We all use space from the moment we wake up in the morning. Checking the weather, navigating to work, tracking a delivery or using a fitness app can all depend on satellites orbiting hundreds or thousands of kilometres above the Earth. Yet in most of these activities, the role played by space infrastructure is largely invisible.
That invisibility makes the economic importance of space easy to underestimate. Rockets, launch sites and satellites may be its most visible manifestations, but much of the value generated by space infrastructure emerges much closer to home. Satellite signals and data are combined with software, maps, sensors and connectivity to support services used throughout the economy.
So how dependent have our economies become on space, and why does that matter?
The economic value of space extends far beyond the space sector
Space-based systems support more than half of the most critical infrastructures and services across OECD countries, including transport, energy, communications and food supply. In the United Kingdom, satellite-enabled services were estimated to underpin around 18% of non-financial GDP in 2022.
This does not mean that satellites themselves generate nearly one-fifth of UK economic output. Rather, satellite services enable and enhance activities elsewhere in the economy. Industries relying on positioning, navigation and timing services provided by navigation satellites represented an estimated 14% of UK GDP. Industries supported by meteorological satellite services represented 11%, while satellite communications and earth observation each supported around 7%.
This distinction matters. Conventional measures of the space economy capture activities such as manufacturing satellites, providing launch services and operating spacecraft. But they capture only part of the economic value that space makes possible. Increasingly, that value is generated in other parts of the economy, when satellite signals and data become inputs into other products and services. Data from Eurostat suggests that 12% of EU27 large firms performed data analytics on satellite data in 2025, surpassing 20% in Denmark and Lithuania.
Satellites increasingly support everyday life behind the scenes
Global navigation satellite systems, or GNSS, provide perhaps the clearest example. Since GNSS chips began appearing in mobile phones, cars and wearables in the early 2000s, satellite positioning, navigation and timing have become embedded across the economy.
The applications now extend far beyond finding a route on a smartphone. Satellite positioning supports personal and asset tracking, vehicle navigation, logistics and fleet management. It helps emergency services locate people, enables precision steering and machine guidance in agriculture and construction, and supports mapping, tourism, health and fitness services. Meanwhile, GNSS timing services synchronise measurements and detect faults in energy grids, co-ordinate base stations and handovers in telecom networks and timestamp financial transactions.
Weather forecasting provides another striking example. More than 90% of the observations assimilated into modern weather forecasting systems come from satellites. Together with major advances in modelling, the expansion of earth observation systems means that seven-day weather forecasts today are about as accurate as five-day forecasts were around 2000, especially in the southern hemisphere where there are fewer in-situ (ground/ocean) observations.
The benefits extend well beyond knowing whether to carry an umbrella. Better weather information saves lives and costs by strengthening disaster response systems and supportings decisions in agriculture, transport and other sectors.
Satellite services are creating new opportunities across the economy
The growing economic role of space is not simply about putting more satellites into orbit. It also reflects the increasing availability of the information and signals they produce.
Around 70% of data from active earth observation missions are now openly available, including data from major public programmes such as Landsat and Copernicus. These datasets support science and public policy and provide a foundation for businesses to develop new services and applications. Open access can lower barriers to entry, support new analytics and enable applications across different sectors.
Several satellite broadband networks are currently being deployed, providing connectivity to remote and sparsely populated areas worldwide. The infrastructure supporting these services is expanding rapidly. More than 14 000 operational satellites were in orbit at the end of 2025, rising to nearly 15 000 by mid-2026. At the same time, greater connectivity and data availability are widening the possibilities for using space-derived services across the economy.
Looking only at the revenues of companies conventionally classified as part of the space sector therefore gives an incomplete picture. The economic significance of space increasingly lies in the businesses, public services and other activities that use space infrastructure without themselves being part of the space industry.
Greater reliance on space also creates new vulnerabilities
This growing reliance also presents a policy challenge. When satellite signals and data become inputs into critical infrastructure and everyday economic activity, disruptions to space-based services can have consequences far beyond the space sector.
Navigation again provides a useful example. Positioning, navigation and timing signals are used in transport and logistics, energy and telecommunications, finance and emergency services, agriculture and numerous digital applications. Their growing economic and strategic importance increases the need for reliable and resilient signals, interoperability, standards and cybersecurity.
Recent developments show that these risks are not hypothetical. Reports of radio-frequency interference affecting European air transport increased from 249 in 2021 to 5 624 in 2025. Such interference can involve jamming, which disrupts satellite navigation signals, or spoofing, which can cause receivers to calculate an incorrect position.
As dependence grows, resilience is therefore no longer solely a concern for space agencies and satellite operators. It also matters to the governments, regulators, businesses and public services responsible for the sectors that rely on space-based infrastructure.
Understanding our dependence on space
This presents a measurement challenge as well as a policy one. Official statistics are becoming better at capturing the direct contribution of the space sector to national economies. Measuring the extent to which satellite-enabled services support activity elsewhere in the economy is more difficult.
Emerging evidence nevertheless shows how widespread their use has become. In Denmark, for example, 18% of urban, non-financial private enterprises used satellite-based services in 2022. In agriculture, 74% of farmed area used RTK-GPS precision steering in 2025, while satellite imagery was used on 31% of farmed area, up from 12% in 2018.
Better measurement can help governments assess the returns from public investment in space, identify industrial strengths and dependencies, and design policies that support competitiveness and resilience. It can also help reveal where economies have become dependent on satellite infrastructure and where vulnerabilities may lie.
The policy question is therefore broader than how large the space economy is. It is also about understanding how much economic activity space enables and how these benefits can be maintained as reliance on space-based infrastructure grows.
The OECD’s new Space Economy at a Glance 2026 looks more closely at these trends. It brings together new evidence on how the space economy is evolving, from public and private investment and the growing use of satellite-enabled services to emerging technologies, market concentration and the risks associated with increasing dependence on space infrastructure.
Space may still evoke images of rockets, astronauts and exploration. But its economic importance is increasingly found much closer to Earth, in the infrastructure, data and signals that modern economies rely on every day. As space activities continue to expand, the OECD Space Forum, together with its members, is leading efforts to develop the next generation of international standards for measuring the space economy and capturing its far-reaching contributions to economies and societies.
