A flurry of military and intelligence satellite launches by rival powers this month came as the United States and two dozen partner nations wrapped up the largest global space defense wargame in history.
Russia launched what some leaders have described as a spy satellite for Iran and its own on-orbit snooping satellite Cosmos-2558, which is circling Earth in an orbit conspicuously close to a recently launched U.S. National Reconnaissance Office satellite, a Netherlands researcher confirmed.
The global space economy reached a new high of nearly $447 billion in 2020, an increase of 4.4% from a revised 2019 figure of $428 billion. The 2020 figure is 50% greater than a decade ago, and 176% greater than . . .
International successes in space, such as the Hope, Perseverance, and the Zhurong missions to Mars, don’t happen without years of advance government spending. In 2020, as nations struggled to overcome a global pandemic, space spending varied widely across countries and agencies.
Since Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight around the Earth in April 1961, humans in pioneering new technologies and pushing the limits of what’s considered possible. This year ushered in a new era of human spaceflight when SpaceX became the first . . .
The science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce is at the core of the space industry—from the mathematicians and astronomers who analyze space to the engineers who design and build the launch vehicles that get us there. This workforce is enabled . . .
Growth in the government investment sector of the space economy outpaced commercial sectors as the U.S. and non-U.S. government shares of the global space economy between 2017 and 2018. . .
Space is a global enterprise, with companies, private backers, and nations around the world investing in commercial, civil, and defense space sectors.
The global space industry grew 7.4% in 2017, reaching a total of $383.5 billion. This continues a broad upward trend that spans more than a decade. Traditional sectors for space commerce have continued to grow and are . . .
Global government spending increased in 2017, totaling $76.2 billion, up from $72.7 billion in 2016. Government spending accounted for 19.9% of the global space economy . . .
Brazil has experienced widespread economic challenges in recent years, which weakened the Brazilian Real by 51% relative to the US dollar over the past decade. The Brazilian government allocated . . .