Government space program budgets maintained their growth trajectories for a fifth consecutive year and have registered the strongest yearly growth since 2009, reaching $82.5 billion in 2020, a 10% increase over 2019.
The socio-economic benefits from space assets, as well as the rapid development of commercial space markets, has resulted in a growing number of countries investing in space. However, despite this trend, the gap between emerging and mature space powers has grown significantly over the last decade, and threatens to grow even larger in the next, especially as the Covid-19 economic fallout might force emerging countries to re-evaluate, cancel or postpone their space investments in an effort to shore up their public finances.
COVID-19 had no noticeable impact on government space budgets, the pandemic having occurred with budgets largely already decided. It remains to be seen whether governments can sustain these historic budget levels in the future.