In the space race not all runners are equal.
Space is like a new part of our geography, a bit like a new continent we can now navigate to. So the path for it is hard, our understanding of it grows every day, but success can be extremely rewarding.
You could see space as a strategic resource at the centre of many modern needs, just like oil or electronics. It acts as a key to crucial capabilities that would simply be impossible without it.
From fast and secure communications to synchronised worldwide clocks; climate monitoring to military spying; resources tracking on earth to mining minerals on the Moon, space is a vital asset. And like any asset, countries around the world are actively racing to get the biggest share.
Some are playing the big game, some are catching up fast, some are glad to participate, and others are just sitting on the bench.
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The Front Runner
The distance between space’s front runner, the USA, and other challengers is bigger than most people realise.
To give you an idea, 2023 stats on the number of orbital launches per country shows around 116 USA launches. They’re followed by China with 67 launches – so close to half the US number. And Russia, the third biggest, is “only” at 20 launches (obviously it is still a significant performance).
It’s also interesting to look at the total number of satellites launched per country. Sources indicate 4 511 American satellites launched in total but 586 Chinese ones. These two are followed by the UK’s 561 and Russia’s 177 total satellites.
So on the pure space access aspect the USA has a very strong advance but that’s not the only part.
The USA has also been consistently leading the space exploration race. The list is long for NASA scientific milestones:
- Apollo missions where astronauts walked on the Moon for the first time and on six different occasions
- Hubble space telescope in 1990; then James Webb space telescope in 2021
- Multiple Mars orbiters and rovers
- Probes across the solar system
The list continues to grow and the competition exists but at a very different scale.
And in addition to rockets, satellites and scientific missions the USA is also leading in Human spaceflight despite a strong Chinese and Russian presence. NASA is by far the main International Space Station’s player. And projects like Space Shuttle or SpaceX’s Dragon capsule certainly placed it as the key gatekeeper for human space activity.
And in fact the American supremacy in space doesn’t seem to be slowing down. If anything, with the current growth of the space industry, the number of US objects in space is rapidly increasing.
And despite budget cuts on some projects in 2023-2024 NASA’s budget is still very high compared to the past decades.
The Main Pack
So who are NASA’s main challengers then?
To be clear, it is actually quite hard to give a real ranking between the different space programs. It depends a lot on your criteria and some things like budgets or number of space objects can be misleading. But let’s at least try and see the countries who are the most invested and whose progress is noticeable.
As mentioned before, the first options that could come to mind include Russia and China.
Russia has obviously inherited a big part of USSR’s technology and keeps a strong presence in the sector. Bear in mind this heritage includes the world’s first satellite (Sputnik-1), the first human in space (Yuri Gagarin), and even the world’s first and largest spaceport (Baikonur). These capacities and the work of Roscosmos have allowed Russia to keep a strong position. It is also a vital player for the International Space Station’s operations. In fact until 2020 NASA depended on Russia’s Soyuz capsule to send their crew to the ISS.
But it does seems like China’s progress over the last decades has allowed them to pass Russia on the podium. In fact China is now the main challenger to US domination on most space fields. Human spaceflight for example with China’s Tiangong space station. Number of objects launched in space as seen in the earlier chart (despite a comparable UK performance). Space access in general with the Long March rocket series and a number of active spaceports in the country.
Even on the space exploration side China is a big runner with several rover missions to the Moon (Chang’e missions) and to Mars (Zhurong), which are performances very few countries can claim.
Europe is also a very strong player with significant remarkable scientific space projects and with an independent space access. The European Space Agency (ESA) has access to expertise from France, Germany, Italy, and many more. It has independent space access with the Kourou spaceport and a strong scientific capacity with missions like Rosetta-Philae.
(It’s worth clarifying that many European countries have their space agencies, and are racing for themselves as well. But ESA can act as a supervising body or as a strong partner depending on the projects.)
Of course Japan (JAXA) would definitely be included in the Main Pack. And again the formula is powerful and includes independent access to space, multiple series of homemade launchers, strong scientific projects and direct contributions to key programs like the ISS.
And, last but not least, one of the biggest names in the modern space industry is India. ISRO has seen a significant boost, especially after the PSLV program in the 90s. And India has a long history of research in space, independent and quite active access to space, and key exploration milestones like the Chandrayaan landing on the Moon for example.
The Second Wave
It would not be very useful to mention every single country in the space race. Google can take care of that.
But if you take the time to look at the progress of the different national space programs around the world you will notice two things:
- A high number of “national space agencies” were born around the 80s and 90s, in corelation with the USA vs Soviet Space Race. But in many cases these national programs remained quite limited in both budgets and ambition. Actually they were often used as political banners more than real space programs.
- A significant acceleration happened in the early 21st century, with many previous space programs boosting their ambitions, and many new space programs being born.
And the targets can vary a lot from one country to the other. Direct access to space is often the hard part.
Even the most serious new space players often prefer to focus on satellites ownership. This is quite easy to understand once you realise the number of constraints for safe rockets launch and the technical difficulty of independent space access. This goes from the obvious technical challenges of the rocket equation to simply geographic constraints for a national spaceports.
I’ll try to detail why it’s so hard for new space players to launch their own rockets in a future article by the way.
Generally though, the priority is about space data usage and the goal is to secure a space strategic infrastructure. Countries with low space heritage will often prioritise work on their satellite capacities at university and/or military levels first. Military projects obviously often being put forward for strategic and political reasons. And university projects are often simple and accessible enough to start exploring the space topic on the civilian side.
South Africa for example has initiated a national space program in 2010. And the official priorities are oriented towards mostly the use of space products and services. In other words, the mission includes launching their own satellites and use this capacity at a national level.
Larger projects, however, can go all the way from building a solid space infrastructure for agricultural imagery for example or independent telecommunications but these do not come cheap and take considerable time to mature.
Of course certain countries tend to push scientific projects, sometimes for political reasons (communication, cooperation with other bigger space countries). In fact those missions are rarely interesting from a financial or infrastructure perspective. A good example would be the UAE with their Lunar and Mars missions.
The Missing flags
So we looked at the big players and the challengers trying to make a name for themselves. But there are still many countries in the world with close to no space objectives. As of 2024 there are 78 national space programs for 195 countries. Others remain poorly involved in the space race.
The reasons can be economic, technical, or political in case they depend on other partners or have key political issues. But the risks are the same as for any asset:
- Political dependence on partner to access a vital asset
- Uncontrolled threat from rivals who have conquered space
- Technological weakness as the gap grows larger everyday
- Missed economic opportunities
Space is not only growing as an independent industry but it is actually becoming a pillar for most other key industries. From agriculture to military capacities and from ship navigation to telecoms.
Many (often developing) countries are still extremely limited in their space activity, with restricted focus on remote sensing and purchased satellites. But most at least announce plans to improve their space data usage, scientific skills or strategic partnerships.
