
From equipment manufacturing to data analysis and financing, countries big and small are getting into the new space race
CNA
As launch costs fall and satellite data becomes easier to analyse and access, space has become everyone's playground. As more countries in Southeast Asia angle for a slice of the pie in the sky, CNA TODAY looks into how Singapore's own astro ambitions match up.
In Jakarta, radar satellites survey the Indonesian capital, measuring millimetre-scale ground movement, as the city sinks, that is gradually reshaping flood defences and infrastructure plans.
Over in Vietnam, the country’s first radar satellite, LOTUSat-1, is designed to see through clouds and darkness, providing the authorities with the data they need to respond to storms and protect fragile coastlines.
Even tiny Singapore has joined the space race, launching satellites since 2011 and using space-based imagery to strengthen coastal protection, climate resilience and long-term urban planning.
These examples show that what intensified in the 1960s as a Cold War contest between two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union – has become something far more expansive. Space used to be the final frontier; now, it's almost everyone's aspiration.
In the past, getting into space required huge defence budgets and government-run rocket programmes that only a few countries could afford.

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