Jonathan Hung, Executive Director of the Office for Space Technology & Industry at the Economic Development Board, shares his view on Singapore's role in the global space economy.

Singapore

Singapore is actively pursuing a role in the expanding global space economy by fostering international collaborations and supporting domestic innovation. The Economic Development Board (EDB) highlighted partnerships with organizations such as NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Asia-Pacific Space Agency Forum, as well as bilateral agreements with countries like Japan and the UAE. 

The Singapore space sector currently includes about 70 companies ranging from large satellite operators to manufacturers and service providers. Notable firms such as Trans Astral Technologies and Zero Error Systems have attracted international investment, contributing to the country's ambitions to scale its space industry and participate in the projected growth of the global space economy.

Singapore wants to play a part in the global space economy: EDB

What are the risks of going for international partnerships in space? Oh, certainly I think the whole space economy is global. We have to work together as one and make sure that we have a safe, secure, sustainable sector. I think Singapore, for example, we work very closely with international partners. In the US, for example, where we have a strategic dialogue with them. We also work with many of their research institutes, Goddard, Ames, JPL. We have various research activities going on between the parties. With the Europeans, the European Space Agency, we also work very closely. We have actually signed a letter of intent, an LOI, with the European Space Agency earlier this year, and that actually is on commercialising space technologies, which is also something that we look at quite carefully, making sure we can translate early-stage R&D to actual outcomes. There's a lot of hype and a lot of young companies coming to space. We want to make sure they're successful and sustainable as well. Moving across, I guess, to Asia, we work very closely with our friends in Japan as well. We leverage the International Space Station Kibo module, for example, for experiments. We also work with the international fora platforms, like the Asia-Pacific Space Agency Forum, where we work together with Japan and ASEAN partners to shape international norms. So these are some examples where we work together at the bilateral level. If you go one step deeper, we also work with countries like the UAE, where we work closely with industry to ensure that we work together, and we have sealed a partnership between SD Engineering and Edge, for example, on satellite manufacturing programmes. So it is very, very international and very global. A lot of our companies play in different parts of the value chain, and we hope to make sure that they also can scale internationally. Jonathan, JP Ong here. If I'm not mistaken, the idea now is to see the global space economy grow from about $600 billion to about $1.8 trillion by 2035, based on some projections. I do want to take a step back and ask you, how many entities in Singapore are involved in the space industry, for lack of a better term, whether it be companies that are directly involved in space operations activities, or even institutes of higher learning that are currently rolling out space exploration programmes in educating and training students in the sector of the future? That's a good question. We have about 70 companies or so in the entire value chain within the Singapore space sector. That encompasses your large players in the operator space. You have the likes of Iridium, SES, IntelSat, Viasat, all the way down to design, manufacturing, and providing services as well. So the entire stack, we do have a good sense of where people are, and I think that is something that also provides an interesting holistic environment to support a range of companies that potentially want to leverage Singapore for advanced manufacturing, to try out and test new designs, or to leverage Singapore to access the wider Asia-Pacific. A couple of companies that come to mind, just to give examples, we do have a company called Trans Astral Technologies. They are one of the world's largest suppliers of wireless communications, and these guys have been doing very well. They have attracted the likes of the Japan Telco NTT for funding, and that has allowed them to scale not just domestically, but also regionally, and also actually within the western countries as well. We have companies that look at radiation-hardened processes as well, called Zero Error Systems, backed earlier in 2023 by Airbus Ventures, also similarly scaling up. We have companies that also look at thrusters, for example electric thrusters, and these things are allowing satellites to actually have longer gestation within orbit, and these companies are also able to attract good venture funding as well. So it's quite a good broad-based ecosystem. I think they touch many parts of the value chain. A lot of it is in subsystems. We grow them domestically, but we certainly want them to scale and find niche opportunities within the global space sector.

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