As proliferated low Earth orbit constellations expand and large geostationary satellites become more mission-specific, smaller GEO platforms are emerging to fill niche roles, presenting opportunities for new commercial and government operators, while influencing how coverage, capabilities and operational risk are managed across orbital regimes.
Sovereign Access and Market Structure
The advent of smaller GEO platforms may also affect how nations approach space access.
Lower-cost thresholds can enable emerging space actors to establish a presence in GEO without committing to traditional large, capital-intensive systems, said Charles Galbreath, director and senior resident fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence (MI-SPACE). “A smaller satellite, which could be a lower cost barrier to enter, can support other nations’ entry into the space domain,” Galbreath said.
Manufacturers that build smaller geostationary satellites are able to provide focused service often at a lower price, which allows companies or countries with limited budgets to purchase satellite capacity, Tom Stroup, president of Satellite Industry Association (SIA), echoing Galbreath.
“They don’t necessarily need all of the capability of a large geostationary satellite,” Stroup said.
Many of the new entrants into the small GEO market are governments, where a small GEO enables them to establish a sovereign capability, said Mike Kaliski, chief technology officer at HummingSat, a SmallSat for GEO platform developed by ESA member-state consortium SWISSto12.
For example, SWISSto12 is seeing strong demand from sovereign customers that currently lease capacity from larger operators and want to be able to operate their own localized GEO satellites, he said.
Consequently, small GEO satellites also ease the cost of entry new commercial firms join the space industry and open the door to new market opportunities, Kaliski said.
“GEO continues to be a very valuable asset,” Kaliski said. “In many cases, small GEO enables business cases that would otherwise not be viable and/or enables completely new business cases to materialize.”
Shorter Build Cycles Make Room for Risk
Traditional GEO satellites are designed for 15 to 20 years on orbit, driving redundancy and conservative component selection, said Galbreath. “If I develop something that’s going to live for 15 years, it has to be multiply redundant, very assured to achieve that type of lifespan,” he said.
Shorter build cycles and replaceable platforms shift that equation, he added. “If you decide to go with smaller satellites that might be cheaper and then you can replace them, certainly that can increase your risk tolerance for components,” Galbreath said.
However, smaller GEO does not inherently mean shorter-lived, Galbreath noted. “There might have been a misconception that small satellites are necessarily cheaper or have shorter lifespans. Both of those could prove false over time,” he said. In fact, some small satellites have already been operating for decades, he said.
The potential for servicing, repair and replacement in GEO is another variable that fundamentally shifts architecture design as well as the way operators employ their systems, Galbreath added.
For example, tech refresh rate is not only influenced by satellite size but whether the system is built to be replaced frequently or serviced in orbit, said Galbreath. “If you’ve chosen to go with large systems that are never touched again, you’re certainly going to have a slower tech refresh rate than if you have a smaller satellite that you replace every few years, or a system that you can service and augment over time,” he said.
“When you can develop a system faster, you’re able to get that new technology into orbit quicker. And whether you replace that technology with a new satellite in a shorter timeframe, or you replace it with parts that you swap out through orbit,” he said.
Small GEO satellites do also face constraints imposed by specific rideshare launch volume, including mass restrictions, thermal dissipation capability, internal volume and power generation, said HummingSat’s Kaliski. But these limitations are “not significantly different” from constraints associated with larger GEO platforms, he said.
Flexible GEO Strategies Gain Traction
Small GEO enables operators to use an incremental, disaggregated approach for GEO deployments than their larger counterparts, which can result in cost savings, Galbreath said. “Flexibility of a payload comes at a cost: the more flexible the design, the less overall RF power,” Kaliski said. “Having a larger quantity of smaller satellites is a flexibility of its own that can be leveraged at fleet management level and does not come with the aforementioned costs.”
Additionally, small GEO platforms can serve as replacements for large GEOs as they approach the end of life or serve as a starter satellite for operators before a larger GEO becomes feasible, Kaliski said.
“All GEO spacecraft have a predictable lifetime, so we will see small GEOs replacing legacy large GEOs in some markets where business cases drive these choices,” he said. “An operator may also initiate a new service with a small GEO, which could flourish to the point at which launching a larger GEO makes financial sense,” said Kaliski.
Smaller satellites could also operate collectively rather than individually, said Galbreath. “If you do put small satellites in geo for a mission that may have been a traditional large satellite mission, like communications, you could do it in a virtual array where multiple satellites are operating in tandem to create a synthetic aperture that might be larger than you could achieve with one exquisite satellite,” he said.
However, disaggregation can also increase complexity in fleet planning, Galbreath noted. “When we look at small satellites, it increases our flexibility, which we then need to factor into our planning cycle and our architecture management – what gets replaced when, what gets maneuvered to what location at what time,” he said.
Could Small GEO Spark GEO Renaissance?
While defense agencies such as the U.S. Space Force are expanding LEO and VLEO (very low Earth orbit) capabilities, GEO remains an essential environment for secure communications, Galbreath said.
“The benefit of GEO in terms of maintaining a relative position over the Earth is so important that it’s not something we should as a nation give up on in favor of proliferated low Earth orbit,” Galbreath said. “Having a mixed architecture is important.”
However, certain types of missions could call for variation in GEO size, he said.
Particularly for satellite communications, there’s a benefit to using a large antenna and large solar arrays that generate power associated with traditional GEO satellites, said Galbreath.
But for applications such as space domain awareness, the geometry changes, he said. “When we look at offensive and defensive capabilities at GEO, certainly domain awareness in GEO, we begin to see a niche for smaller satellites that I think could have great utility,” Galbreath said, noting that emerging security programs such as GSSAP or RG-XX present growth opportunities for the SmallSat market, including small GEO.
Automation tools already demonstrated in LEO environments are also likely to migrate upward, Galbreath said. “We’re already seeing in proliferated low Earth orbit constellations the use of automation and AI tools to manage large constellations. That same type of technology can translate to GEO very well,” he said.
Particularly for space domain awareness applications using small GEO, the integration of AI capabilities will be critical, Galbreath said.
“As we have more things in GEO, being able to employ AI for domain awareness and fusing of orbit determination data is going to be essential,” he said.
While some space firms are building smaller geostationary satellites, falling launch costs have paved way for larger LEO satellites, said SIA’s Stroup.
“The LEOs are getting bigger,” he said. “I wouldn’t necessarily describe them as a big satellite relative to a large geostationary satellite, but I think now that we’ve established the market demand, there’s a need for more capacity on each of them.”
The satellite market is likely to continue on a multi-orbit trajectory over the next decade, said Galbreath.
All orbital domains, including GEO, have the potential to see market growth and new types of missions, particularly with the expansion of in-orbit servicing, replenishment and augmentation, Galbreath said.
“I think what we’ll see in 10 years is a combination of the traditional exquisite satellites that are designed for 10-15-20 years of life, as well as small satellites with specific missions that have shorter lives,” he said.
HummingSat’s Kaliski predicts shrinking satellites to prompt a resurgence in GEO: “GEO is the strategic high ground in space, with fundamental advantages driven by physics,” he said. “We strongly believe that GEO is about to rejuvenate, in part driven by the opportunities small GEO brings to the GEO business.”
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