Today, when everything is digital, it seems truly remarkable how long we have been commercializing space in analog mode. Sure, the Space Race and defense spending in the 1960s gave birth to microelectronics. But who could forget – if you’re of the right age – the US$1 million that one company spent to create a pen that could write in microgravity? The company’s founder, Paul Fisher, offered the Space Pen to NASA, and it made its first spaceflight in 1967. (Meanwhile, Russian cosmonauts just used a pencil.)

It was in the 1980s that the digital world we know today began to take shape, with the introduction of the personal computer. But the GEO satcom business, operating in its safe-seeming silo, continued to operate on 15-year replacement cycles that set the pace for the entire industry. Digital encoding gradually took over connectivity, but the fundamental architecture of the global satcom network remained resolutely analog.

Today, the Space Pen’s writing is on the wall. Satcom and earth observation now take place in a digital ecosystem from orbit to Earth – still incomplete in places but advancing at the kind of speed that digital innovation provides.

In this issue:

• Escaping the Silo – By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Software, Interoperability and Facing Disruption – By Stuart Daughtridge, VP of Advanced Technology at Kratos and Chair and Director of DIFI
• New from BSW: Byte-Sized Space
• Meet the Future Leaders of the Industry
• The Golden Crown, the Chicago White Sox & the Collapse of Starlink – By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Innovation
• Plus More!

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