Space startups eye opportunities in the orbital surveillance market

WASHINGTON Space startups are vying for a slice of the growing market for enhanced space domain awareness (SDA) in geostationary orbit, with some firms exploring options to retrofit existing satellites with new surveillance capabilities.

Atomos Space, an in-space transportation and logistics startup, is planning two missions to GEO where its servicing vehicle will attach SDA payloads developed by Katalyst Space onto commercial telecom satellites.

This move comes as the U.S. military seeks to augment its space surveillance capabilities, particularly in GEO orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth’s equator. where its most valuable spacecraft operate and where adversaries are also deploying new systems.

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William Kowalski, co-founder and chief operating officer of Atomos Space, told SpaceNews the company plans to launch its next mission in 2025 using its Quark vehicle to service an undisclosed customer.

As part of the mission, the Quark will install Katalyst’s Sight sensor on a telecom satellite, Kowalski said. He added that a 2026 mission will deploy a new Katalyst sensor called Shield, featuring multiple nested sensing payloads.

“Certainly in the last 12 months, interest has picked up substantially,” said Kowalski. “I’m seeing demand for the payloads that Katalyst is doing, and also demand for repositioning and life-extension services for GEO assets. On the national security side, there’s significant demand for the space domain awareness payloads.”

Atomos is reworking components and increasing in-house production following communication issues between an experimental servicing vehicle and a client satellite during its first mission to low Earth orbit in March.

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The SDA hosted payloads market is becoming increasingly competitive as more companies develop technologies.

“Our market analysis shows there’s about a billion dollars in the SDA hosted payload market in the next five years alone,” said Ghonhee Lee, Katalyst’s chief executive and founder.

Katalyst recently announced a collaboration with Atomos Space and Intelsat to coordinate a satellite-servicing mission, aiming to install a hosted sensor payload on an aging commercial satellite in geostationary orbit.

The Shield sensor includes a base station and deployable scouting units, which can inspect resident space objects at close range.

A key differentiator is its ability to retrofit satellites already in orbit, as opposed to focusing solely on new-production satellites. “It’s a low cost, low risk path to closing intelligence gaps in GEO,” Lee said, adding that Katalyst has pitched its Shield sensor to U.S. Space Command and is seeking military funding for the project.

David Broadbent, president of Intelsat Government Solutions, expressed support for the project.

“Upgrading our existing on-orbit platforms with the capabilities that Shield offers is a cost-effective pathway for us to optimize our fleet to better serve our government partners,” Broadbent said in a statement.