Our digital technology world owes a debt of gratitude to space. It was the need to miniaturize electronics for the first civilian and military space programs that created demand for the integrated circuits independently invented by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Intel in 1960. From that pioneering work came today’s silicon chips that cram 100 million transistors in a space the size of the head of a pin.

Today, more than 60 years later, space is going digital at last. Human activity in Earth orbit has long been ruled by radio waves, which transmit information in a continuous analog stream unlike the series of separate bits in digital circuits. Satellites were designed to send and receive to fixed spots on Earth’s surface and were unable to adapt to changing market demand. Deliberately designed for simplicity, they beamed back to Earth whatever analog signal they received. The ground systems they connected to were assemblies of analog hardware that amplified, split, combined and switched communications.

The new generations of satellite being launched into GEO, MEO and LEO are increasingly commanded by onboard software that interacts with AI-enabled software on the ground. They steer their electronically-generated beams wherever needed, adapting minute by minute to demand. The digital capacity of space keeps growing with new satellites, on-orbit servicing and debris removal spacecraft. Businesses have been funded to put data storage systems in orbit and on the Moon. And ground technology is beginning a revolution to replace analog systems with end-to-end digital, creating the possibility of seamless interconnection with the world’s telecommunications networks. An industry long restricted to an insignificant slice of telecom spending has begun a journey toward a much bigger role in connecting and comprehending the planet we share.