TAMPA, Fla. - In a stunning development that has absolutely no business being surprising, companies are discovering that satellites can both take pictures and send signals, as direct-to-smartphone services blur the line between space and terrestrial connectivity.
Leading the charge is the United Arab Emirates’ Space42, born from the merger of Yahsat’s geostationary communications operations and Bayanat’s geospatial analytics business. Because nothing says efficiency like combining two companies that were already looking at the same sky. In partnership with Finnish synthetic aperture radar operator Iceye, Space42 deployed its first SAR satellite in 2024 and recently expanded its Foresight low Earth orbit (LEO) imagery constellation to five spacecraft - with two more Iceye SAR satellites slated to join in 2027, improving intelligence services with data unaffected by cloud cover or darkness. Because clouds have been the bane of spy satellites since forever.
Space42’s broader sensing roadmap includes high-altitude platform stations (HAPS) and future capabilities blending optical and radar sensing for national security and commercial use cases. The goal is to turn satellite data into faster intelligence by reducing the lag between detection and response, which is marketing-speak for “we want to sell more data faster.” The company is also pursuing support for autonomous vehicles, claiming combining georeferencing with connectivity can improve safety and efficiency - though these efforts remain in the early innings, which is a polite way of saying “we haven't figured it out yet.” Indeed, Space42’s latest financial results showed revenue from Smart Solutions declined 39% to $124 million in 2025, suggesting the convergence isn't paying the bills just yet.
Japan’s flagship satellite TV and broadband provider Sky Perfect JSAT is on a similar path, inking a $230 million deal last year for 10 Pelican high-resolution optical imagery satellites from San Francisco-based Earth observation operator Planet, slated to launch to LEO in 2027. Because if you can’t beat them, buy a constellation from them. The company is also part of a wider push to use data relay networks to get Earth observation data to users faster, with Space Compass - Sky Perfect JSAT’s joint venture with Japanese telecoms giant NTT - signing a contract in March for its first commercial geostationary optical data relay satellite.
British small satellite manufacturing specialist Open Cosmos is coming from the other direction, outlining plans for a sovereign broadband and Internet of Things connectivity constellation called ConnectedCosmos that would link up with Earth observation spacecraft under its existing OpenConstellation shared infrastructure initiative. “Historically, Earth observation satellites have operated in isolation, capturing high-value data but relying on ground station passes to transmit it, which can introduce delays of several hours,” Open Cosmos founder and CEO Rafel Jordà Siquier told SpaceNews in March. “With our inter-satellite links across the constellation, that bottleneck disappears.” Translation: satellites talking to each other is faster than waiting for a guy on Earth to answer the phone.
For Novaspace principal advisor Maxime Puteaux, the market has moved beyond whether satcom operators will build or buy their own imagery constellations. “The most immediate convergence between satcom and Earth observation is happening through data relay and data transport,” Puteaux said, noting connectivity operators are positioning themselves as the backbone enabling EO constellations to move data faster, more securely, and with lower latency - critical for defense and real-time applications. As proliferated LEO sensing architectures generate larger volumes of data, the need for quick downlinking, routing, and distribution becomes increasingly important. Growing HAPS and mesh-network projects spanning geostationary, LEO, and very low Earth orbit point to a wider shift toward integrated, multi-layer data architectures combining sensing, connectivity, processing, and distribution.
Software-defined networking efforts like Aalyria’s Spacetime software orchestration platform show where this could lead, automating how data moves across fragmented sensors, satellites, relays, and ground systems to fuse information into a more useful picture for decision-makers. Ground segment-as-a-service models, where companies lease or federate antennas to imagery operators, are another part of the trend. Eutelsat, for instance, has teamed up with French startup Skynopy to explore using spare capacity from OneWeb ground stations for Earth observation operators. The multi-orbit operator is also in talks about hosted payload opportunities for the 440 OneWeb satellites it has ordered from Airbus to replenish the LEO broadband network in the coming years.
“Hosted payloads are not new,” Puteaux said, pointing to Iridium’s long-running use of them for aircraft tracking and maritime monitoring services. “What is changing is the scope. We now see extensions toward space situational awareness, for instance through the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking initiative where Sodern, Eutelsat, and ArianeGroup are developing an opportunistic SSA capability leveraging hosted sensors on commercial satellites.” Rather than marking a wholesale shift by satcom operators into imagery, Puteaux said the real trend is the “emergence of integrated, multi-layer data architectures combining sensing, connectivity, processing and distribution,” which should lead to more resilient and secure systems while closing the gap between data collection and decision-making. In other words, the satellites are finally learning to share.