The space economy comes down to Earth

. The writer is an AI and sustainability policy analyst at UCSI University, Malaysia. Reach him at: naveed.r.khan@ gmail.com Space policy in Pakistan is still discussed through launches, satellites and national prestige. That is understandable, but increasingly outdated. The global space economy is shifting from what goes into orbit to what comes back from it, for instance, data, connectivity, navigation, weather intelligence and services that improve decisions on Earth. The numbers are striking. The OECD estimates global space-related revenues at $550-600 billion in 2025, already approaching the scale of the semiconductor industry. The World Economic Forum and McKinsey project the broader space economy to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, up from $630 billion in 2023. Crucially, the fastest growth is expected not in rockets and spacecraft, but in "reach" sectors enabled by communications, positioning, navigation, timing and Earth observation. For Pakistan, the bigger opportunity is therefore to build businesses, public services and research around satellite data. That opportunity is becoming tangible. Pakistan launched PRSC-EO1 in January 2025, followed by PRSC-EO2 and PRSC-EO3 in 2026. SUPARCO lists applications ranging from precision agriculture and irrigation management to crop-yield prediction, urban planning, glacier and water monitoring, and disaster response. These uses sit directly inside some of Pakistan's most persistent economic vulnerabilities. Agriculture is an obvious starting point. Satellite imagery combined with AI can identify crop stress, estimate acreage, monitor irrigation, predict yields and improve agricultural insurance. For a country repeatedly hit by floods, droughts and heat stress, Earth observation can also make disaster management less reactive. The OECD notes that more than 90% of observations assimilated into modern weather-forecasting systems come from satellites. This is not "space science" in the narrow sense, it is economic planning. The same logic extends to cities, transport and finance. Satellite positioning underpins logistics, fleet management and digital mapping. Earth-observation data can identify unplanned urban expansion, monitor infrastructure, map flood exposure and help insurers price risk. WEF estimates that supply chains and transportation, food and beverages, defence, consumer industries and digital communications will generate more than 60% of the increase in the space economy through 2035. Pakistan should stop treating a satellite launch as the end of a mission. Economically, it is only the beginning. The missing layer is a domestic market that turns raw space data into usable products. The OECD reports that about 70% of data from active Earth-observation missions is now openly available globally. A Pakistani start-up does not need to own a satellite to build a crop-monitoring platform, flood-risk model, logistics product or climate-intelligence service. It needs access to data, computing capacity, skilled people, government demand and room to test and sell. AI makes this more important. The OECD identifies AI-enabled data processing as a major frontier of space innovation. Competitive advantage will not belong only to countries that collect the most imagery, but to those that extract the best decisions from it. A satellite image of a field has limited economic value until an algorithm can tell a farmer, lender or insurer what has changed and what to do next. Pakistan's National Space Policy already recognises commercial exploitation and private-sector participation. The challenge is to turn that language into an ecosystem. First, Pakistan needs a national geospatial data common. Non-sensitive data from publicly funded missions should be available in standardised, machine-readable formats, with clear licensing and APIs for universities, start-ups and businesses. Second, government should become an early customer. Ministries and provinces could issue competitive challenges around crop forecasting, illegal construction, flood mapping, water stress and road monitoring. Third, SUPARCO should increasingly become a market-maker as well as an operator of space assets. A space-data accelerator linked with universities, agriculture departments, insurers, banks and telecom companies could help turn research into commercial services. Small validation grants and shared cloud-compute credits may generate faster returns than another demonstration project. Fourth, Pakistan should measure the space economy properly. OECD work shows why conventional statistics miss much of its value: satellite-enabled activity appears inside agriculture, transport, telecoms, finance and software rather than under a neat "space" category. Without measurement, policymakers will celebrate inputs without knowing the output in exports, productivity or jobs. There is also a strategic reason to act. Nearly 15,000 operational satellites were in orbit by mid-2026, while private operators accounted for 88% of satellites launched in 2025. Growth also carries costs. The OECD counts 45,860 tracked debris objects and more than 140 million smaller potentially damaging objects. Countries that fail to build domestic analytical capacity risk becoming permanent buyers of intelligence produced elsewhere. The next phase should therefore be judged differently. How many farmers use satellite-derived advice? How much disaster loss is avoided? How many insurers price risk using local geospatial models? How many start-ups export space-enabled services? How many public decisions improve because data arrived earlier and was interpreted better? A satellite becomes economically valuable not when it reaches orbit, but when its data reaches a farmer, insurer, logistics company, city planner or entrepreneur who can turn it into a better decision.