Current barriers and factors of success in the diffusion of satellite services in Europe

Satellite services benefit civil society by helping tackle challenges such as climate change, the digital divide, etc. They have the potential to deliver concrete benefits to European society through innovative services supporting economic, societal and environmental policies. Such benefits can trigger increased public support for space in Europe. However, this potential has yet to be achieved. This paper argues that technological bias, the diversity of interests and initiatives among stakeholders and their individual actions do not always serve their collective objective to ensure wide diffusion of satellite services. It draws on theories of diffusion of innovation and on its authors' participatory work with the space and the user communities and at their interface in an effort to help diffuse satellite services within civil society. One of the major causes of insufficient service diffusion is the weakness of the interface between the space and user communities; some of factors that currently contribute to this state of affairs are the space community's over-reliance on publicly financed, technical demonstration projects as solutions to service diffusion; insufficient coordination by public authorities of innovation policies and programmes with other public policies and objectives; and an insufficient integration of satellite services within users' culture, traditional tools and services. The discussion allows for conclusions to be drawn on how the system of stakeholders could function better in order for satellite services to be successfully diffused in Europe.