Publications

Orbit has never been cheaper to reach than today, but nearly every satellite is still built to be used once, then abandoned. Static constellations can be held at risk by a widening set of counterspace weapons, disposable platforms are feeding the on-orbit debris population, and the supply chains behind space hardware are increasingly contested, throttling space capability delivered to orbit.

We argue that controlled atmospheric re-entry and satellite reuse belong in the category of foundational infrastructure for space resilience and a circular orbital economy, addressing each of these problems. In current military doctrine on space resilience, every named resilience attribute is bounded by the assumption that the satellite is one-time-use (disposable). The returnable satellite is the missing element of a resilient architecture, and amortized economics favor reusable systems across a wide range of assumptions.