New Space Business: An Opportunity for Emerging Space Nations

After a period of pure governmental space activities, financed by public money, space has become a commercial business with an estimated turnover of 660 billion USD in 2024 and an expected growth of more than 1.5 trillion USD by 2035. Space activities have transferred from national prestige motives to entrepreneurial business motives. This process has been accelerated considerably with what we presently label as the New Space era. Indeed, since the year 2000, we have witnessed a number of changes in space launch approaches as well as a growing number of smallsats, CubeSats, and satellite constellations in Low Earth Orbit. As a result of these space activities becoming affordable to a large range of countries and, at present, having an important effect on STEM education and capacity building particularly in emerging space nations, there is a need to prepare the future workforce for an economy which will considerably be driven by space-based communications and applications. Indeed, there is no reason why countries, over and beyond the traditional major spacefaring nations, should not prepare for this space business era by becoming active players themselves. Various international initiatives such as the US-led Artemis and the Chinese-led ILRS initiatives support this venue and could become a strong catalyst, but an important element is to have a national space strategy implemented stepwise. A template on how to establish such a strategy is provided in this article. A discussion will analyze the rationale and arguments for emerging space nations to become part of this development, suggesting a number of further studies to enhance this approach.