MarketWatch releases its Small Satellite Market Report

The small satellite industry is consistently changing. There have been numerous organizations from nearly every sector taking advantage of the low cost, efficiency, and innovation that is provided by small satellites. We've covered stories in the past of small satellites providing opportunities for creating commercial opportunities as well as humanitarian efforts for solving the world's problems. The report is predicting that small satellites will have a market value that will exceed 1.42 billion in 2017.

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Launch Providers Accomodate more Small Satellites!

Launch companies are shifting from sending large spacecraft into orbit to sending more small satellites into orbit. Experts at the Small Satellite Symposium confirmed this trend that has been sweeping the space industry. Small satellites have been adopted by many organizations ranging from the nonprofit to the commercial industries and are being deployed all over the world. One company with a focus on innovating small satellite launches is SpaceX.

Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX commercial sales vice president, detailed a new model that SpaceX is currently working on. “We are working on the model where we have multiple missions dedicated to flying secondary payloads,” Hofeller said. He further noted that getting the cost and routine schedule down, that this will be a much better opportunities for small satellites to get into orbit. SpaceX hopes to improve means of launching clusters of small satellites into low level orbit on its Falcon 9 rockets. 

Google will sell its Terra Bella Small Satellite!

Planet, an Earth-imaging firm will acquire Google's Terra Bella small satellite business. The two companies made the announcement last Friday. As part of the deal, Google also agreed to buy Earth-Imaging data from Planet. Terra Bella was founded in 2010 and it builds small satellites and constellations for Earth observation.

This acquisition and sale is a great example of the diversification of the industry that is happening. This diversification is becoming increasingly common in the small satellite industry especially when it comes to combining areas and data in order to provide better services for earth science related projects. We've seen it with humanitarian efforts from NASA and more commercial industries.