Quilty Space’s Top Five Satellite 2026 Takeaways

April. 02, 2026

By Quilty Team

Quilty Space attended the Satellite 2026 Conference in Washington, DC, last week, participating in panels, meetings, and industry receptions. As usual, the team debriefed after the conference to collect our thoughts and learnings. Here were our main takeaways from Satellite 2026: 

1. The industry had a mood swing. Out: the doom and gloom fatalism that defined the last few years of SpaceX dominance. In: genuine commercial momentum fueling everything new and shiny, from orbital data centers to sovereign constellations, direct-to-device networks, and SES’s MeoSphere. The satellite industry still struggles to compete with Starlink, but has found more reasons to be excited than in previous years.  

2. Launch demand is up. The debate over how many launchers the market can support has given way to a conversation about who can execute first. Demand is high, driven by Amazon Leo, Golden Dome, Eutelsat OneWeb, IRIS2, and more. Rocket companies from heavy lift to small launch are growing their backlogs in spite of SpaceX’s success. The conversation is not “how do we survive or justify our existence in the face of SpaceX competition?” It’s “how soon can we launch and start delivering for our customers?”  

3. One IPO to rule them all. As usual, what SpaceX does has a profound effect on the rest of the satellite and space industry, and the looming IPO is no different. Here, Quilty Space found the industry mood was one of excitement about the mega stock listing. Is SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion valuation staggeringly high? Yes. Has the late integration of xAI and the 1 million-satellite orbital data center filing changed the company in ways that make it even frothier? Also yes. But after years of fearing a cataclysmic event that would send space investors running to other industries (potential LEO bankruptcies in the 2010s, a dearth of exits prior to the SPAC boom of the early 2020s, followed by the underwhelming performance of said SPAC stocks until recently), the industry now has an event that may draw more investors, not less. 

4. The elephant not in the room. Golden Dome made a cameo in nearly every conversation, generating peak hype and almost no clarity. Beyond the obligatory nods to sovereignty and the fate of the PWSA transport layer, we heard “what even is Golden Dome?” more often than “is this seat taken?” Fair question, considering Congress is still trying to pin it down. Strip away the branding, and you’re left with a $185B “system of systems” that feels less like a clean-sheet architecture and more like a forced group project. A few net-new bets will likely get funded — left-of-launch, space-based interceptors — but the bulk of the effort looks like a strategic roll-up of existing programs. Efforts like AMTI, HBTSS, Resilient MWT, SDA tracking layers, and the Space Data Network are all being pulled forward, reprioritized, and put on Dome timelines. This is a hard concept to CliffsNote while waiting on your coffee at the (new) convention center Starbucks. 

5. Optical ground stations: main character energy. Optical ground stations popped up in several client meetings at the show — and for good reason. As every new constellation levels up to moving absurd data volumes back to Earth, it’s becoming clear that legacy infrastructure simply isn't built for the scale. Between Blue Origin’s TeraWave pushing optical-to-ground and SES’s meoSphere layering in high-throughput optical crosslinks, the industry is realizing the bottleneck isn't just in orbit. With roughly 1.2 million proposed satellites tied to orbital data centers alone, the physics are hitting a wall. Even the closing fireside chat featured Bridget Mendler of Northwood Space — a startup that just secured a Space Force contract and is spinning up a 180,000-square-foot factory to mass-produce rapidly deployable, phased-array ground networks. Spectrum is finite, and the pressure is shifting toward the optical ground segment to bridge the gap. Good luck, Charlie! 

Outside of SES’s MeoSphere constellation announcement, this year’s Satellite conference was light on news, but that didn’t reflect 2026 overall. Major developments are happening constantly, like Blue Origin’s TeraWave announcement, Nvidia’s spotlight on orbital data center demos, and today’s news of a purported Globalstar acquisition by Amazon. With all these happenings in the first three months, 2026 is shaping up to be a very busy year.