VLEO Satellite Development and Remote Sensing: A Multidomain Review of Engineering, Commercial and Regulatory Solutions

Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) satellites, operating at altitudes below 450km, provide tremendous potential in the domain of remote sensing. Their proximity to Earth of-fers high resolution, low latency, and rapid revisit rates, allowing continuous moni-toring of dynamic systems and real-time delivery of vertically integrated earth ob-servation products. Nonetheless, the application of VLEO is not yet fully realized due to numerous complexities associated with VLEO satellite development, considering atmospheric drag, short satellite lifetimes, and social, political and legal regulatory fragmentation. This paper reviews the recent technological developments supporting sustainable VLEO operations with regards to aerodynamic satellite design, atomic oxygen barriers, and atmospheric-breathing electric propulsion (ABEP). Furthermore, the paper pro-vides an overview of the identification of regulatory and economic barriers that extort additional costs for VLEO ranging from frequency band allocation and space traffic management to life-cycle cost and uncertain commercial demand opportunities. Nevertheless, the commercial potential of VLEO operations is widely acknowledged, and estimated to lead to an economic turnover in the order of 1.5 B$ by 2030. Learning from the literature and prominent past experiences such as the DISCOVERER and the CORONA program, the study identifies key gaps and proposes a roadmap to sustainable VLEO development. The proposed framework emphasizes modular and serviceable satellite platforms, hy-brid propulsion systems, and globally harmonized governance in space. Ultimately, public-private partnerships and synergies across sectors will determine whether VLEO systems become part of the broader space infrastructure unlocking new capabilities for near-Earth services, environmental monitoring, and commercial innovation at the edge of space.