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For decades, geostationary orbit (GEO) was the undisputed home of satellite communications. From television broadcasts to internet backhaul and voice services, GEO satellites formed the backbone of global connectivity, delivering vast coverage from their fixed position 36,000 kilometers above Earth.
But that dominance is no longer guaranteed. The rise of broadband megaconstellations in low Earth orbit (LEO), led by SpaceX’s Starlink, has redefined expectations around performance and cost.
As these LEO systems expand, traditional GEO operators are being forced to adapt to a market in transition.
Amid this disruption, another, quieter evolution is underway within GEO itself. A new generation of smaller, more nimble communications satellites is emerging, offering faster deployment, lower costs and greater flexibility.
These small GEOs don’t necessarily aim to replace their multi-ton peers, but they’re introducing new applications and attracting interest from first-time operators, governments seeking sovereign capability and even legacy players looking to hedge their bets in an increasingly competitive broadband market.
Now, as demand for traditional TV broadcast capacity wanes and broadband competition intensifies, the GEO market could be changing again.
Just six commercial communications satellites were ordered for GEO in 2024, the lowest annual tally in two decades, and half were smaller than a dishwasher at 1,000 kilograms or less.
This marks a significant shift from when legacy players routinely competed for 15 to 20 annual orders of massive, school bus-sized spacecraft weighing several tons.
Small GEO upstarts have already captured two of the five geostationary commercial communications satellite orders announced this year.
“There are a lot of contracts brewing around the corner,” said Sethu Suvanam, CEO of Finland’s ReOrbit. That company secured its first GEO order last year with Malaysia-based Uzma, an energy and technology services provider.
ReOrbit expects to secure two additional GEO orders by the end of 2025.
Size matters
Lower cost, quicker build times and adaptability make small GEOs attractive for niche markets, rapid deployment needs and specific regional or governmental applications such as secure communications and national broadband access.
They also offer legacy GEO operators a smaller bet on broadband, where growing competition from Starlink and other LEO constellations is clouding the investment opportunity, as they seek a path out of their declining TV broadcast revenues.
However, small GEOs also have less space for transponders and power, providing only a fraction of the capacity that colossal satellites such as Jupiter-3 or a ViaSat-3 can boast.
With ReOrbit, this trade-off is particularly appealing for nations seeking a cost-effective path toward satellite capabilities free from foreign influence.
“Today there is a … vacuum when it comes to sovereign satellite systems,” Suvanam said. “A lot of countries are leasing satellite capacity when it comes to communications for their critical communication requirements, both civilian and non-civilian side.”
Growing geopolitical tensions have led countries to place greater importance on their own satellite infrastructure, Suvanam said.
“We are not just selling satellites; we sell sovereignty,” he added.
The company has also recently partnered with Ananth Technologies to leverage the Indian aerospace manufacturer’s production and assembly capabilities for building GEO satellites, and jointly market them to global customers.
Unlike other players in the market, ReOrbit focuses on software, viewing hardware as a commodity to integrate rather than to produce in-house.
In contrast, companies like Swissto12, a Swiss firm known for 3D printing satellite subsystems, have expanded into building entire spacecraft internally.
Swissto12 CEO Emile de Rijk told SpaceNews he expects large geostationary satellites will still have a role for deploying substantial capacity in a single mission, but expects smaller spacecraft to drive overall market growth, potentially pushing annual GEO orders beyond historic highs within the next five years.
“My prediction is the market will remain relatively stable for large GEO telecom satellites, but there’s going to be significant growth in the demand for small GEO satellites,” de Rijk said.
“And it’s not direct demand for small GEO satellites — it’s demand for business cases that happens to be best addressed with small GEO satellites and is not addressed today, hence not visible in the GEO market.”
Astranis, which builds GEO satellites that are around half the size of Swissto12 and ReOrbit, is also bullish.
While going even smaller means Astranis satellites have about half of a typical GEO spacecraft’s 15-year design life, the San Francisco-based company has racked up significantly more orders than its peers.
Financial backing
Astranis operates its satellites on behalf of customers, handling the ground infrastructure necessary for operating in orbit. The company’s debut satellite launched in 2023, and, by the end of 2025, it is poised to have deployed more satellites in recent years than the three largest traditional GEO operators combined.
Investors have injected more than $750 million into Astranis since its creation a decade ago. Its customers include maritime and aviation connectivity specialist Anuvu and telcos venturing into space for the first time.
Thaicom, Thailand’s flagship satellite operator with a fleet of larger GEOs, has also ordered an Astranis satellite to provide broadband to some of the most remote and unconnected areas in Asia.
Swissto12, which counts established operators Viasat and Intelsat among its early customers, aims to launch its first spacecraft in 2026.
In March, Swissto12 also announced an order from Singaporean venture Astrum Mobile for a satellite that would deliver resilient, low-bandwidth multimedia and connectivity services directly to devices across Asia.
The Swiss company secured $28 million in debt financing in 2023 to expand production capabilities for the small GEO market.
ReOrbit aims to deploy its debut GEO satellite in 2028, but its first space mission is slated for 2026 in LEO. The company is providing a spacecraft as part of a European Space Agency program aiming to demonstrate secure space-to-space and space-to-ground data transfer technology tailored for Earth observation missions.
Suvanam said revenues from the ESA contract are helping the company build out capabilities amid an ongoing funding round.
ReOrbit has also booked revenues from an earlier contract to provide three medium Earth orbit satellites for Warpspace, a Japanese data relay venture. He said ReOrbit completed a preliminary design review for the constellation in 2021, but the project is on hold as Warpspace awaits additional funding.
Meanwhile, AscendArc of Portland, Oregon, emerged from stealth in January after raising $4 million in venture capital to take on the market, supplemented by a $1.8 million contract from the U.S. Air Force’s innovation arm to help develop the technology.
Founded by a former SpaceX engineer, AscendArc is positioning itself to address rising U.S. military demand for advanced satellite systems, though specific plans remain undisclosed.
Nascent struggles
Funding is only one of many hurdles a fledgling small GEO manufacturer must clear to get their business off the ground.
Saturn Satellite Networks, founded in 2017 by satellite industry veteran Tom Choi, initially secured commitments in 2022 for $235 million from equity backers, including German investment firm EMP Structured Assets and an undisclosed U.S. defense contractor.
The funding was intended to cover nearly half the cost of Saturn’s Space Broadband Networks-1 (SBN-1) project, comprised of six identical satellites, each delivering at least 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) of capacity.
The satellites were slated to launch together directly to geosynchronous orbit (GSO) on a single Ariane 6 rocket in 2025.
But Amazon’s bulk procurement of rockets for Project Kuiper — a LEO constellation of more than 3,200 broadband satellites — upended Saturn’s plans.
“The Ariane 6 was the only rocket available under $100 million that could lift over 4.2 tons directly to GSO,” said Choi, who also founded satellite fleet operator ABS in 2005.
“Nothing in our planning allowed us to predict that 92 rockets (of which 18 would be Ariane 6) would be procured by Amazon in one go as we began our program.”
Saturn downsized the project to four satellites after failing to secure an alternative launcher that matched Ariane 6’s cost and performance.
However, this smaller order also resulted in the loss of volume-based discounts previously negotiated with component suppliers, helping raise costs by nearly 40%.
“As you would imagine it would shake the confidence of the equity investors who EMP had lined up to fund the program,” Choi said.
“Unsurprisingly, they were unable to continue. When an unexpected tsunami called Kuiper hits your program, there is not much anyone can do but to go back to the drawing board and develop a new [plan].”
Now, Saturn’s leaders are determined to diversify as much supplier risk as possible for a satellite platform called SBN-X.
The platform has two versions: SBN-X Mini, which could propel itself to GSO within five months of launching to LEO on a small rocket, and SBN-X Max, designed for direct injection to GSO after sharing a ride on a larger rocket.
Choi said the satellites would be built in partnership with a U.S. defense aerospace contractor, using third-party components with GEO heritage.
Saturn is providing the design and flight software for the satellite, while the contractor would assemble and test it.
“The new SBN-X platforms can be built one at a time so funding requirements will be paid by the customers when they order the satellites,” he added.
More challenges
Despite its funding success and rapid manufacturing expansion, technical issues have also narrowed Astranis’ lead in this market.
A malfunction on the company’s debut satellite, Arcturus, prevented the satellite from keeping its solar arrays pointed at the sun, resulting in inconsistent power that derailed initial plans to provide broadband over Alaska for a local telco following its 2023 launch.
Plans to follow the mission by deploying a batch of four satellites for three separate customers were ultimately pushed back a year to December 2024.
But months after this batch was launched, Astranis said it had paused efforts to raise one of the satellites, UtilitySat, to its GSO slot to troubleshoot an undisclosed issue.
Unlike the other Ka-band satellites, UtilitySat was designed with Ka-, Ku-, Q- and V-band transponders to support a variety of mission needs.
The “Swiss Army Knife” satellite was initially flagged to provide bridge capacity over Alaska following the Arcturus issue, but the current plan is to provide communications over Mexico for Apco Networks, a Mexican telco that has ordered two of five Astranis satellites slated to launch together on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket this year.
Despite these setbacks, Astranis recently secured a $115 million deal to deliver Taiwan’s first dedicated communications satellite in its largest commercial agreement to date.
Still, the challenges faced by Astranis underline the risks new entrants face as they rush for a slice of the GEO market under the feet of heavyweight legacy space manufacturers, such as Boeing and Airbus.
This article first appeared in the May 2025 issue of SpaceNews Magazine with the title “Downsizing GEO.”
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