The global space economy is on track to surpass $600 billion this year, and the rise of space-as-a-service (SPaaS) is one of the factors quickly driving it toward a trillion-dollar market.
Instead of building a full stack from the ground up, companies can tap into a growing ecosystem of space services, from payload hosting and satellite operations to ground stations and real-time geospatial intelligence products.
The evolution of on-demand space infrastructure mirrors the terrestrial shift toward a platform economy or sharing economy. Similar to how Airbnb, Netflix, Spotify and Uber disrupted the traditional ownership economy in favor of access, space is undergoing a similar change, with a move away from owned assets toward recurring fees or subscriptions.
Hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services were explicit about bringing their terrestrial model to space, with the idea of providing a global, digital infrastructure to help manage the industry’s big data problems. The proposition is simple, explained retired Maj. Gen. Clint Crosier, director of AWS Aerospace and Satellite and former director of planning for the U.S. Space Force: “Don’t spend all of your capital building out infrastructure that doesn’t differentiate your mission.”
In the SPaaS ecosystem, businesses leverage existing resources and expertise to create value, save time, minimize upfront capital expenditures and increase the accessibility of space.
At the same time, as-a-service offerings are giving organizations options. Now, they can choose between owning, leasing or even a hybrid approach, depending on priorities like mission requirements, risk tolerance, internal expertise and time to market.
“Most organizations today are asking a pragmatic question: What’s the fastest, most cost-effective way to get the insights I need from space?” —Awais Ahmed, Pixxel
“Most organizations today are asking a pragmatic question: What’s the fastest, most cost-effective way to get the insights I need from space?” said Awais Ahmed, founder and CEO of Pixxel, a provider of hyperspectral Earth observation (EO) data and analytics-as-a-service. “Building and launching a dedicated constellation is time and capital-intensive, often exceeding $100 million and requiring two to three years of lead time. Unless the end goal is to own sovereign infrastructure or host very niche payloads, space-as-a-service is the better path.”
Unlocking Downstream Value
Each part of the space value chain lends itself to the SPaaS model. SpaceX has dominated launch, with Arianespace, Exolaunch, Rocket Lab, United Launch Alliance and others shaping a robust, increasingly cost-effective rideshare and transportation infrastructure. Companies like Loft Orbital and Sidus Space have pioneered payload-as-a-service and streamlined satellite manufacturing—including novel applications for satellite design and testing. KSAT, Leaf Space, Leanspace and others have brought the subscription service model to ground stations.
Each part of the space value chain lends itself to the SPaaS model.
However, one of the clearest examples of value creation is in the downstream market, the fastest-growing segment of the space value chain. In its latest “Space Economy Report,” Novaspace estimated the market for downstream applications was $157 billion and growing.
Candice Massucci-Templier, manager at Novaspace specializing in government markets, flagged four downstream service areas to watch over the next 1 to 3 years. Those high-growth areas are satcom, broadband and direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity, GNSS navigation services and Earth observation.
Satcom will continue to dominate downstream applications with an estimated 88% of the total $157 billion value, according to Massucci-Templier. “The really exciting slice is D2D,” she said, noting that text and voice to smartphones as well as IoT modules could generate up to $42 billion in cumulative revenue through the next decade.
Premium positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) and GNSS augmentation services comprise the second-largest downstream market. Those areas are seeing greater demand, driven by drones, robotics, precision farming and similar use cases that require meter or sub-meter accuracy. “It’s a high-growth specialty … that is forecasted to more than double to about $22 billion by 2033,” she said.
The underdog to watch is Earth observation. In 2024, EO represented just 4% of the $157 billion downstream market. However, its share is expected to grow quickly, said Massucci-Templier. In the last four years, the number of EO constellations has doubled. This has fueled manufacturing and launch revenues—both areas where as-a-service providers are thriving. Moreover, improvements in the use of AI, automatic change detection and more frequent revisit rates are generating opportunities to extract high-value insights at a lower cost.
Data as the New Gold Rush
AWS has been tracking the growth of the EO segment with an eye toward its growing need for data management. “There are a lot of different segments of the space industry, but the fastest growing by anybody’s measure is Earth observation,” Crosier said. “And the fastest-growing mission is also the mission that requires the most data management.”
“There are a lot of different segments of the space industry, but the fastest growing by anybody’s measure is Earth observation.” —Maj. Gen. Clint Crosier, AWS Aerospace and Satellite
Early next decade, EO satellites could produce an estimated 230 petabytes of data per day. More aggressive estimates suggest the current daily volume of satellite downlink data is as much as 500 petabytes across all mission sets.
The challenge goes beyond the standard issues of processing, storing, managing, analyzing and moving data. To capture real value, data must be timely and actionable to the end user, whether that’s a government client or commercial partner.
“We have to have real-time insights across the data,” Crosier said. “You can only develop real-time insights by leveraging advanced capabilities like AI and machine learning and generative AI.” To address that need, AWS recently stood up a dedicated team focused solely on bringing generative AI capabilities to the global space industry.
Further upstream, ground stations-as-a-service (GSaaS) have been a critical innovation for capturing massive data flows from space. GSaaS dramatically reduces what is often the costliest and most complex part of a mission. Instead of owning ground infrastructure, companies like Swedish Space Corporation, Leaf Space and Atlas Space Operations have created a kind of Airbnb for antennas using their own sites or partnerships with ground station owners.
Virtually all GSaaS services are cloud-enabled, which means anytime, anywhere access to data or satellite mission control. For example, AWS recently partnered with KSAT to create the largest cloud-integrated ground network. AWS is also looking to develop operations centers-as-a-service, or Cloud Mission Operation Centers (CMOC), that allow operators to fly their satellites and downlink data from a remote location, like a hotel room or office. Several companies, including Lunar Outpost, iSpace, and Capella Space, are employing these CMOC capabilities today.
There are ongoing challenges in bringing together space and the cloud. Migrating legacy systems and purpose-built infrastructure into the cloud can be complex and time-consuming, particularly for larger operators or those requiring mission continuity. However, the upshot is greater flexibility, competitiveness and the ability to create value from data using digital tools and cloud resources.
“After 33 years of personal experience flying satellites and launching rockets, as much as I hate to say it, it’s not about the satellites and rockets,” Crosier said. “It’s about the data that’s collected off of those satellites and rockets. That’s where the value is.”
Subscribe to Space
Capturing the value of commercial space ultimately comes down to the question of who can use it. Answering that means tackling two common objections: cost and complexity. In the past, the market for space data was limited to organizations with the capital and expertise to monetize it or drive efficiencies. But that total addressable market is starting to expand.
Analysts at Novaspace have identified a trend among EO imagery providers offering sub-$5,000 subscriptions. Companies such as Planet, Umbra Space and SkyFi are embracing the approach with both subscription and pay-as-you-go plans for geospatial data, analytics and satellite tasking. Pixxel, which now has six satellites in orbit capturing hyperspectral data across hundreds of spectral bands, offers imagery for up to $8 per square kilometer, making it viable for large-scale programs or targeted site studies.
“Accessibility is central to our model,” Ahmed said. “This flexibility means we can support high-frequency, global monitoring and more focused engagements under $5,000, bringing new users into the market without sacrificing data quality or depth.”
Use-based subscriptions are also an emerging trend. Companies such as D-Orbit, Loft Orbital and Spire Global offer payload hosting and mission management. Customers are charged based on the resources used in the mission, greatly reducing the burden of building and maintaining space-based infrastructure. Loft Orbital has reportedly sold out more than 30 satellites since its founding in 2017, representing $500 million in lifetime bookings. Loft offers payload-as-a-service (physical missions that are tested, integrated, deployed and operated by Loft), but it also offers access to task sensors and fly software-based missions on its five-satellite constellation.
“Integrators are seeing more predictable, recurring income versus the old boom and bust of satellite builds.” —Candice Massucci-Templier, Novaspace
Recently, Novaspace began tracking revenues from hosted payloads. Year-on-year, it saw a 25% increase to $1 billion in revenue in 2024. This was largely driven by government users’ programmatic shifts away from purpose-built satellite platforms to integrating payloads on commercial spacecraft. “This means integrators are seeing more predictable, recurring income versus the old boom and bust of satellite builds,” Massucci-Templier said.
The Government User
Since 2022, ministries of defense have shifted hundreds of millions of dollars out of multi-year new build programs into contracts for managed services and commercial satcom leases. The U.S. Department of Defense has led this effort under the doctrine of “buy what we can, build what we must.”
“This has created a steady revenue stream for service providers who now win multi-year OPEX deals rather than one-off CAPEX projects,” Massucci-Templier said. Between 2023 and 2024, global commercial satcom revenues grew roughly 7% from $95 billion to $102 billion, according to Novaspace analysis.
However, as demand for COMSATCOM continues, near-term government demand may be waning for Earth observation and commercial imagery. With roughly 11,000 satellites slated to be built for governments over the next decade, many may end up supplanting demand for commercial capabilities.
“Right now, you have the U.S. government producing their own smallsats and more resilient constellations.” —Frank Rose, Divergent Space Technologies
“Right now, you have the U.S. government producing their own smallsats and more resilient constellations,” said Frank Rose, a board member at Divergent Space Technologies and a former senior official at the State Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration. In the coming years, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which had been fueling a boom in electro-optical commercial contracts, will field a proliferated architecture of hundreds of satellites for data collection.
At the same time, the multifold growth of Earth observation constellations has raised concerns about an excess of on-orbit capacity. “That puts into question whether the current commercial strategy, i.e. the big contracts with the U.S. government, is viable over the long term,” Rose said. “Probably not. So, they’re going to have to look for new markets.”
Those new markets may be commercial; they could also be with non-U.S. governments. Divergent Space, which emerged from stealth in February 2025, is tracking demand from European and other U.S.-allied governments to close their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance gap with commercial capabilities. New demand for commercial ISR has coincided with uncertainty over U.S. support and a shift toward allied burden-sharing. Commercial ISR will not replace exquisite capabilities, Rose continued, “but it will definitely improve allied abilities and make them more capable.”
Space for a Broader Market
The as-a-service model is rapidly being integrated across the space value chain in a clear sign of a maturing market. As the industry embraces sharing and subscription models, users are beginning to see unprecedented simplicity that could soon make it as easy to book a satellite pass as it is to book a flight.
The future trillion-dollar space economy is being driven by a shift from ownership to access. Subscriptions and SPaaS will never replace the need for sovereign and owned assets, but they are key to unlocking the next phase of growth, bringing the benefits of space to new markets on Earth.
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