{"id":294378,"date":"2026-02-12T15:10:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T15:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/294378\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T15:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T15:10:14","slug":"demand-for-sovereign-systems-extends-to-the-earth-observation-stack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/294378\/","title":{"rendered":"Demand for sovereign systems extends to the Earth-observation stack"},"content":{"rendered":"

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. \u2013 At the recent World Economic Forum in Switzerland, much of the conversation revolved around the concerns of middle powers<\/a>, nations with the wherewithal to influence international events that are not among the great powers.<\/p>\n

At the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View, representatives of Earth-observation companies said middle powers that previously relied on space systems operated by powerful allies or partners are now clamoring for sovereign capabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear that the geopolitical situation of today has induced all the countries in the world to think about sovereign capabilities not only in the Earth-observation domain but also telecommunications, connectivity solutions,\u201d Marino Fragnito, Thales Alenia Space senior vice president sales and marketing, said Feb. 10.<\/p>\n

SmallSat Symposium panelists agreed, though, that not many middle powers can afford their own Earth- observation satellites plus ground systems and analytics. In addition to the hefty upfront investment required to establish the infrastructure, operating expenses for sovereign systems would remain high for many years.<\/p>\n

\"\"Kongsberg Satellite Services offers products designed to detect and track maritime vessels. Credit: KSAT<\/p>\n

Budget Concerns<\/p>\n

As a result, middle powers will decide what type of sovereign systems they can afford.<\/p>\n

For some countries, that means acquiring sensors<\/a>, individual Earth-observation satellites or entire constellations<\/a>. Other nations will invest in Earth-observation tasking or downlink capacity, while relying on partners for the rest, said Marco Esposito, Cosine Remote Sensing managing director.<\/p>\n

Dan Adams, KSAT Inc. president and general manager, agreed that most countries won\u2019t be able to acquire the entire vertical stack of Earth-observation capabilities right away. Still, growing demand for sovereign capability is creating a huge opportunity for companies that offer products many nations seek, like maritime-domain monitoring.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a very demanding and complex time,\u201d Adams said. \u201cBut the good news is, from a commercial satellite perspective, there is more opportunity than challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada and Europe<\/p>\n

National approaches to acquiring sovereign capabilities vary widely.<\/p>\n

Canada, for example, has been pursuing sovereign capabilities for years, from launch services to synthetic aperture radar and hyperspectral capabilities, said Francis Doumet, CEO of Vancouver-based Metaspectral.<\/p>\n

In missile defense, nations are continuing to work together closely.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially for Arctic defense, Arctic response, Canada has a lot of early warning stations that the U.S. needs for missile defense and for Golden Dome,\u201d Doumet said. \u201cFom our side, from a data analytics technology provider, we\u2019re not seeing any friction whatsoever when it comes to working together.\u201d<\/p>\n

European nations continue to pool resources. After investing in sovereign priorities, European countries are \u201cputting their resources together in order to have shared infrastructure,\u201d Fragnito said.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. \u2013 At the recent World Economic Forum in Switzerland, much of the conversation revolved around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[289,140385,61,60,140386,140387,82,139543,1935,247,48363],"class_list":["post-294378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-canada","tag-cosine-remote-sensing","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ksat","tag-metaspectral","tag-science","tag-smallsat-symposium","tag-sn","tag-space","tag-thales-alenia-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}