The emerging nanosatellite market

摘要

One job of a satellite market analyst is to try to understand what types of satellites will drive the market in the future. In the past few years, it has been fairly obvious what these are, and making reasonable five-year projections has not been very difficult. In the early 1990s, it was clear to us that small LEO commercial communications satellites weighing less than 1,000 kg were going to be a big driver, because mobile communications systems such as Motorola's Iridium, Loral's Globalstar, and Orbital Sciences' Orbcomm were under development.