Different Tranches of Emerging Space Industry Seeing Different Successes, NSR Says

Among nontraditional space applications, the Earth/space sector -- infrastructure and services provided on Earth to facilitate use of space, such as launch services -- will continue to be the dominant business model in the near term, Northern Sky Research analyst Carolyn Belle blogged Monday. But the space/space and space/Earth segments will start being opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs as long as they can avoid already-saturated applications, NSR said. Space/space is services delivered in space, such as satellite servicing and space tourism, NSR said, and space/Earth is services delivered from space assets for use on Earth, it said. NSR said Earth/space includes nearly half of nontraditional space companies founded, but most of the funding for Earth/space companies went to SpaceX and Blue Origin. It said outside funding for space/space is limited, with Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace having the most investment.