ORBITAL WHISPERS
Capella Space
Capella Space is Silicon Valley’s answer to “what if a defense prime was run by hoodie-wearing MBAs who really wanted to be Palantir.” They sell synthetic aperture radar as a…
Satellite Operators
The landlords of the skies. They rent you megahertz with fine print that makes your lawyer smile. Some even pretend to be tech companies.
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Spinlaunch
Short version: SpinLaunch is now a satellite company that still talks about the big slingshot. The money and the near-term plan say “Meridian Space,” a 280-sat LEO broadband constellation built…
ICEYE
ICEYE is the Finnish SAR shop that went from scrappy CubeSat tinkerer to the “oh look, another sovereign constellation provider” of choice in under a decade. They sell themselves as…
Shanghai Spacecom
Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology, or SSST, is the company behind China’s Qianfan constellation. It was founded in 2018 with money from the Shanghai municipal government and the Chinese Academy of…
Qianfan
Qianfan, also branded as Thousand Sails or the G60 constellation, is China’s state-backed attempt at a Starlink-style broadband network. It is run through Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology, with backing from…
Satellogic
Satellogic is an Earth observation company from Argentina that has spent the past decade trying to prove that low-cost optical imaging can scale into a viable business. Founded in 2010,…
Swarm
Swarm Technologies is the IoT layer that SpaceX bought in 2021 and then quietly folded under its umbrella. Before the acquisition it was an independent startup founded in 2016, building…
Nilesat
Nilesat is Egypt’s state-backed satellite operator, founded in 1996 and headquartered in Cairo. Its entire reason for being is television. The company runs a small GEO fleet that carries the…
Measat
Measat is Malaysia’s state-backed satellite operator, created in the mid-1990s to support national broadcasting and telecom. It is small compared to the global GEO incumbents but entrenched in its home…
Es’hailSat
Es’hailSat is Qatar’s state satellite operator, set up in 2010 as part of the country’s push to secure its own broadcast and communications backbone. Its role is straightforward: provide sovereign…