Trends and Technology Roadmapping in Earth Observation Missions

Earth observation (EO) activities from space have rapidly advanced with a five-fold increase in average annual launches during 2011–2021 as compared to the previous decade. With increasing interest in public and private sectors for charting out strategies and roadmaps for future missions, it is important to track technology trends. Here, a quantitative assessment of key advancement in EO capabilities is presented along with projections for 2030. The analysis shows that, if the trends continue as-is, the number of countries owning (and engaging with) EO spacecraft will expand to 64 by 2030 which will be a 42% increase from 2020 (of 45 countries). Additionally, minimum spatial resolution of imagers on scientific and commercial EO spacecraft will fall below 10cm, and below 30cm for Synthetic Aperture Radars.