How Much Value Are We Leaving in Orbit?
Satellite operators, investors, and space software developers: how much value in orbit is still going unrealized? And if inefficiency persists, is deploying more (often equally inefficient) resources really the answer?
Satellite operators: are your assets truly operating at full capacity? Investors: are your space portfolios delivering the returns you expected? Software developers: have you found the fastest, most secure, and most efficient path to deploy code in orbit?
At Parsimoni, we have spoken with over a hundred stakeholders across the ecosystem, from operators and investors to manufacturers, mission planners, and developers. The answers vary, but they tend to point in a similar direction, and raise a bigger question:
How much value are we actually leaving in orbit?
Signals from across the market
Looking across these conversations, a few patterns keep emerging:
1. Investor caution is increasing
Some investors are stepping back from segments like Earth observation, where returns don't always match expectations. One explanation that comes up repeatedly: in-orbit resources are not fully utilized, while vast amounts of data are downlinked but only a fraction is meaningfully used.
The result is often higher costs, missed revenue potential, and lower ROI than expected.
Processing data directly in orbit could change that equation. So could monetizing spare capacity through third-party workloads. In both cases, the demand appears to be there, but accessible supply remains limited.
And this isn't limited to struggling operators. Most successful missions are only fully productive when satellites are positioned over relevant areas. Outside those windows, capacity is often underused, sometimes idle, despite clear alternative applications.
2. Idle capacity is more common than expected
Even satellites positioned as "as-a-service" platforms frequently operate below capacity. Investors notice it in performance metrics; operators feel it in utilization rates.
The barriers are familiar: high setup costs, engineering complexity, and limited flexibility once systems are deployed.
3. Software deployment remains a bottleneck
One issue consistently arises: deploying software in orbit is difficult and risky. The need to rewrite software for each satellite one by one is another factor limiting growth.
Security concerns, system integrity, and operational complexity often outweigh the perceived benefits. As a result, a significant percentage of onboard compute capacity, which could enable new use cases or reduce data downlink costs, goes unused.
4. Missions are not built for adaptability
Most missions are designed around a small number of initial customers. When those contracts end, operators need to find new revenue streams, often without a clear or efficient path to do so.
5. Innovation struggles to reach orbit
At the same time, startups are identifying high-potential in-orbit applications. But the barrier to entry remains steep. Testing is expensive, and moving from concept to validation is often prohibitively difficult, so most applications remain at the idea stage.
A deeper pattern
Individually, none of these challenges are surprising. Space has always been complex.
But taken together, they point to something more structural.
Across very different stakeholders, the same gaps keep appearing:
- No secure-by-design platform for deploying software in orbit to reduce the significant cyber risk
- No robust software isolation framework to protect satellites from faulty or malicious code
- No efficient mechanism for deployment or updates
- No easy-to-use frameworks for dynamic allocation of resources in orbit
- No hardware-agnostic layer enabling portability
This raises an interesting question: what if the constraint isn't the hardware itself, but how it is used?
Rethinking how in-orbit assets are utilized
This is the problem we set out to solve at Parsimoni.
The approach is simple in principle: make existing in-orbit systems easier, safer, and more flexible to use, without requiring fundamental changes to underlying infrastructure.
That's the idea behind the Parsimoni App Store for Satellites and SpaceOS:
- Designed to work with existing systems, no flight software replacement required
- Built with a security-first architecture (zero trust, strict isolation, formal verification, advanced cryptography)
- Aligned with modern development workflows, including containerization
- Hardware-agnostic, enabling portability across systems
Where the value starts to emerge
If these barriers are reduced, a different picture starts to form.
Unused capacity can become:
- New revenue streams through third-party applications
- Lower costs via in-orbit data processing
- Stronger, more resilient onboard systems
In that sense, the opportunity isn't necessarily about launching more hardware, but about extracting more value from what's already there.
Our model reflects that: no upfront cost, and participation only in measurable upside, whether through incremental revenue or cost savings.
So, how much value are we leaving in orbit?
Even high-performing satellite businesses are inherently constrained by timing and positioning. A satellite built for a specific use case, like crop monitoring, is only productive when conditions align.
The rest of the time, capacity sits idle.
That idle time isn't just a limitation. It may be one of the largest untapped opportunities in the space economy.
The question is no longer whether more value can be extracted from in-orbit assets, but how much is already there waiting to be unlocked, and who will do it first.
If you are exploring this question, it's worth comparing notes. The incremental impact on existing assets can be larger than expected.