The Rising Rocket Race: New Players Now Entering the Space Arena

Blue Origin Finally Takes Flight After Years of Delays

After what felt like an eternity of delays and anticipation, Blue Origin completed its maiden flight of its New Glenn rocket on 16 January 2025. The second stage successfully placed its payload into orbit, while the first stage failed to land on the recovery ship offshore.

This wasn't the fairy-tale debut Jeff Bezos might have hoped for, but getting to orbit on your first try is no small feat. Think of it like learning to drive a car – you're thrilled just to get from point A to point B without hitting anything, even if you don't quite nail the parallel parking.

The launch was rescheduled for December 2024 or early 2025 after months of preparation and testing. Blue Origin's entry into the orbital launch market means SpaceX finally has serious competition from another American heavyweight.

The space industry has been waiting for this moment, and despite the landing hiccup, New Glenn represents a major milestone for commercial spaceflight.

China's Launch Powerhouse Continues Breaking Records

China's Orienspace's Gravity-1 rocket completed its successful maiden flight on 11 January 2024, debuting on a new mobile sea platform in the Yellow Sea while breaking records as both the world's largest solid-fuel carrier rocket and China's most powerful commercial launch vehicle to date (as of early 2024). But that was just the beginning of China's rocket revolution.

Long March 12 successfully launched on its debut flight. Importantly, the launch also marked the debut of the YF-100K engine that will power the first stage of Long March 10 which is expected to send Chinese astronauts to the Moon before 2030.

What's fascinating here is how China is methodically building its space infrastructure – each rocket isn't just a standalone achievement but a stepping stone toward bigger ambitions. China is expected to debut multiple new launchers, including OrienSpace's Gravity-2, CAS' Kinetica-2, LandSpace's Zhuque-3, and Galactic Energy's Pallas-1.

It's like watching a master chess player positioning pieces for a checkmate that won't come for years.

European Upstarts Challenge American Dominance

Europe isn't content to sit on the sidelines while Americans and Chinese duke it out for space supremacy. MaiaSpace, a subsidiary of ArianeSpace, is expecting to launch its Maia rocket from French Guiana.

Orbex will bring its Prime rocket to SaxaVord for a potential first launch. These aren't household names yet, but they represent Europe's determination to carve out its own piece of the commercial launch pie.

Skyrora, which has suffered years of regulatory delays, is expecting to launch the first suborbital flight of its Skyrora L vehicle in the spring. RFA One pushed its maiden flight to 2025 after its first stage blew up on the launch pad in August.

The European space scene feels a bit like the early days of Silicon Valley – lots of ambitious startups, some spectacular failures, but an undeniable sense that something big is brewing. On 13 March, the KAIROS rocket from Space One company attempted its maiden flight.

The rocket was destroyed in an explosion five seconds after lift-off. No injuries were caused by the explosion.

Australian and Indian Companies Enter the Global Race

Gilmour Space in Australia is preparing to launch the inaugural flight of its Eris Block 1 rocket. The three-stage launch vehicle is 25 m (82 ft) tall and is equipped with 1.5 m (4.9 ft) diameter payload fairings.

The rocket is designed to send up to 305 kg up to low Earth orbit. This first mission, called "TestFlight1," does not appear to have a payload on board.

Meanwhile, We may also see a launch of Indian company Skyroot's much-anticipated Vikram 1 before the end of the year. These companies might not have the flashy valuations of their American counterparts, but they're solving a real problem – affordable access to space for smaller payloads.

ISRO successfully completed the docking of two SpaDeX satellites (SDX-01 & SDX-02) in the early hours of 16 January 2025. Docking of two vehicles in space has previously only been achieved by the Soviet Union/Russia, United States, ESA, and China.

India's achievement here is like joining an exclusive club that only had four members before.

SpaceX Sets Impossible-Sounding Goals

SpaceX is targeting a whopping 170 orbital liftoffs in 2025, which would shatter the record the company set just last year. "We're targeting 170 launches by the end of the year," Anne Mason, director of national security space launch at SpaceX, said during a call with reporters on Wednesday (May 28).

That would shatter the company's single-year record of 134 orbital liftoffs, which was set just last year. To put this in perspective, that's nearly one launch every other day for an entire year.

Starlink is also growing all the time, as this year's statistics show: SpaceX has launched 64 orbital missions so far in 2025 (all of them with the Falcon 9), and 48 of them have been Starlink flights. That works out to a rate of 0.43 launches per day.

This means SpaceX will have to pick up the pace a bit to reach the target Mason mentioned: 170 launches in one year would equal about 0.47 launches per day. It's almost like SpaceX is playing a completely different game than everyone else – while competitors celebrate successful first flights, SpaceX is treating rocket launches like an assembly line.

Private Space Tourism Companies Battle for Ultra-Rich Customers

On 26 January, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity was successfully launched from Spaceport America on Galactic 06 suborbital space tourism mission. Galactic 07 launched on 8 June, the final flight of Unity suborbital spaceplane.

Meanwhile, Blue Origin's New Shepard also returned to suborbital space tourism launches with the successful NS-25 mission on 19 May. The next mission, NS-26, took place on 29 August and NS-28, that took place on 22 November.

The space tourism market is fascinating because it's essentially creating a new category of luxury experience that didn't exist a decade ago. Meanwhile, applications like space tourism are no longer in the realms of science fiction.

The market is expected to be capped at around $4-6 billion to 2035, with most revenues coming from in-orbit stays aboard space stations by ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Think of it as the ultimate Instagram moment – except your selfie is taken 60 miles above Earth.

Venture Capital Money Floods Into Space Startups

Funding in the space industry is set to receive a boost this year from growing U.S.-China tensions, after startups in the sector clocked $8.6 billion in investments in 2024, according to a report by investment firm Seraphim Space. "This will very likely continue to drive investment towards the capitally intensive sectors of the space industry in the year ahead," said Lucas Bishop, Investment Associate at Seraphim Space.

The money isn't just coming from traditional aerospace giants anymore. According to Transacted Inc., private markets firms invested $12.5 billion into space companies in 2023, a 30% increase from the previous year.

Andreessen Horowitz has been particularly active in the space sector, leading investments in multiple space-related startups. Space companies saw investments worth $8.5 billion in the 12 months ended June this year, up from the $5.1 billion in the corresponding year-ago period.

Venture capitalists are betting that space is the next trillion-dollar market, and they're putting their money where their mouth is. We expect private and public investment in space companies to increase at an increasing rate in 2025.

We expect private and public investment in space companies to increase at an increasing rate in 2025. Startup Investment: The space venture capital world is becoming increasingly crowded with many new players and significant growth in fund size among experienced space VCs.

Government Spending Reaches Record Heights

International government spending on space programs in 2023 grew 11% to $125 billion. Nine of the top-spending governments increased their budgets by double-digits last year: the United States, China, Japan, Russia, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, and South Korea.

This isn't just about national pride – governments are recognizing that space capabilities are becoming essential for national security and economic competitiveness. Global military space budgets grew 18% to $57 billion, 46% of total government space spending.

The majority (80%) of defense spending comes from the United States, but other nations, including Japan and Poland, increased space defense spending sharply last year. The U.S.

Department of Defense's Innovation Unit received $945 million in new funding, four times its previous year's appropriation. When governments start throwing around billions like this, you know something fundamental is shifting.

Space is no longer just about exploration – it's about survival in an increasingly competitive world.

Small Satellites Create New Opportunities for Startups

Albedo is the first space company to commercialize the new orbit regime of VLEO (very low earth orbit). VLEO enables enhanced data quality for numerous earth observation modalities.

Our first VLEO satellite, named Clarity and built in-house, is launching in 2025 and will capture visible & thermal images at a resolution that can only be obtained today from drones/planes (commercially) or classified National Security systems. The beauty of the small satellite revolution is that it's democratizing space access.

Care Weather collects the highest-accuracy global weather data to help governments and shipping companies adapt to extreme weather. The data is collected by Care Weather's unique flat-panel radar satellite, which is 1000X more cost effective because it's vertically integrated, gets more solar power, and sails on top of the atmosphere for a closer view of the surface.

In the last 4 months, we built and launched the smallest radar satellite ever. We have $35M worth of LOIs, including one from the Air Force and others from cargo shippers.

These companies are proving that you don't need NASA's budget to make a meaningful impact in space.

The Trillion-Dollar Space Economy Takes Shape

By 2035, the space economy is set to reach $1.8 trillion, up from $630 billion in 2023 and averaging a growth rate of 9% per annum – a figure significantly above the growth rate of global GDP. That's not just impressive – it's revolutionary.

The global space economy totaled $570 billion in 2023, 7.4% higher than 2022's revised sum of $531 billion. This growth is consistent with the industry's five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.3% and is nearly double the size of the space economy a decade ago.

Five sectors – supply chain and transport; food and beverage; state-sponsored defence; retail, consumer and lifestyle; and digital communications – are forecast to generate 60% of the global space economy by 2035, although others will also benefit. The space economy isn't just about rockets and satellites anymore – it's becoming the invisible backbone of modern life.

Your Uber ride, your weather forecast, your Netflix stream – they all depend on space-based infrastructure in ways most people never think about. What started as a race to the Moon has become the foundation of the digital economy.

Who would have guessed that the final frontier would turn out to be the ultimate business opportunity?

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