereign LEO-based GNSS Augmentation System. As a commercial augmentation to existing systems, the constellation is intended to strengthen the UAE’s role in the global navigation market and seed new commercial services, such as unmanned vehicles and advanced network synchronization. The constellation will be jam- and spoof-resistant, with engineers focusing on resilience and performance.

At the Crossroads of Global Communication

Middle Eastern satellite operators have always existed at a critical crossroads, providing connectivity across shipping, aviation and complex telecommunications markets. Today, leading regional operators are expanding their services and are increasingly positioned as the gatekeepers through which global connectivity flows.

UAE’s Space42 (the merger of Yahsat and Bayanat) is emerging as a key player in satellite direct-to-device (D2D), a market that is projected to grow tenfold over the next decade, reaching an estimated $10 billion by 2033. Through its involvement in Equatys, Space42 is partnering with Viasat to pool together the world’s largest coordinated spectrum block for D2D connectivity. Equatys has already secured two partners: e&’s telco arm, which has committed to coordinate spectrum allocation, test 5G interoperability and seamless terrestrial and non-terrestrial network handover, and Indonesia’s Telkomsat, which will potentially expand Equatys’ shared MSS infrastructure.

The D2D expansion will be further supported by Thuraya-4, which entered service in November 2025. The software-defined payload enables dynamic beamforming and management of up to 3,200 individual communication channels with L-band service across more than 100 countries in Europe, Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, plus a U.S. defense and commercial MSS contract.

Oman recently announced its contract with Airbus for the nation’s first communications satellite, OmanSat-1. The software-defined Ka-band satellite not only advances Oman’s goals of digital sovereignty, it positions the nation to provide critical infrastructure at home and across the Middle East, East Africa and Asia. The launch is scheduled for September 2028 and will be one of the early deployments of Airbus’ fully reconfigurable OneSat, with a flexible payload for variable demands and missions.

Beyond communication, Oman’s Etlaq Spaceport is helping unleash Omani expertise in test, integration and launch, while addressing the launch bottleneck in the global space economy. In October, Oman’s Civil Aviation Authority announced one of the world’s fastest approval cycles for launch and a multi-complex facility at 18° latitude, providing a powerful incentive for the growing number of carriers.

There are other signs of Arab nations taking the lead in satcom. Arabsat recently announced a partnership with Canada’s Telesat to distribute capacity from the forthcoming Lightspeed LEO constellation, expanding Arabsat’s portfolio as a multi-orbit operator. Neo Space Group, through its ongoing partnership with SES (SES Open Orbits) and its recent acquisition of Display Interactive, is challenging Starlink’s dominance in aviation by offering multi-orbit in-flight connectivity. TÜRKSAT 6A, Türkiye’s first domestically produced communications satellite, entered service last spring, significantly expanding Türksat’s geographic reach and next-generation capabilities.