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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Speaking at the SmallSat Symposium, Sheppard Mullin partner Drew Svor outlined the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to retire legacy Part 25 rules in favor of a modular system under Part 100. This proposal seeks to modernize a licensing process that has struggled to keep pace with soaring application volumes and increasingly complex mission profiles.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. With over 14,000 satellites in orbit and filings for hundreds of thousands more flooding the International Telecommunication Union [ITU], the industry has hit a wall. Success is no longer determined by who can launch the fastest. Instead, it depends on who can find a clear frequency to talk back to Earth without being drowned out by the noise.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. For the Space Industry Investment and Exit Strategies panel, a clear consensus emerged that the space sector has graduated from a science fair to a serious asset class. No one’s funding technology for technology's sake anymore. Today, capital flows follow what insiders call the barbell market of recurring revenue, defense utility, and the ability to survive.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. For years, the SmallSat Symposium acted as a showcase for cheaper data relays and internet-from-the-sky optimism. But inside the Grand Hall today, the mask slipped during the session on Building the Physical Layer of Autonomy. The industry isn't just building smarter cameras but constructing the nervous system for orbital combat.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. For the past decade the SmallSat industry operated under a comforting delusion that low Earth orbit was a sanctuary where commercial operators could move fast, break things, and prioritize automotive-grade electronics over military-grade hardening. Dr. Paul Struhsaker, CEO of Arrasar Partners, with the precision of the former NSA intelligence analyst and Navy submarine officer that he is, exposed and dismantled that illusion during the session Orbital Assets: Contested and Congested.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Dr. Marco Brancati, newly minted Technical Director of the Leonardo Space Division, took the stage for the Keynote By Leonardo. Brancati didn't come to Mountain View to talk about democratizing space but to describe a fortress under construction.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Even here in the heart of Silicon Valley, the conversation has pivoted aggressively toward the Pentagon. The topic is the Golden Dome, the administration’s missile defense architecture mandated by Executive Order 14186 and funded at $175 billion.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. The free drinks at SmallSat Symposium usually signal a celebration, but this year they feel more like a necessity. If 2024 was the year of the press release, early 2026 is the year of the hangover. Breathless promises of ubiquitous, high-speed connectivity from space have collided with a formidable wall of physics, finance, and federal regulation.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Rockets still make a lot of noise, but the revolution visible at the SmallSat Symposium moves silently, digitally, and at the speed of code. For decades “metal benders”—those massive aerospace conglomerates that first weld titanium and then figure out the flight computer—have defined the space industry. That era is officially obsolete.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Rockets function reliably. Satellites roll off assembly lines at scale. Yet the buzz at SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View can’t mask a sobering reality: data gets stuck on the way down.
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