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- Growing global (8/19/22)
Growing global (8/19/22)
Rachael Zisk
August 19, 2022
Good morning, and happy Friday. Congrats on making it through the week.
Weāre officially going back to the Moon. Later today, NASA will announce the landing site for Artemis III, the next mission to put humans on the lunar surface. And with SLS standing tall at Launch Complex 39B, ready to launch Artemis I, we just canāt get enough Moon news.
In today's newsletter:š°ļø Space in Africaš EO for Ukraineš Weekend reads
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Africa's Space Industry
Earlier this week, Space in Africa published its report on the state of the African space industry. Between 2019 and 2021, the ānew spaceā industry in Africa has reportedly seen major growth, and is valued at $19.5B as of the end of 2021.
Africaās space: The space industry in Africa is currently dominated by global navigation satellite system (GNSS) companies and satellite TV providers.
The space industry in Africa, by the numbers:
19,000 space industry workers, of which 11,000 are government employees
13 nations represented
48 satellites manufactured
272 ānew spaceā companies on the continent
Driving the growth: Government investment in the space industry nearly doubled between 2019 and 2021. In 2019, African governments invested ~$289M in the space industry. In 2021, that number was $523Māan 81% increase in two years. This year, African governments have allocated a combined $535M to space programs, a ~2% increase over last year.
The report also found that thereās been a shift from companies building larger GEO satellites to opting for smaller satellites in lower orbits.
Looking ahead: Space in Africa anticipates that the space industry on the continent will continue to grow over the next five years. It projects that the industry will grow more than 16% to $22.6B by 2026.
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ICEYE Provides SAR to Ukraine
Image: ICEYE
ICEYE signed a contract with the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation yesterday to provide the Ukrainian government with access to its SAR constellationās imaging capabilities.
The background: ICEYE has launched 21 satellites to date and owns the worldās largest SAR satellite constellation. SAR satellites can gather information day and night, in all weather conditionsāa major asset in wartime.
Other EO players, including Maxar and Planet, have also been playing a vital role in increasing transparency around the war in Ukraine through imagery.
As part of the deal, ICEYE will give the Ukrainian government full control of one of its SAR satellites over the country. ICEYE will continue to operate the satellites. The contract also allows the Ukrainian armed forces to access ICEYEās SAR constellation for frequently updated radar imagery of critical locations.
āICEYE owns the most developed radar satellite imaging technology in the world as of today,ā said Serhiy Prytula, founder of the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation, in a press release. āThis agreement is a significant step in responding to the Government of Ukraineās urgent request for critical earth observation data, and it will greatly benefit our Armed Forces.ā
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In Other News
Sierra Space completed a test readiness review on its carbothermal reduction technology, which is designed to extract oxygen from lunar regolith.
R3-IoT, a Scottish startup that uses satellite data to monitor equipment, has rebranded as Krucial to help it branch out of the aquaculture market.
Northrop Grumman ($NOC) is partnering with STAR HARBOR to design an astronaut training program for its planned space station.
Weekend Reads
š§ Payloadās Mo and Ryan partnered with Not Boring to write a comprehensive, 11,000-word primer on the space economy that runs the gamut from the history of space exploration to SPACs and back again. If youāve been trying to convince your friends and family of the importance and impact of the space industry, this oneās for them.
š For the science buffs out thereā¦
Marina Koren, space reporter at the Atlantic, talked with astrophysicists to find out what happens when galaxies collide, and what the night sky would look like as an observer in one of these galaxies.
Caleb Scharf, director of astrobiology at Columbia, wrote for Nautilus about how we might decode messages that come to us through the cosmos using quantum properties.
Clara Moskowitz at Scientific American talks us through the breakthroughs scientists have made in black hole research and what they mean for our understanding of the universe.
The View from Space
Image: Planet
A lake on an island in a lake is aptly called a recursive lake. Here, Planet imagery has captured a recursive lake inside the Taal Volcano, which itself sits inside Taal Lake on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.
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