State of the Small Satellite Supply Chain
Download as PDF October 2026 edition · 201 KB · CC BY 4.0 — cite with a linkKey findings
What the mid-year data says about the industry
- Geography is widening. United States leads with 415 companies (27% of the catalogue), yet 89 countries host at least one space company. The long tail — from Kazakhstan to Ecuador — is where the fastest programme growth is happening.
- Ground Segment is the largest hardware segment (920 products), ahead of Satellite Platforms (715) and Communications (592) — the market keeps rewarding whoever moves data, not just satellites.
- Procurement is still opaque. Published list prices exist for only a small share of catalogued hardware, and supplier-stated lead times run from stock to five years, with a median of six months. Component-level medians are tabulated below, each with the number of products it rests on: published prices exist for barely one product in fifty, so those medians are an indication, not a market rate. Lead times are the fuller series — we are not aware of another public source that tracks procurement times for space components.
- Launch access keeps normalising. Published rideshare pricing starts at $7,000/kg to SSO, with 123 launch windows in the next 90 days, of which 0 is announced as a rideshare mission by name — spare capacity on the others is negotiated with the provider rather than published. List rates for smallsat rideshare have been slowly rising even as bulk capacity gets cheaper.
Companies by country
top 15 of 89 countries
🇺🇸 United States 415 🇨🇳 China 104 🇮🇳 India 95 🇩🇪 Germany 75 🇬🇧 United Kingdom 74 🇯🇵 Japan 54 🇫🇷 France 50 🇨🇦 Canada 45 🇷🇺 Russia 44 🇪🇸 Spain 42 🇮🇹 Italy 41 🇦🇺 Australia 35 🇰🇷 South Korea 30 🇵🇱 Poland 21 🇸🇬 Singapore 19Products by category
top 12 hardware & service segments
Ground Segment 920 Satellite Platforms 715 Communications 592 Software & Services 500 ADCS & Navigation 404 Propulsion 395 Payloads & Instruments 362 Structures & Mechanisms 323 Power Systems 315 Microelectronics & Components 308 OBC & Avionics 267 Launch Vehicles 163Catalogue composition
who makes up the supply chain — including its most under-counted layer, academia. A company can hold more than one capability, so the labelled slices overlap slightly; the grey segment covers service bureaus and profiles not yet classified.
Component benchmarks — highlights
medians computed live from catalogued products; blank = insufficient published data (most space hardware is priced on request)
| Category | Products | Listing sources | Median mass | Median lead (n) | Median price (n) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ground Segment | 920 | 294 | 4.8 kg | 8 mo (34) | $425 (19) |
| Satellite Platforms | 715 | 338 | 50 kg | 5 mo (15) | $650,000 (17) |
| Communications | 592 | 185 | 0.16 kg | 1.2 mo (28) | $2,390 (14) |
| Software & Services | 500 | 259 | — | — | $299 (3) |
| ADCS & Navigation | 404 | 112 | 0.25 kg | 2.8 mo (22) | $6,000 (13) |
| Propulsion | 395 | 126 | 1.95 kg | 3.7 mo (21) | $6,500 (15) |
| Payloads & Instruments | 362 | 185 | 0.9 kg | 4.5 mo (6) | $2,425 (8) |
| Structures & Mechanisms | 323 | 102 | 0.31 kg | 2 mo (11) | $495 (16) |
Lead-time medians (highlighted) are drawn from the 218 products whose suppliers state a delivery time — about 4% of the catalogue. We know of no other public source that tracks procurement times for space components at all; that also means these figures are indicative, not a market average. All 17 category benchmarks →
Launch economics
published prices only — every figure carries a source and an as-of date
| Provider | Offer | Published price | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| SpaceX | Rideshare — 2026 launches | $7,000/kg | 2026-08 |
| SpaceX | Rideshare — 2027 launches | $7,500/kg | 2026-08 |
| CAS Space | Kinetica-2 — dedicated launch | $4,443/kg | 2026-04 |
| Innospace | HANBIT-Micro — dedicated small launch | $28,000/kg | 2026-03 |
| Rocket Lab | Electron — dedicated small launch | $7,500,000/launch | 2024-11 |
| Rocket Lab | Neutron — medium launch | $55,000,000/launch | 2024-11 |
| Galactic Energy | Ceres-1 — dedicated small launch | $4,000,000/launch | 2020-03 |
| Rocket Factory Augsburg | RFA One — dedicated small launch | $3,240,000/launch | 2021-02 |
123 launch windows are scheduled in the next 90 days; 0 of them is announced as a rideshare mission. No public manifest states whether the rest have room for a secondary payload — that is a question for the provider or a broker. Sources, price history and the live window list: Launch Price Index →
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