Nearly 2,800 smallsats reached orbit in 2024, accounting for 97% of all spacecraft launched that year. That single number, pulled from BryceTech’s annual Smallsats by the Numbers report, frames the scale of an industry that has outgrown the word “small.”
Carissa Christensen, founder and CEO of the Alexandria, Virginia-based analytics and engineering firm, has spent a career putting numbers to that growth. BryceTech’s Start-Up Space series, now in its eleventh edition, documented $1.4 billion flowing into Series A rounds in 2024 across 69 companies raising their initial venture backing: the strongest first-round funding since 2021. In a market analytics field that includes Euroconsult, NSR, and Quilty, BryceTech has carved out a distinctive niche by tracking startup investment year over year with a consistency that makes trend lines visible.
Christensen’s path to space analytics was anything but linear. She co-founded two companies, defense contractor The Tauri Group and quantum computing software firm QxBranch, that were both acquired in 2019 (by LMI and Rigetti Computing, respectively). A Harvard Kennedy School graduate specializing in science and technology policy, she has testified before both the U.S. Congress and the U.K. Parliament on the state of the space industry. She serves as a Senior Advisor to the U.S. Space Force’s annual Schriever Wargame and sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Space.
What makes her analysis useful for European stakeholders is how well it travels. BryceTech’s 2024 projection of growth in heavy-lift launch demand for U.S. commercial providers anticipated the megaconstellation-driven surge now reshaping manifest planning globally. The firm’s Smallsats by the Numbers 2025 report, published exactly one year ago, provided baseline data that European procurement officials continue to reference when sizing their own constellation ambitions.
At SmallSat Europe, Christensen joins a panel titled “The European Pulse: A 2026 Market Outlook for Smallsats” alongside ESA’s Director of Technology Dietmar Pilz, Neuraspace CEO Chiara Manfletti, Astroscale US SVP Janna Lewis, and Cambridge Consultants’ Head of Satellite & Space Stewart Marsh. The session examines how economic and geopolitical pressures are reshaping European smallsat ventures, from supply chain resilience to the business models that will survive a tightening funding environment.
The question the panel must answer: Europe’s smallsat sector is maturing, but is it maturing fast enough? The continent accounts for a fraction of global launch volume and venture investment compared to the U.S. and China. Christensen brings one piece of that puzzle: the investment data that makes the gap precise. The other four panelists bring the policy, technology, and operational perspectives to judge whether it is closing.
