Quilty Space’s Top Five Takeaways from WSBW 2025

September 24, 2025 - Written by Quilty Space

Quilty Space attended the annual World Space Business Week in Paris last week. Our French could use some work, but fortunately, we’re fluent in the language of the space industry. Over the course of the week, Quilty Space noticed several emerging trends based on dozens of meetings and hallway conversations. The following (non-exhaustive) list covers the biggest themes that stood out to us from the conference.

DTD is king. Already a perennial hot topic, this year’s DTD conversations were amplified by SpaceX’s $17 billion spectrum deal with EchoStar and the unveiling of Equatys – a Space42/Viasat-backed venture to provide global DTD services with pooled MSS spectrum. Meanwhile, MDA Space, still reeling from the loss of its $1.3B EchoStar order, insisted that its DTD pipeline remains active and perhaps accelerating. While a handful of stocks (most notably ASTS, IRDM, and MDA) sold off on the news, the overall industry buzz toward DTD leans positive, given the potential for billion-dollar orders that are badly needed to support the flood of new smallsat manufacturers, component vendors, and providers that have entered the market in recent years.

Ground segment heats up. The traditionally sleepy ground segment is suddenly getting interesting as both the satcom and EO industries adapt to technology, market, and competitive change. In the satcom world, there is a move toward higher frequencies in the millimeter bands (Q/V/E/W) and even optical. Meanwhile, even as LEO broadband and DTD constellations build out hundreds of new gateways, it appears the teleport segment is finally undergoing terrestrial-type consolidation with EQT’s Satport emerging as the likely consolidator. In the EO world, the drive for lower latency has prompted the deployment of dozens of new antennas and sites by traditional ground players. New ideas are abounding, ranging from infrastructure-sharing startups (Skynopy, Infostellar) to dedicated relay constellations by startups (Apolink) and even the industry’s market leader, KSAT (Hyper).

The gravity of Kuiper. Amazon’s megaconstellation still faces industry skepticism, but with ~100 satellites on orbit and more on the way, conversations are shifting from “is Kuiper real?” to “will Kuiper do X, Y, or Z?” In the consumer market, Kuiper stands alone in its willingness to compete head-on with Starlink. We're also starting to see inroads into other markets, like aviation with JetBlue. So far, Amazon has held its cards close, but the consensus is that Kuiper will be disruptive to any market it touches and will seriously challenge the multi-orbit business case when multi-LEO becomes a viable option.

The ongoing launch supply crunch. Even without Amazon’s 2022 order for up to 83 launches, the heavy lift launch market was destined to face a mid-decade supply crunch due to forklift upgrades of long-serving ULA and Arianespace launch vehicles (Atlas 5, Ariane 5). Both launch vehicles are years late to market, and Blue Origin (a new market entrant) has only managed one launch YTD vs. an original forecast of 8-10 launches. Meanwhile, the situation is only marginally better in the small/medium lift market, where only Rocket Lab (Electron) has yet managed to fly regularly and reliably. There’s always the SpaceX rideshare option, but the thrice-annual Transporter missions are sold out through mid-2027. The supply crunch should ease as new launch vehicles (i.e., Firefly, Relativity, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space) come online over the next two years, but if history is any guide, the supply crunch may last longer than generally anticipated.

In-space platforms evolve from tugs to Cadillacs. What started as a wave of Orbital Transfer Vehicles for moving cubesats around has evolved into a stronger, beefier class of in-space vehicles capable of a much wider range of services. Impulse Space is the poster child for this new class of vehicles, announcing GEO transfer missions with Anduril, Astranis and Infinite Orbits during WSBW, all of which need high-velocity support. Others like Firefly (Elytra), ULA (Centaur-5) and Quantum Space/Arrow (Ranger) are also producing vehicles that don't just transport spacecraft between orbits, but host payloads for situational awareness, edge compute and other services. U.S. defense needs and commercial small GEO are the emerging drivers.