It’s likely no one needs convincing about the benefits of space-based services. Weather forecasting, communications, and navigation are just some of the applications we use every day, rarely considering where the technology comes from. Watching a breaking news report on your phone or pulling up a banking app to make a transaction on the fly has become an everyday action, wholly unremarkable. It’s easy to forget that not that long ago, they were the stuff of science fiction. Indeed, space is so embedded in our lives that economists estimate the value-add to the global economy is between $280 and $400 billion. Every year.
And yet there is a case for saying that space is underperforming. That is because, for many potential users, accessing and buying space data can be prohibitively difficult. In this blog, I will explore the reasons why this is the case and look at what might be done to improve matters. It has been said that we need “a supermarket for space data.” But is that really the right approach?
Customers Navigate Multiple Entry Points
The challenge of space data is defined by two main issues: access and price.
On the access side, the routes for entry to the space marketplace are myriad, as space involves a fiendishly complex value chain. “Upstream” are the satellites and everything involved with keeping them in orbit. “Midstream” is where satellite data is beamed down to Earth, stored, and processed. “Downstream” is the place where information is turned into applications and products. As a customer, you can go to any point on this value chain to buy something.
For example, a government user could go to the European Space Agency or any other organization that generates climate data (like NASA, JAXA, or others) and then use that data to create new intelligence on emissions. Provided, that is, they had the right computer processing tools, understood the scientific methodology behind the data, and had the ability to process it.
Another option is to work with an expert consultancy to manage the sourcing and processing of said data. Many of these providers, especially in the UK, are small businesses with decades of specialist knowledge. While that makes them good at what they do, there is little incentive for them to make the data-buying process any easier.
Or they could come to commercial companies directly, such as GHGSat, where raw data points get transformed into intelligence: something more polished and easier to use, such as emissions data characterized in kilograms per hour and overlaid onto maps of industry assets with a quantification of error shown.
Lack of Standardisation Causes Confusion
Adding to the confusion is an absence of standardization. A potential customer could easily get two data suppliers providing different answers to the same question, with both being correct, according to the scientific approach being followed.
While this system is not the fault of the customer, it is sometimes exacerbated by the multitude of different uses for the same data. Space data companies cater to a wide variety of end users with wildly differing needs and skill levels. One size rarely fits all.
However, the tailor-made route adds complication—plus, it makes it trickier to cost the end product, the second key challenge for space data.
Pricing Misperceptions
Space data is typically perceived as expensive. That is not always the case (GHGSat’s satellite emissions data comes at a fraction of the cost of other technologies), but the fact remains: putting satellites into space is expensive, and that cost catches up somewhere. More customers would lower the cost… But how do we get more customers when the price can be high and the purchasing process confusing?
But a Tipping Point is Coming
There is no single lever we can pull to make this market function more efficiently. But factors are now in motion that will, within the next three to five years, bring us to a tipping point where buying space data will fundamentally change.
For starters, space data is becoming commoditized. The value of space information is indisputable, as demonstrated by the frequency with which people interact with space data every day. The more people draw on it, the more they find new uses for it.
Second, the price of launch has dropped dramatically and is likely to fall further still, which lowers end-user costs.
Ultimately, space data is on its way to becoming standardized. This is critical because the blocker for space data uptake across government is often not the complexity, or the need for expertise, or even the cost, but the fact that data has to integrate with existing mechanisms.
However, for the public sector, testing and regulation mechanisms are critical, and these take a long time to develop. At a recent GHGSat roundtable event, we asked, “What does good look like by 2030? Or 2040?” Our civil service experts said, “We want to be using space data routinely.”
The UK Space Agency is leading the charge with initiatives such as the definition of standards for measurement from space. Customers will no longer have to rely on the space nerd who gatekeeps the data.
There will always be a market for bespoke, specialist information, much as there is demand for chefs creating exquisite dishes with whatever ingredients they foraged from the beach that morning. For everybody else, a more recognizable menu will do just fine. This is what people mean when they imagine a shop for space data—a standardized, centralized experience with clear pricing and options for some variation (or bargains).
Nice as all that sounds, it won’t work. Or at least, it won’t properly address the two fundamental challenges with space data that we’ve identified—access confusion and (therefore) high data cost.
The Solution: Turning from Space Complexities to the Challenges on Earth
To change that dynamic, I suggest those of us in the space industry need to stop thinking about space (with all its fascinating complexity and infinite potential) and focus instead on one basic question: what do customers actually need?
The answer usually is reliable insight that helps them solve a problem. They don’t care where the data comes from or what goes on behind the curtain. They just want to press a button, get a solution, and get on with their day.
Accepting this requires humility—haven’t we spent the past half century telling the world all about the incredible things space does for us?—but also opens up the possibility to become more relevant. We know that however good our technology may be, there will always be some things it can’t do and that other, complementary systems might be required too. We should lean into this and stop trying to sell space data like it is a precious object. Companies, governments, banks, investors, and insurers have well-established information channels. Rather than shouting, ‘We’re space; you need us,’ we should instead aim to integrate with this ecosystem—seamlessly, unobtrusively, but always adding the value we know space-based information provides.
As an upstart outsider building a business (while also inadvertently creating an entire new industry), GHGSat has always collaborated. We believe it is the best way to cut greenhouse emissions. And we have learned that customers don’t care where the data comes from. They’re curious about space—it is a great door opener—but what they want is to fix a problem as efficiently as possible. So we put our sensors on aircraft as well as into orbit. We combine our data with other sources. We form partnerships. Ultimately, we are one tile in a mosaic—a really important tile, of course, but part of a bigger picture, one that more and more people can see.
