Before launching its own satellite, Peru purchased about 10 Earth observation images annually. Since the Airbus-built PeruSat-1 reached orbit in 2016, Peru has gathered and stored more than 500,000 satellite images.

“We can take images whenever we want, and the sovereignty is really important to us,” Lt. Col. Javier Ildefonso, Commander of Peru’s Space Operations Center, said in September at the Space Defense and Security Summit. “We will continue to buy the NewSpace technologies in the future. But at the same time, we want to develop our own technology as well.”

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Debra Werner is a correspondent for SpaceNews based in San Francisco. Debra earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. She is a recipient...