World Space Business Week ran in Paris from 14 to 17 September 2026. Novaspace organises it as two summits that can be taken separately or together, the Summit for Satellite Financing and the Summit on Earth Observation Business, with a shared Wednesday programme joining the two audiences. Caelum attended the full week, mostly in the financing sessions and in meetings with capital partners and the insurance market. No counterparties are named and nobody is quoted; what follows is the shape of the conversations and our reading of them.
GEO refinancing is the live question
The opening day of the financing summit listed financial priorities for the industry, infrastructure for the space economy and global operator strategies among its themes, and in the corridors those three collapsed into one subject: how the GEO fleets built in the 2010s get refinanced as their original debt matures. The Telesat maturity wall we wrote about at the start of the month was the case everyone had read.
Lenders showed a clear preference for structures that sit closer to the asset than corporate credit does. A satellite with contracted capacity, a defined remaining life and an identifiable ground segment is a different proposition from an operator's balance sheet, and the pricing gap between the two has widened. Sale-leaseback of an in-service satellite into a dedicated vehicle, with the lease sized to backlog rather than to segment history, is the tool that fits. It is the third of Caelum's four services, and it was the one most asked about in Paris.
In-orbit delivery: who holds what, and when
For new-build satellites the structural conversation was about the delivery point. An in-orbit delivery contract places launch and early-operations risk with the manufacturer; the buyer takes title once the spacecraft is on station and checked out. That is the point at which a lessor can step in without taking launch exposure, which Caelum does not take on any structure.
The questions from financiers were practical. What is the condition precedent to acceptance? Who holds the in-orbit insurance in the gap between handover and the first lease payment? How is a partial-performance delivery priced? None of these has a standard answer yet. Aviation converged on common delivery and acceptance language over decades; space will get there faster because the people drafting the documents have read the aviation precedents.
The ground estate is where the capital is comfortable
Ground segment came up in the software session on the Monday and in almost every bilateral. The reason is simple: a gateway, teleport or control facility is a fixed asset in a named jurisdiction, and lenders who hesitate over a spacecraft do not hesitate over a concrete pad with a twenty-year service agreement. The IRIS² implementation agreement signed on 7 August 2026, covering 348 satellites in the main constellation with first launches brought forward to 2029, carries a secure ground segment that will need financing outside the programme budget. Our market note on the Goonhilly sale and the blocked Eutelsat–EQT carve-out covers why that layer trades the way it does.
Insurance capacity is the constraint nobody solved
The most sober conversations were with the insurance market. The 2023 loss year, roughly US$995m of claims against US$557m of premium, and the probable total loss of SpainSat NG II in January 2026 have left fewer underwriters willing to write in-orbit cover and a harder market for those who remain. For a lessor this is a structural issue rather than a pricing one. A lease requires the asset to be insured for its full term; if capacity thins, the cover becomes the binding constraint on tenor.
The consequences are already showing in the structures being discussed: shorter insured periods with renewal covenants, larger deductibles carried by the operator, and a premium for satellites whose disposal plans and manoeuvring reserves are documented well enough to satisfy an underwriter. The orbital sustainability argument and the insurance argument are the same argument.
What we took home
Paris confirmed that the asset-level financing conversation has moved from whether to how. The demand is for structures that hold title, sit near the ground segment and are sized to contracted revenue. How that applies to a specific fleet is best worked through directly: get in touch.