Satellites launched into orbit per year
1,400 2021
115 2000-2010 average
This month’s glamor rocket, rising next Wednesday from the Arianespace launch site in French Guiana, is an “Ariane 5”: a 170-foot tower weighing 780 tons and carrying 180 tons of liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen fuel. Operated by the European Space Agency, its task is to lift the 44-foot, 7-ton, $9.7 billion James Webb Space Telescope off the Earth (pictured below), and direct it to “Lagrange 2,” a stable orbital a million miles from the Earth and well beyond the Moon. Successor to the Hubble, the Webb carries a 360-kilo, 21-foot-in-diameter mirror faced with ultra-polished beryllium, along with a set of four detection instruments designed at NASA’s Goddard Space Center in Maryland. For the next decade, these will analyze infrared radiation in hopes of understanding exoplanet atmospheres, observing star and galaxy formation, investigating “dark matter,” and examine the very early universe.
The Webb is very much in the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Voyager, and Mars Rover tradition: a government-led, big-science. international (NASA: the Webb is an “international collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) abstract-knowledge-and-benefit-of-humanity project. Around this newest example of a familiar tradition, however, are hundreds of illustrations of a quite different and much newer space concept — about 1,400 more satellite launches, the large majority by private-sector rocket companies carrying small satellites meant for very prosaic commercial use rather than scientific exploration or public policy. Examples from this month’s launch schedule include:
> RocketLab Electron, from Mahia in New Zealand, carrying two communications satellites for BlackSky’s earth observation satellite network. This provides imaging services via a network of two dozen small satellites — about 135 pounds, smaller than the 184-pound Sputnik satellite of 1957 — orbiting about 270 miles above the Earth.
> Virgin LauncherOne, launched not from a pad on the ground but from a converted Boeing 747 flown from California, carrying two “nano-satellites” weighing about 5 pounds for Polish firm SatRevolution (along with eight for the U.S military). SatRevolution eventually hopes for a network of 1,024 low-orbit nanosats providing imaging to agricultural, business, and government clients.
> Space Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, with 51 small satellites for SpaceX’s “Starlink” system, meant as part of a future network of 42,000 small satellites at 350 miles providing “video calls, online gaming, streaming, and other high data rate activities” to areas the global fiber-optic cable system that carries most Internet traffic does not reach, at a projected cost of $10 billion or so — that is, about the same as the Webb.
Wednesday’s launch, then, underlines the continuing strength and romantic appeal of the 65-year-old tradition of government-led, science-first space exploration. This year’s parallel launches of its hundreds of small private-sector cousins suggest that, for the first time, civilian commercial space industry now operates on the same scale.
* Official counts of satellites are surprisingly inconsistent. The UN’s count reports 8,089 man-made objects in orbit at the moment; the Union of Concerned Scientists says “more than 4,550.” Either way, adding 1,400 more in a single year is a lot.
NASA’s guide to the James Webb Space Telescope.
The EU’s Arianespace reports on progress toward launch.
The Canadian Space Agency’s guidance system and spectrographic instrument.
Calendar and count
Online journal Spaceflight Now tracks launches and payloads.
A United Nations index of 8,089 objects launched into space since 1957.
And last …
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.