“Space has a hard time competing within these input markets, because smartphones are a billion-dollar-plus annual business and satellites are not growing to that level, at least not yet. So space has to compete for these underlying technologies and then needs them to be more specialized. You go to that sensor manufacturer and say, we love this technology, but we also need it to be rad-hardened. It's pretty much always going to be less than the number of smartphones that are sold.”
The Space Policy Show · Policy · November 2026
Context
Every satellite needs a star tracker, which uses the same kind of sensor as a smartphone camera. Andrew Berglund explains why that leaves space competing with consumer electronics for components it then needs customised.
Transcript
no that's a that's a good point what are some what are some other examples um i know that space has some very kind of distinct technologies um that that only space has so what are those and why are they important to watch or just examples obviously not the full list
…you know lens guidance instruments or something like that um and a small small part of that is star trackers so uh a lot of these really niche applications that are required by you know satellite manufacturers and things like that are so hard to disentangle from the larger industries that make them
yeah and i'll add there i think uh star trackers is a great example and relates to some ongoing research we're doing part of the story there is it's not a fully distinct technology it's a it's a distinct application of a technology that's used in a lot of other areas so if you follow the development of star trackers it really coincides with the development of digital camera technology over the last 25 30 years very similar sensor in space you're taking that light the light is hitting the sensor and you're using that information to figure out where your satellite's pointed and your satellite payload is pointed uh but you have the same sensor in your in your digital camera uh or your smartphone so that that is another kind of layer to the complexity here and why frankly space has a hard time sort of uh competing within these input markets because smartphones are a you know one billion dollar plus annual uh uh business right and satellites are growing they're not growing they're not growing to that level at least not yet so it's so space has to compete for these underlying technologies and then it needs them to be more specialized in some cases so you might have to go to that that sensor manufacturer and say we love this technology but we also need it to be rad…
yeah yeah that's um that's so the star trackers is one example andrew do you have any others that you want to share
yeah another one that comes up pretty frequently is optical communications terminals so as we're trying to move from uh communicating by radio frequency and communicating by uh laser uh to to kind of enable these big proliferated constellations in space uh optical communication terminals are sort…
Yeah. And there might even be for optical communications, that's kind of an area of potential growth as well, since the kind of spectrum is the radio frequency spectrum is getting crowded and is regulated quite heavily. We're not only competing, though, for technology with other industries, is that…
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