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70,000 Satellites, One Big Bottleneck: The Industry Wakes Up to the Data Trap

February 12, 2026 / Business & Finance

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Novaspace Partner Nathan De Ruiter presented staggering figures. Opening the floor with an exclusive forecast, he predicted that 70,000 small satellites launching over the next decade will represent an investment of roughly $134 billion. Yet the mechanism for getting those satellites’ data back to Earth remains archaic, fragmented, and dangerously slow. We have entered the era of the Data Trap, where terabytes of potential insight perish in orbit because the physical pipe to the ground is too narrow.

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SES Executive Confirms End of the 15-Year Satellite Era

February 12, 2026 / Business & Finance

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Taking the stage, Dr. Bryan Benedict, Senior Director of Innovation at SES Space & Defense, dismantled rather than defended the legacy model. He described the merger between satellite giants SES and Intelsat that created a fleet of over 100 operational spacecraft not as a strategic power play but as a tactic necessary for survival.

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D2D’s Hype Hangover: The Physics Finally Bite Back

February 10, 2026 / Business & Finance

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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The New Orbital Guard: Commercial Tech Steps Up as the Pentagon’s Watchtower

February 10, 2026 / Business & Finance

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. The mood at the SmallSat Symposium has shifted from anxiety to resolve. While previous years were defined by fear of orbital overcrowding, this year marks the moment the industry decided to act. Experts at the Space Domain Awareness panel officially retired the “Big Sky” theory, the old assumption that space is too vast for collisions to matter. Yet panic did not replace this outdated concept. Instead, a sophisticated, militarized professionalism has taken command.

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