Statistics of Earth Remote Sensing Satellite Launches and Industry Trends in 2025
Section: common questions
Author: Roman Permyakov, Head of the Earth Remote Sensing Department
In 2025, 315 space launches were successfully completed, which is 25% more than in 2024. Earth remote sensing spacecraft (ERS satellites) were on board every fourth launch vehicle.
This publication considers ERS satellites primarily for civilian purposes: commercial, scientific-educational, demonstration satellites, as well as hydrometeorological spacecraft, civilian electronic intelligence satellites, including automatic identification system (AIS) satellites for maritime vessels. The inclusion of the latter in the pool of civilian-purpose spacecraft is in line with the established practice of statistics keeping by the international leader in Earth observation consulting — the company NovaSpace.
Thus, the launch statistics for 2025 considered in the article exclude ERS satellites primarily for defense and reconnaissance purposes, in particular, American Starshield (85 spacecraft), Chinese Yaogan (9 satellites), South Korean KorSat (2 satellites), European CSO-3 and LuxeoSys, Israeli Ofeq-19. Nevertheless, we cannot completely avoid the defense direction when assessing trends in the ERS sector.
Trends
1. The defense and reconnaissance function of ERS spacecraft, previously a secondary element in the industry's development alongside scientific-research and civilian goals, has become the key driver for creating new satellite constellations and partnerships, concluding commercial contracts, and promoting strategic initiatives.
ERS is being integrated into the large-scale $175 billion U.S. missile defense system project “Golden Dome”. In addition to the Starshield system, SpaceX may receive an additional $2 billion for launching 600 satellites to track missiles and aircraft.
NATO [1] released its first Commercial Space Strategy and began collecting commercial ERS data from ICEYE, Planet, Airbus, and SatVu as part of its Alliance Persistent Surveillance from Space (APSS) Initiative.
The German Bundeswehr concluded a €1.7 billion contract for exclusive access to intelligence data from the ICEYE radar constellation with the Rheinmetall–ICEYE Yo joint venture.
NRO [2] continues annual payments of $300–400 million to Vantor (ex. Maxar Intelligence), BlackSky, and Planet under the 10-year (2022–2031) EOCL contract for the supply of ERS data.
NGA [3] concluded a $200 million contract for access to commercial ERS data and services with 13 private companies (including Airbus D&S, BAE, Booz Allen Hamilton, BlackSky, Vantor, Planet, Ursa).
The Russian Aerospace Forces continued launching Kosmos-series ERS spacecraft in the interests of the Ministry of Defense.
2. Government agencies remain the largest customers of ERS satellites, data, and services, integrating successful products from private players into their own systems, formulating strategic priorities, and attempting to reduce administrative barriers to financing, purchasing, and using these products.
The German government concluded a multi-year $280 million agreement with Planet for the supply of space imagery and services from Pelican, SkySat, and PlanetScope spacecraft.
Japan's national satellite operator JSAT concluded a $230 million agreement with Planet to build an ERS satellite constellation based on Pelican spacecraft.
The U.S. President signed an executive order on ensuring national space superiority, with a priority focus on developing the commercial space economy by attracting an additional $50 billion into it.
NASA [4], under the 5-year “Commercial Small Spacecraft Imaging Program”, paid out $34.7 million to private companies, including Planet, Vantor (ex. Maxar Intelligence), GHGSat, Airbus, ICEYE, Umbra, Capella, BlackSky, Satellogic.
The President of the Russian Federation approved the national project “Cosmos”. The budget of the federal project “Satellite Communications and Earth Observation” for the period 2026–2036 will amount to 1,031 billion rubles. Of the 276 ERS satellites planned for launch by 2036, 196 spacecraft will receive extra-budgetary funding.
On September 6, 2025, Government Decree of the Russian Federation No. 1297 came into force, stipulating:
- zero cost for government agencies to purchase optical data with resolution worse than 1 m and radar data with resolution worse than 10 m;
- provision of ERS data from non-state satellites to government authorities — only through a contract with Roscosmos;
- retention of revenues received from private individuals as payment for ERS data in the Roscosmos budget.
3. The task of strengthening national sovereignty in space through independent developments and the acquisition of technologically complex satellite solutions from competent foreign players is being addressed in parallel with an increase in the number of countries that have launched their first CubeSats for demonstration and scientific-educational purposes.
ICEYE has signed contracts for the sale of individual spacecraft and multi-satellite radar constellations to the governments of 8 countries worldwide, including Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Japan.
In 2025, Botswana (BOTSAT-1) and Montenegro (Luca) launched their first ERS satellites. Greece and Pakistan launched their first domestically produced ERS satellites — DUTHSat-2 and PRSC-EO1, respectively.
4. Vertical and horizontal consolidation of the ERS market continues.
Leading European satellite manufacturers Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales signed a memorandum on the creation by 2027 of a joint hyper-enterprise with a target annual revenue of €6.5 billion.
Following the rebranding of the American company Maxar, its division responsible for ERS products and analytics (Maxar Intelligence) was renamed Vantor, while the division engaged in satellite platform development (Maxar Space Systems) became Lanteris. In November, the pioneer of commercial lunar spaceflight — the American company Intuitive Machines — announced the acquisition of Lanteris for $800 million.
The American satellite manufacturing and launch company Rocket Lab acquired Geost — a developer of electro-optical and infrared sensor systems for ERS missions in the national security sector — for $275 million.
The American quantum computing company IonQ acquired the American radar imaging operator Capella Space to integrate its quantum technologies with satellite infrastructure.
The Dutch geotechnical conglomerate Fugro acquired the German company EOMAP, specializing in monitoring water bodies using ERS.
The Italian developer of space logistics and orbital transportation solutions D-Orbit entered into an agreement for strategic business combination with the Italian leader in geospatial analytics — Planetek.
5. Business models for acquiring ERS spacecraft and their satellite resources have generally taken shape and are actively being tested by potential customers from government, educational, and business environments.
Among the main types of business models, the following can be distinguished:
- “turnkey” (e.g., ICEYE satellites for the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Japan);
- custom projects on an outsourcing basis;
- joint development on parity terms (e.g., the American-European Sentinel-6 satellite);
- technology transfer — comprehensive transfer of knowledge and innovations (e.g., China's assistance in creating Pakistan's satellites);
- SaaS [5] — integration of specialized payloads into standard satellite platforms (e.g., 3U/16U platforms from STC, Geoscan, and Sputnix for participants in the Russian scientific-educational project “Space-π”);
- SDaaS [6] — the concept of providing ERS data as a cloud service through a web interface or API [7] with optional analytical processing capabilities (e.g., the LizzieSat 3 satellite from the American company Sidus Space);
- CaaS [8] — opening access to a payload slot in a pre-prepared satellite constellation with ready infrastructure (e.g., satellites from the American-Argentine company Satellogic);
- leasing (e.g., the Zorkiy-2M satellites created by Sputnix on order from State Transport Leasing Company (GTLC)).
6. The technical and functional characteristics of ERS satellites, their power supply systems, imaging equipment, data transmission channels, and processing tools are improving and being modernized in line with global technological trends.
In March 2025, the American company Albedo launched the Clarity-1 satellite into a very low orbit at an altitude of about 350 km, achieving a record spatial resolution of 0.1 m for civilian ERS spacecraft. The company expects the satellite's active lifespan to be around 5 years.
In April 2025, the European Space Agency launched the world's first radar spacecraft operating in the P-band — the Biomass satellite. Thanks to its wavelength of 70 cm, the Biomass radar signals have high penetration capability, and the satellite itself is aimed at solving the task of calculating forest biomass.
A new record for data transmission speed between satellites via laser communication links: 400 Gbit/s — was set in March 2025 between the Chinese spacecraft Guangchuan 01 and Guangchuan 02 (operator — Laser Starcom). Although formally these are technology demonstrator satellites for satellite communications, the use of the same technology for ERS tasks is only a matter of time.
Vantor (ex. Maxar Intelligence) released a unique industry AI service for Earth monitoring — the Sentry platform. The platform embodies the work of a “virtual constellation” of WorldView satellites and partner spacecraft from Umbra, Satellogic, and Array Labs. The main functions of Sentry include:
- automatic orchestration of simultaneous space imaging of hundreds of objects on Earth by multiple ERS satellite constellations regardless of their ownership and type of equipment;
- AI tools for object detection, predictive analytics, and collaborative processing of space imagery.
The trend of recent years toward “piloting” artificial intelligence technologies and “edge computing” on ERS satellites in space has been complemented by the trend of powering such computations using ultra-powerful space data centers/processing centers powered by solar energy. Projects in this direction have already been presented by Google (SunCatcher) and Nvidia (Starcloud), while Elon Musk (SpaceX, Starlink), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Blue Origin), and Sam Altman (OpenAI) have expressed interest in similar developments by their conglomerates.
Statistics
Out of 408 ERS spacecraft launched in 2025, 5 were unsuccessful (Figure 1). The Indian radar satellite RISAT-1B failed to reach orbit due to issues with the third stage of the PSLV-XL rocket. Due to premature engine shutdown on the fourth stage of the Ceres-1 rocket, the Chinese optical satellites Jilin-1 Gaofen-04C and Jilin-1 Pingtai-02A-04 were lost. The South Korean Hanbit-Nano rocket exploded during launch along with its ERS payload consisting of the Jussara-K and Solaras S2 satellites. For these reasons, statistics are provided only for the 403 successfully operating ERS spacecraft.
Figure 1. Earth Observation Satellites Launched in 2025, by state
Figure 2. Earth Observation Satellites Launched in 2025, by countries
One-third of all ERS satellites worldwide (130 spacecraft) were launched by the United States. Over the year, they significantly pulled ahead of China, with which they shared 1st–2nd place in 2024. In 2025, China placed nearly as many satellites into orbit as the previous year (75 spacecraft in 2025 vs. 83 in 2024) but reduced its relative share among all ERS spacecraft from 28% to 19%.
Russia retained third place with 28 officially launched ERS spacecraft, including 15 classic radar and optical satellites and 13 specialized satellites for automatic vessel tracking, ionosphere and atmosphere research with radio occultation, reflectometry, and radio-electronic equipment. Russia's share decreased over the year from 23% to 7%.
In the group of second-wave countries that launched more than 10 ERS spacecraft: France (20 satellites, including 10 vessel monitoring satellites from Kinéis), Finland (19 satellites, including 18 ICEYE radar imaging satellites), Japan (12 satellites, including 7 radar satellites from iQPS and Synspective), and Germany (11 satellites, including 9 OroraTech fire monitoring satellites).
The third tier conditionally includes 16 countries that independently or in partnership launched from 2 to 8 ERS spacecraft. Their combined share in the total number of ERS satellites is 21%. One satellite each was launched by 27 individual countries and consortia, accounting for about 5% in total.
In terms of mass and dimensions, the combined share of micro- (10–200 kg) and nanosatellites (1–10 kg) increased over the year from 66% to 75%. However, more satellites are now being launched in micro- rather than nano-format (Figure 3). CubeSats of different form factors also saw a redistribution in launch numbers. The share of 6U CubeSats increased over the year from 5% to 7%, and 16U CubeSats from 1% to 4%.
Figure 3. Earth Observation Satellites Launched in 2025, by mass
Most ERS spacecraft are equipped with imaging equipment of several types. However, to obtain unambiguous classification results by this criterion, we will follow a number of assumptions:
- In the presence of two types of equipment, the most specialized one will be considered significant. For example, MS — in combination with PAN+MS, HS — in combination with MS+HS, Video — in combination with MS+Video.
- In the presence of three or more types of equipment, imaging will be considered “Combo”.
- All varieties of reflectometry of global navigation satellite system signals: GNSS-R and RO — are combined into the general category GNSS-RO.
- Radio-electronic reconnaissance equipment, including automatic identification system (AIS) tools for vessels, is designated as class SIGINT.
- Instruments for microwave radiometry and echolocation imaging on microwave waves are combined into the MWR category.
Figure 4. Earth Observation Satellites Launched in 2025, by equipment
In terms of application areas, half of the ERS satellites still have multi-purpose designation. Hydrometeorological tasks are addressed by every fifth spacecraft. About 6% of launched satellites are aimed at detecting fires and greenhouse gas emissions. Other satellites focus on technology validation, cartographic, forestry, and agricultural tasks.
USA
The significant increase in the number of launched ERS spacecraft over the year (from 85 to 130 ERS spacecraft) is associated with accelerated deployment of optical SuperDoves satellites from Planet (72 ERS spacecraft in 2025 vs. 36 in 2024) and Lemur radio-electronic maritime vessel detection satellites from Spire (26 ERS spacecraft vs. 8).
The first multispectral very high-resolution spacecraft have launched: five Pelican satellites from Planet with 0.4 m/pixel resolution and three third-generation BlackSky satellites from the same-named company with 0.35 m/pixel resolution.
Vantor (ex. Maxar Intelligence), having launched the last pair of Legion 05-06 spacecraft in February, completed the formation of the six-satellite WorldView Legion constellation with 0.34 m/pixel resolution.
Constellations of X-band radar satellites from American companies Umbra Space and Capella Space were replenished in 2025 with one Umbra satellite and two new Capella spacecraft.
NASA, together with India, launched the NISAR radar satellite operating in L and S bands, and together with the European Space Agency — the Sentinel-6B radar altimeter.
China
The pace of Chinese ERS satellite launches has stabilized not only in the number of spacecraft but also in the number of independent manufacturers-operators (22 in 2025, 20 in 2024). On one hand, this is a consequence of China's “planned” economy; on the other — the result of saturation of the most ambitious and numerous Chinese constellation, Jilin. In 2025, the operator of this constellation, Chang Guang, launched only 4 Jilin satellites. At the same time, China's first private meteorological satellite constellation Yunyao-1 from the same Chang Guang was replenished with 17 GNSS signal reflectometry spacecraft.
The Xingshidai multispectral satellite constellation received a powerful update of 12 satellites equipped with blockchain authentication technology (operator — ADASpace).
The SuperView satellite constellation (operator — SiWei), well known to worldwide users, expanded with 3 new optical SuperView Neo spacecraft with 0.5 m/pixel resolution. SpaceTY launched three spacecraft with completely different payloads on each. In addition to its typical Tianyi 42 radar satellite with up to 1-meter resolution in C-band, the company launched one hyperspectral and one multispectral spacecraft — Tianyi 29 and Tianyi 35, respectively.
Russia
In 2025, Russia launched all ERS spacecraft as part of two large-scale launches — in June and December. In summer, along with the main payload (hydrometeorological Ionosphere-M 3-4 satellites from IKI RAS), two Geoscan company spacecraft were placed into orbit: the 3U format Innosat3 CubeSat for automatic vessel tracking and Russia's first 16U format CubeSat, Innosat16, with 2.5 m/pixel panchromatic resolution.
In winter, alongside the main payload (multispectral Roscosmos Aist-2T No. 1,2 satellites capable of stereo imaging with 1.6–1.9 m/pixel resolution), four 16U Gryphon CubeSats (manufacturer — Novosibirsk State University, operator — Roscosmos subsidiary JSC “TerraTech”) with 2.5 m/pixel spatial resolution were launched.
Commercial companies' and scientific-educational institutions' satellites formed the second group in the December launch's secondary payload pool.
As in the previous year, the Sputnix group of companies launched 3 new optical Zorkiy-2M satellites with 2.75 m/pixel resolution, 9 SITRO-AIS automatic vessel identification spacecraft, and the single-unit Cholbon CubeSat built for the Yakutia Academy of Sciences. All were created on Sputnix' own 1U/3U/12U platforms.
Along with STC (Special Technological Center LLC) and Geoscan platforms: CSTP 3U/16U and Geoscan 3U/16U of corresponding form factors — the Sputnix platform forms the basis of all 28 Russian educational/scientific ERS CubeSats launched on December 28.
Prospects
Roscosmos plans for launching the high-orbit hydrometeorological Electro-L No. 5 satellite have been postponed to 2026. Among private companies in 2026, the Sputnix Group plans to launch the Kinosputnik spacecraft with 0.8 m/pixel resolution, and the MT-LAB LLC and Stilsoft consortium — the KOEN spacecraft with 0.5 m/pixel resolution.
In addition, it is expected that in 2026 Russian government customers will receive up to 5 billion rubles from the federal fund for purchasing ERS data from private and state satellite companies.
Earth Remote Sensing Satellites launched in 2025
Update 01/30/2025: Colleagues suggested that the Russian SamSat-Orion remote sensing spacecraft, despite the plans, was not actually part of the associated launch payload from 12/28/2025. The tables are updated accordingly.
