I recently read an article about how Russia will supply Iran with a Kanopus-V surrveilance satellite, which is better than anything Iran already has and that got me wondering.

One site says that currently there are more than 3 thousand active satellites in the space and another 3 thousand that aren’t, so considering such an extreme amount, would it be possible for smaller countries like Greece, Portugal, Belarus, Bulgaria,etc. to afford satellites of their own or is it still just a big boys game?

Iran and, if we count two non-working satellites, North Korea, have gotten their satellites into space, but Iran spends about 15% of it’s entire budget on the military and North Korea is well…North Korea, so they aren’t rational spenders.

There are things like Cubesat, which is literally a 10cm cube that’s considered a satellite, but I doubt that can be used as a military spy satellite to monitor military bases of countries.

Also are there shared satellites? For example US satellites that are shared with NATO partners?