Europe’s biggest space opportunity comes after launch

At most major European space summits, the sovereignty debate has long been overshadowed by talk of launchers, constellations and the symbolism of a national presence. On the sidelines, however, the conversations were often more textured; stretching beyond questions of access and prestige and increasingly toward those of data, domain awareness, resilience, continuity and even countermeasures in an increasingly contested orbital environment. 

It’s time that Europe took more of a leading role in this evolving paradigm and the strategic reality that underpins it. That is, hardware alone will not determine space power. 

Rather, it will be increasingly influenced by who controls what happens next. That translates into an expansion of how — and what — we come to view as infrastructure; those often quieter systems that keep orbital economies functioning long after launch. It won’t be glamorous. But this is precisely where the next decisive layer will be built. In practice, that means logistics, servicing, refueling, edge computing, cyber resilience, debris removal and end-of-life operations. In fact, in this next stage of our orbital development, these are the very functions that will determine who can operate reliably, maneuver freely, recover quickly, scale sustainably and — ultimately — who holds strategic leverage that will shape the conditions under which everyone else operates.

Yet Europe now also risks underinvesting in one of the few areas where it already holds a genuine advantage. From operational space surveillance and tracking to autonomous rendezvous and docking technologies, as well as companies like us at D-Orbit developing in-space transportation and logistics, Europe has already begun laying the foundations for this next operational layer. More broadly, as Europeans, we routinely demonstrate orbital transportation, host payload operations, autonomous mission management, while carving out those initial elements of a persistent logistics architecture. Europe is indeed one of the few regions where commercial actors are already operating the foundations of a lasting in-orbit economy. 

Yet our policy and procurement frameworks still tend to think with a legacy mindset.

Public programs, for instance, continue to optimize around ownership of assets instead of delivery of services. Agencies buy satellites with fixed specifications instead of capabilities with measurable outcomes. Procurement rewards technical deliverables instead of operational availability, resilience, responsiveness, or mission continuity. This approach, of course, made sense when space infrastructure was scarce and vertically integrated. But in an era where orbital services can be purchased, upgraded, scaled and competed, the consequence now is not only inefficiency, but strategic fragility. And because the actors who own orbital infrastructure will increasingly define the operational rules, they will also shape mobility corridors, servicing standards, access to orbital resources, collision-avoidance norms, data-routing architectures and cybersecurity frameworks. 

In a crisis, those will be the systems that keep us operational or not.

Plus, this is not just commercial territory. It’s dual-use infrastructure with direct ties to defense, civil protection, communications resilience and a broader sense of our own industrial autonomy. Europe understands this dynamic on Earth. We do not, for example, ask governments to build and own every fiber-optic cable, data center, or logistics fleet. Instead, we procure outcomes and regulate our mutual strategic interests. 

Space should be no different.

If Europe is serious about its autonomy, then procurement must evolve from buying hardware to buying capability. That means restructuring programs around service-level agreements rather than asset ownership; rewarding uptime, responsiveness and time-to-capability, and allowing commercial operators to compete on performance instead of compliance with architectures that were designed years before launch. In fact, commercial space infrastructure can complement the sovereign ones, through pooling and sharing principles. It also means separating genuinely strategic sovereign investments from commercially contestable services. Most importantly, Europe needs to formally recognize in-orbit infrastructure as its own strategic category.

At the next ESA Ministerial and within the EU Space Programme, policymakers should establish a dedicated budget line for in-orbit infrastructure; distinct from categories of satellites and launchers. Without that distinction, orbital logistics and servicing will remain trapped between institutional silos despite becoming increasingly central to Europe’s competitiveness and security. 

The global space economy is clearly entering a new phase. Launch is changing. But it’s still just an initial chapter. Infrastructure is the next big push. Europe has an opportunity to lead. But leadership will not arrive from simply placing more objects in orbit. Rather, it will come from building the very systems that make orbit usable, sustainable and secure for everyone else.

Stefano Antonetti is the strategy and growth director at D-Orbit.

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