Futron Corporation is pleased to announce the completion of the Company's second annual Space Competitiveness Index: A Comparative Analysis of How Countries Invest in and Benefit from Space Industry.

Futron’s 2009 Space Competitiveness Index (SCI) provides a structured analysis of the competitiveness of leading space-faring nations, providing further discussion of their respective strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in space activity. The SCI assesses more than 50 individual metrics across three underlying dimensions of competitiveness: government, human capital, and industry. Using this framework, Futron offers a comparative assessment of ten leading space participant nations: Brazil, Canada, China, Europe (counted as a single entity), India, Israel, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States.

Futron’s 2009 Space Competitiveness Index finds that while the United States remains the leading space participant, its advantages in all three major dimensions of space competitiveness continue to narrow as other nations invest in space policy, expertise, and infrastructure. European space activity continues to cohere. Russia retains its notable strengths. Asian space powers China, India, and Japan are in close competition with one another, even as they challenge established space leaders. Canada’s knowledge base and cooperative approach sustain its competitive position. Finally, newer and smaller participants such as Brazil, Israel, and South Korea maintain their niche roles in space—but even they face displacement by emerging space participants around the globe.

To better understand the complex European market, Futron’s 2009 Space Competitiveness Index features five new mini-profiles of leading European countries and their activities. This enhanced European focus is complemented by an additional new discussion of five emerging space actors: Australia, Singapore, South Africa, and a timely examination of strategic questions surrounding the space programs of Iran and North Korea.

The 2009 SCI updates three separate market segments detailed in the 2008 inaugural SCI—Remote Sensing, Military, and Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT)—and includes two additional segment evaluations: Space Exploration, and Technology Readiness and Capability. The Space Exploration segment focuses on global civil space exploration, including deep space missions and other scientific spacecraft. The Technology Readiness and Capability segment offers comparative snapshots of technology levels for several technical clusters considered key, from an engineering perspective, to ensuring effective space capability and functionality.

As the issue of space competitiveness has become a prominent consideration at the highest levels of government, military, industry, and academia worldwide, Futron’s 2009 SCI is a tool that offers decision-makers a new benchmark to re-assess the competitive landscape of human space activity—and to contemplate its implications for their respective governments, businesses, and organizations.