Launch costs have fallen a hundredfold in two decades, and the consequences are arriving all at once: this is the year commercial space stopped being about rockets and started being about business models.
Direct-to-phone satellite service now covers dead zones on every continent, turning ordinary smartphones into emergency communicators. The next step — satellite broadband to unmodified phones — enters testing with major carriers this year.
In orbit, the first commercial stations are booking research customers as the International Space Station approaches retirement. Microgravity manufacturing of fibre optics and pharmaceuticals has moved from experiment to early production.
The rules of the game are being written in real time, from debris management to lunar resource rights. What is no longer in question is the direction: space has become an economy, not just a frontier.