As a testament to ISAM’s importance, the Biden-Harris administration released a National ISAM Strategy and Implementation Plan.10 According to Dr. Ezinne Uzo-Okoro of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the chair of the working group that produced the strategy and implementation plan, ISAM is a key set of capabilities and services necessary for maintaining national leadership in space.11
ISAM can enable a new space-industry architecture by creating new value and roles in a few ways: First, by moving capital-intensive requirements from design, build, and launch phases to operational costs. For instance, due to unique demands of launch and operating in space, spacecraft tend to incur high development costs due to engineering contingencies designed to offer the satellite the best chance of success. As Dr. Bhavya Lal observed, a satellite’s design is often influenced more by the first eight minutes of its life [launch] than the decades of in-orbit service.12 If satellites can be serviced or assembled in space, it’s possible to reduce or remove some costly design and development costs by shifting them to when the spacecraft is operational, and possibly even generating revenue.
The second way ISAM can help space organizations create new value is by improving an operator’s return on investment. In-space servicing can extend the life of a satellite. For example, in 2021, a mission extension–servicing vehicle successfully docked with an aging communication satellite to extend the satellite’s life by almost 30%.13
A third way ISAM can create new value is by sustaining the space environment because space sustainability is business sustainability. The same technologies that can relocate or repair a functioning satellite can fix or remove a satellite before it becomes problematic debris.
To create new value through ISAM, new roles are required for government and industry. In the near term, industry roles could focus more on basic ISAM activities and services, such as remote inspection, relocation, refueling, repair, and replacing of parts. Over the long term, ISAM technologies and services will be essential for more complex activities including in-space resource utilization, creating in-space infrastructure for tourism and manufacturing, and other activities that will eventually be necessary if the space sector is to not just reach the often touted trillion-dollar market value but sustain long-term development far beyond that figure.
STM for industry transparency and trust
STM requires information on where spacecraft are in space and the rules and norms to guide satellite behavior. STM is an essential piece of a modern space-industry architecture because it can improve transparency and trust.
Indeed, the very growth necessary to reach new space sector goals isn’t likely to happen without STM. As Lt. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander, US Space Command, has said, “Now is a time for action ... we are at a tipping point in our utilization of space ... space traffic management needs to be taken to the next level.”14 The space environment may quickly be approaching its limit as-is, let alone with hundreds of thousands of additional satellites and dozens of new activities from space tourism to in-space manufacturing.
Take orbital congestion, for example. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of predicted hazardous close approaches by satellites jumped by 58%, while that number leaped 134% between 2020 and 2022.15 At the same time, collision-avoidance maneuvers conducted by satellites are increasing at an equally troubling rate.16 Yet, there aren’t widely adopted rules sufficient to manage space traffic.
More than preventing collisions, it’s important to manage space traffic to plan missions, manage uncertainty, and promote safe operations. All of these can affect anything, from a company’s bottom line to military activities and even threaten to make Earth orbits unusable.17
Part of expanding industry transparency and trust will likely depend on how new STM roles are developed. Governments will need to create and enforce STM laws and rules (though industry can and should help inform them), while industry will need to support the creation of an inclusive, trusted, and accessible STM common-operating picture. Other government and industry roles are likely to develop as STM is established. For example, satellite-safety inspections or audits could aide in oversight, while new traffic rules could help mature the space insurance sector.
Satellite standards for business linkages
Satellite standards are a key piece of a new space-industry architecture because they can create business linkages across space activities, and business linkages are an important requirement for helping advance space activities such as ISAM and STM. Standards can generate business linkages by acting as a source of shared knowledge, improving market efficiency, and promoting trade—which can all help to reduce business barriers.18 Countless other industries benefit from standards for these reasons.19 Standards currently inform some aspects of satellite design and operation, but satellites still tend to be mostly proprietary, serve unique use cases, and offer little interoperability with other satellites.
The importance of standards becomes clearer when considering the planned growth in operational satellites. There are some 7,200 active satellites in orbit with hundreds of thousands of additional satellites planned for the coming years.20With even a fraction of the planned satellites in orbit, attempting to scale new space activities, like ISAM or STM, without standards may not make business sense.
It would be like attempting to create traffic rules for automobiles without common break lights, turn signals, or road signs. Or attempting to create gas-station and vehicle-service markets for tens of thousands of different makes and models of vehicles, all with different fuels, engine designs, and features. A lack of satellite standards can also affect how sustainable space activities are. After all, if it is too difficult to remove defunct proprietary satellites from orbit now, it’s likely to only grow more complicated with tens of thousands of additional satellites occupying already congested orbits.
Without standards and the business linkages they create, new space services could continue to face familiar challenges of scale and accessibility—a problem the current space industry architecture is ill-suited to solve. Government, industry, and academia will need to work together to advance necessary standards through industry adoption and policy.
What’s standing in the way of the activities we need?
ISAM, STM, and satellite standards are important to developing a modern space-industry architecture, but seeing these activities mature requires improving technology, developing complementary policy, and incentivizing cross-industry support.
While most of this work will likely fall on the space industry and related government agencies, it shouldn’t be limited to the space industry. Some necessary ISAM and STM technologies, such as artificial intelligence/machine learning or robotics, aren’t unique to the space industry, nor is the space industry unique in its need for government policy support for growth; other industries can help advance ISAM, STM, and satellite standards by advancing technologies and manufacturing practices—like those mentioned in the model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and digital engineering (DE) deep dive below—that are compatible for space and nonspace applications. Perhaps more persuasively, other industries should contribute because the benefits these activities produce will likely extend across industries, governments, and consumers just as many space activities have for decades.