By Abbey White, Staff Writer, SatNews
Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Coverage and analysis from across the conference, tracking the forces shaping the next phase of the SmallSat market.
From Sandbox to Shield: The SmallSat Industry Grows Up
MOUNTAIN VIEW. If the mood at past SmallSat Symposiums was defined by exuberant experimentation, this year feels different. The energy has not vanished, but it has matured. During the session Engineering the Future Spacecraft, a clear signal emerged from the noise: the industry is graduating. Focus has shifted from the novelty of New Space to the serious, high-stakes business of national infrastructure and defense.
The practice of launching science projects to see what sticks is fading. In its place rises a drive for reliability, scale, and sovereign capability. As Peter Krauss, CEO of Terran Orbital, noted, “The days of flying things that are TRL 0… are over.”
The Bar Has Been Raised
This transition is not about shutting out innovation but professionalizing it. The customers driving the market today, primarily major defense primes and government agencies, demand a rigor that early startups often overlooked.
Krauss illustrated this shift by describing the industry’s talent gap. “You’re interviewing a 25-year-old, you want them to have a master’s degree and 10 years of work experience,” he said. His humorous exaggeration underscored a serious point regarding the expectation for day-one competence. Jan Smolders of Space Inventor captured this evolution perfectly, arguing, “It’s not a tech market anymore. It’s a delivery market.”
Engineering hurdles are no longer about just making something work in a vacuum. They are about manufacturing a product repeatedly, reliably, on time. The Golden Dome missile defense initiative referenced in the research serves as prime example, demanding an industrial base capable of churning out assets at a pace that boutique manufacturing simply cannot match.
Sovereignty Over Hype
While the conference floor still buzzes with talk of orbital data centers and edge computing, the panelists brought the conversation back to geopolitical realities. When asked about near-term value drivers, Rusty Thomas, CEO of EnduroSat USA, steered the room away from speculation, stating, “What’s not going to unlock value in the next three years for any of us is data centers in space.”
Instead, Thomas highlighted the urgent need for resilient communications in an unstable world. “Sovereigns who want to have a resilient communication capability—countries in the Pacific who might get their cable undersea cables cut on a bad day—are still going to need to talk,” he explained. As global supply chains fracture, the ability to control one’s own communications infrastructure is becoming a critical asset.
The Integration Debate
As the industry scales to meet these defense and sovereign needs, a debate is forming around the best path forward. Tina Ghataore of Aerospacelab described a vertical approach born from the need to secure a fragile supply chain. “We’ve had to pay for the roadmap,” she noted, explaining her company’s move to bring component manufacturing in-house.
In contrast, Rusty Thomas advocated for a model where customers leverage existing buses rather than building from scratch. He argued against past inefficiencies, suggesting that “companies don’t need to spend $10-20 billion” to build a constellation when the infrastructure already exists.
A New Era of Seriousness
The mood in Mountain View is not pessimistic but pragmatic. The industry is moving away from the move-fast-and-break-things era and entering a phase of industrial resilience.
The Strategic Edge is no longer just about having the most advanced sensor. It requires a supply chain that can survive geopolitical friction and a production line that can deliver at volume. The romance of the early days has not disappeared, but it has been replaced by the satisfaction of building something that truly works and matters on a global scale.