Launch Services & Propulsion

SpaceX shares rose about 4% on Monday after Morgan Stanley reiterated an overweight rating and a $300 price target on the rocket and satellite company, calling it an "unusually cheap" way to play the growing space and artificial intelligence economy. The target implies 88.7% upside from Friday's close. Analyst Adam Jonas said SpaceX looks expensive on conventional metrics but relatively cheap after adjusting for growth, trading at about 30 times estimated 2028 EV/EBIT versus roughly 16 times for other mega-cap AI enablers, and at only 0.3 times EV/EBIT/growth, about 40% below the peer median. Jonas said the market already prices in most of SpaceX's space and connectivity opportunity, leaving about $32 a share for its AI business, and flagged Starship Flight 15, expected in late October or early November, as a key catalyst that could be the biggest positive catalyst since the IPO. Further AI compute contracts, new Grok releases, and progress on Starship reusability could also support the stock, while risks include slower AI growth, higher infrastructure costs, and potential dilution.

Rocket Lab Corporation announced a multi-year agreement to launch 20 new Electron missions from Launch Complex 1 for Synspective, carrying StriX synthetic aperture radar satellites to sun-synchronous orbit annually from 2028 through 2031. The contract is the largest commercial launch deal for Electron so far and lifts Rocket Lab's backlog above 100 missions, deepening its role in building Synspective's global Earth-imaging constellation. The deal reinforces Electron's position as a high-cadence small-launch workhorse and slightly reduces near-term lumpiness risk in the launch book, though the key near-term catalyst and risk remain Neutron test progress and ongoing cash burn. Rocket Lab's US$1.944 billion equity raise to fund the pending Iridium acquisition shows management leaning on the balance sheet to expand into higher-value space systems and communications, amplifying the benefits of large multi-year contracts like Synspective's while raising the stakes around dilution and execution. Analysts had already modeled revenue near US$2.2 billion and earnings around US$365 million by 2029 on the optimistic side, against a more cautious consensus that treats cash burn and contract lumpiness as core risks.

SpaceX shares have stabilized after notching an all-time low of $104.83 in early August, with the company citing fresh catalysts that could drive the stock higher into year-end and into 2027. Starship, SpaceX's two-stage rocket and the largest human-made flying object, recently reached orbit for the first time, and the recent flight deployed the first 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites. Anthropic expanded its computing agreements with SpaceX, committing up to $84.5 billion through May 2029 for NVIDIA-based AI infrastructure, while Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest SpaceX will grow revenue by 147% in 2027. The odds of a SpaceX and Tesla merger by the end of next year have spiked to 63% on Polymarket. The company also pointed to Planet Labs and Google's launch of the first AI satellite as proof of concept for its ambitions in space-based AI data centers.

Google said Thursday that its prototype satellite for Project Suncatcher, built in partnership with Planet Labs, launched into orbit aboard the Transporter-18 rideshare mission with SpaceX. The tech giant said its team has confirmed contact with the satellite, and it is operating as expected. Travis Beals, senior director of Project Suncatcher, wrote in a blog post following the launch that this is the first step in a long-term research moonshot exploring whether space could one day host scalable machine learning infrastructure, and that over the coming weeks the team will gather in-orbit data on how its TPUs handle the physical stress of spaceflight and the radiation and thermal extremes of space. Alphabet holds a stake worth more than $82B in SpaceX, which went public in June in a record IPO. SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, has also announced that it plans to build and launch its orbital data centers.

SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on Thursday aboard a Crew Dragon capsule, marking the company's 13th crew rotation mission for NASA. The crew, consisting of two Americans, one Canadian, and one Russian cosmonaut, lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a Falcon 9 rocket. According to Bloomberg space correspondent Lauren Grush, the mission comes amid speculation that SpaceX may retire the Crew Dragon once the ISS program ends, with only four more crew rotation missions currently scheduled. The crew will spend roughly a week aboard the station before the previous Crew 12 team returns to Earth following a handover. Three of the four astronauts on this flight are first-time flyers.

Firefly Aerospace shares rose about 6% Wednesday morning after the space technology company announced a commercial agreement with Starcloud to test advanced artificial intelligence computing in lunar orbit. Under the deal, Starcloud's computing payload will fly aboard Firefly's Elytra orbital vehicle as part of a mission targeted for no earlier than 2028, with Starcloud's SC-1L processor receiving data from Firefly's Solux vision system, performing AI computing in orbit and sending the processed information back to Earth. The Starcloud payload is scheduled to join Firefly's third lunar mission, in which Elytra will initially serve as a transfer vehicle and communications relay for the company's Blue Ghost lander, expected to touch down at the Moon's Gruithuisen Domes under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. After that portion of the mission is completed, Firefly plans to keep Elytra in lunar orbit for five years to support commercial and government payloads as well as imaging operations, including the Starcloud computing demonstration. Firefly is also developing its Ocula lunar imaging service and recently announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to process Ocula data aboard Elytra before transmitting results to Earth, while the company plans to send its first Elytra vehicle into lunar orbit with Blue Ghost Mission 2, targeted to launch no earlier than 2027.

Elon Musk's net worth ended the week at $925 billion, up more than $305 billion since January, as his path to trillionaire status stalled amid fading momentum at Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla will unveil the long-delayed Roadster, with the base model starting at around $200,000 and the Founders Series at $250,000, limited to 1,000 vehicles, while traders on Polymarket expect third-quarter deliveries of between 450k and 475k vehicles after 480k in the second quarter. SpaceX is set for its first orbital launch on Monday, a test that will carry the third version of Starlink to space; Starlink made over $4.29 billion in the second quarter, accounting for 53% of SpaceX revenue, and analysts expect total revenue to jump to $44 billion this year and $108.3 billion next year. Most of Musk's wealth comes from his 48.5% stake in SpaceX and about 20.3% of Tesla, plus large holdings in Neuralink and The Boring Company.

SpaceX's fully reusable rocket Starship, which the company is developing, succeeded for the first time in reaching Earth orbit on its 14th flight test on September 28, 2026. A vehicle combining the upper-stage spacecraft Ship 41 with the first-stage booster Booster 21 was launched, and although one of the six Raptor engines on the upper stage shut down earlier than planned during ascent, it achieved orbital insertion and released all 26 next-generation communications satellites, Starlink V3, into orbit. The original plan called for roughly six orbits of low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 275 kilometers over about 10 hours, followed by a controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, but the flight time was shortened to about three hours following the upper-stage engine malfunction. Previous flight tests of Starship and Super Heavy had deliberately remained on suborbital trajectories with safety as the priority, and the shift to true orbital flight and the demonstration of its capability as a means of transporting operational satellites mark a turning point. SpaceX has won a 2.89 billion dollar HLS development contract from NASA and aims for a crewed lunar landing on Artemis 4 in 2028 and the construction of a long-term activity base on the lunar surface.

U.S. space company SpaceX conducted a launch of Starship, the world's largest rocket, on the 28th, placing it into Earth orbit for the first time on its 14th launch. Nikkei reported the news, saying it gave momentum toward commercialization. Meanwhile, an engine problem occurred during flight, shortening a planned 10-hour mission to 3 hours. Space-related companies are likely to draw attention.

Nvidia announced an additional $150 billion share buyback authorization, bringing its total remaining authorized amount to $235 billion, which the company said it plans to use through the end of fiscal 2028. The buyback, described by panelists as potentially the largest authorization ever announced, helped lift Nvidia shares, which are up about 21% this year. Nvidia also unveiled a new AI security system called the open agent safety platform, developed with several partners including Anthropic but notably not OpenAI, in response to recent hacking incidents. CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC the platform is designed to keep agentic AI systems within minimal rights, and he said OpenAI is welcome to adopt the open-source technology. The announcements came as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met President Trump for a private dinner, with no headlines emerging on what was discussed. Separately, SpaceX launched Starship Flight 14, its first flight into low Earth orbit, carrying 26 Starlink V3 high-speed internet satellites; one of the rocket's six engines went out, but the mission still reached low Earth orbit. Meta introduced a new Meta enterprise platform and hired MongoDB CEO CJ Desai to run it, sending MongoDB shares sharply lower in pre-market trading. President Trump is set to roll back Biden-era fuel economy standards, cutting the 2031 fleet target from roughly 50 MPG to 34.5 MPG, and said he is looking very seriously at a diesel export ban.

SpaceX plans to launch its massive Starship rocket early Monday, aiming to send the spacecraft into orbit for the first time. According to SpaceX's website, the 75-minute launch window begins at 8:15 a.m. ET, or 7:15 a.m. local time, from the company town of Starbase, Texas. The Federal Aviation Administration told CNBC that it issued a license authorization for the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Flight 14 launch and reentry operations on Sept. 26. With the 14th test flight of Starship, Elon Musk's aerospace and defense company also plans to deploy 26 of its new Starlink V3 satellites. Starship is critical to SpaceX's expansion plans; on SpaceX's earnings call in August, Musk said it is not out of the question that at some point Starlink will deliver a majority of the world's internet, at least in countries where the company is allowed to operate.

Rocket Lab launched its 97th Electron mission, delivering the 13th StriX satellite for Earth-monitoring constellation operator Synspective into a 559km low Earth orbit. The 'Owlright Owlright Owlright' mission lifted off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 12:39 p.m. NZST on 26 September 2026. The deployment expands Synspective's synthetic aperture radar imaging constellation, which provides high-resolution, all-weather, day-and-night imaging of the Earth's surface. The flight was Rocket Lab's 18th launch this year, sustaining Electron's position as the world's most frequently-launched small-lift orbital rocket. Across a multi-year partnership, Electron has now deployed all 13 StriX satellites with 100% mission success, and another 14 launches remain on schedule to deliver the rest of Synspective's constellation by the end of the decade.

Elon Musk may be poised for a Zuckerberg-style comeback moment as Tesla prepares to debut its Roadster on October 1st in Waco, Texas, and ramps up production at its Tesla Semi factory targeting 50,000 units a year. Meanwhile, the average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage has climbed to 7.45%, its highest level in three years, pushing the monthly payment on a $500,000 mortgage to $3,479 — up from $2,995 just seven months ago, an additional $5,813 a year in mortgage interest expense for homebuyers. On the tech front, Alphabet is launching data centers in space in partnership with Planet Labs for the first time on October 1st, carrying its TPUs aboard a SpaceX booster, a move that could strengthen its position against competitors in both AI chips and driverless cars through Waymo. Bradley Tusk, a longtime tech investor and political strategist, said on the show that OpenAI has about 1 trillion4 in Capex commitments, roughly $1 trillion more than Anthropic's approximately $400 billion, and argued OpenAI and Anthropic are wildly overvalued. Tusk also praised Meta's open-source AI inference strategy as brilliant, though he said he is not a Mark Zuckerberg fan due to the harm he believes Instagram has caused to children.

Firefly Aerospace signed a multi-launch agreement with SSC Space for two Alpha rocket launches from Sweden's Esrange Space Center, marking the company's first planned orbital launch site on mainland Europe. Under the deal, signed September 9, SSC Space purchased the full payload capacity across both flights to distribute among its own government and commercial clients, with the missions targeted for no earlier than 2028 to carry Swedish national security and commercial payloads. CEO Jason Kim described the arrangement as a "launch as a franchise" model that gives NATO allies flexible orbital access while granting Firefly pricing power and operational leverage. The win builds on completed groundwork at Esrange, including a launch control center, payload processing facility, integration building, and tracking systems, with the launch pad now in its final construction stages. The agreement adds to a diversified pipeline that includes a $144 million NASA award for a Blue Ghost lunar lander, an extended Lockheed Martin deal covering up to 25 Alpha launches through 2031, a $94 million Space Force radar contract, and a spot on the $981 million NITE-STAR test and training program, alongside a 659% year-over-year Q2 revenue surge to $117.7 million and full-year guidance of $420 million to $450 million. Because the Esrange missions are not scheduled to lift off before 2028 and depend on a pad still under construction, the deal enriches forward backlog rather than near-term income statements.

Blue Origin has raised $10 billion in its first-ever outside funding round, with Jeff Bezos personally contributing a fresh $2 billion, according to details reported by the Wall Street Journal. The Amazon founder's total investment in the space company now stands at $32 billion since its founding in 2000, funded through strategic sell-offs of his Amazon stock. Valued at $140 billion, Blue Origin has opened its doors to outside investors for the first time, and additional commitments may still push the round's total higher. CEO Dave Limp is restructuring the 15,000-person workforce, enacting targeted layoffs and grounding the suborbital tourism flights to prioritize core technical advancements and critical NASA contracts. After generating $800 million in 2025, Blue Origin expects to hit $1.4 billion this year, and internally projects topping $30 billion in annual revenue by 2030.

Yuanta Securities says the space economy is entering a major turning point after the International Space Station, the backbone of off-world scientific experimentation for more than 26 years, prepares to be retired around 2030, as demand for access to space from the private sector keeps rising, especially for medical research and the development of data centers in space. This is reflected in the number of projects approved for launch to the ISS, which hit a record high of 115 projects in fiscal year 2025, with nearly 80% being commercial research projects. The transition to the era of commercial space stations is happening alongside a sharp fall in the cost of reaching space, thanks to reusable rocket technology, particularly from SpaceX. Global pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb are already using low-gravity conditions to study the properties of drugs, while privately held Varda is developing autonomous vehicles for experiments or manufacturing in orbit to return products to Earth. The space economy's market value is expected to rise from 630 billion dollars in 2023 to 1.16 trillion dollars in 2030 and reach 1.79 trillion dollars in 2035, or average annual growth of 9%, which would benefit leaders in space transport such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab, as well as Redwire, which specializes in equipment and systems for space operations. Rocket Lab recently won a 266 million dollar contract from the U.S. Space Force for a missile-defense test launch mission, plus another contract worth 397 million dollars to build satellites that detect and track targets from space. Although bottom-line profit may not yet be strong in this period, the revenue trend and the value of work in hand, or backlog, are growing very strongly, reflecting robust demand. The Bloomberg Consensus sets a target price of 3.66 baht per DR, which is seen as leaving room for further upside of as much as 50%.

Rocket Lab has secured $1.94 billion through an at-the-market share sale to fund its planned Iridium acquisition, replacing a planned $3.6 billion bridge facility and reducing its need for debt financing at the cost of a higher share count. The company also added to its order pipeline with a $190 million award for 20 HASTE hypersonic test flights and a separate $266 million Space Force contract covering at least 12 suborbital missions, and it was selected by Viasat to provide a satellite bus for a protected communications program. Rocket Lab has completed 96 Electron launches, including 17 missions this year. Raymond James initiated coverage with an $80 price target, citing growth opportunities and a potential path toward positive EBITDA and free cash flow by 2027 or 2028, though the company still reports negative free cash flow and operating losses. Shares climbed about 2% Tuesday as investors weighed the defense awards, satellite work and financing progress.

SpaceX has stopped selling rideshare missions on its Falcon 9 rocket, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Some companies have been unable to secure Falcon 9 flights after 2028, and there is a rush to book launches as SpaceX winds down its flagship vehicle while rivals try to ramp up. The move is contributing to a rocket-supply crunch that is prompting a scramble across the space industry, with companies hunting for new ways to get satellites and spacecraft deployed as many rockets under development fall behind schedule. Some executives are pursuing costly strategies to ensure they can fly, such as building their own rockets or potentially acquiring a rocket company, and prices for many missions are rising.

Rocket Lab shares jumped 8.2% in the afternoon session after Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated an Overweight rating and a $122 price target on the stock. Analyst Andres Sheppard said the firm remains bullish and views current price levels as an attractive entry point, with the target implying roughly 89% upside. Sheppard pointed to two primary upcoming catalysts: the maiden launch of Rocket Lab's Neutron medium-lift rocket and the completion of the Iridium acquisition. Cantor Fitzgerald also cited the company's operational execution following its 96th Electron mission, highlighting its dedicated launchpads, diverse customer base, expanding rocket portfolio and proven space launch track record as significant competitive moats. Rocket Lab shares are down 8.2% since the start of the year and, at $69.79, trade 53.5% below their 52-week high of $150.23 set in May 2026.

SpaceX is targeting Sept. 28 for Starship Flight 14, six days later than its original Sept. 22 target, a mission designed to attempt a full orbit around Earth and deploy operational Starlink V3 satellites. The flight would mark a step beyond previous Starship tests, which did not attempt full orbital operations. Starlink remains the more established part of the business, providing recurring revenue that helps fund SpaceX's capital-intensive ventures, while the company's AI computing segment posted revenues of $2.56 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 247.5% year over year, with compute revenues of $2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $1.15 billion. Management expects compute capacity to exceed 2 gigawatts by year-end and 10 gigawatts by 2027 end, even as second-quarter 2026 capital expenditures reached approximately $18.4 billion, including about $15.8 billion for AI compute infrastructure, and the company reported a $541 million net loss. SpaceX carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and a Value Score of F, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate projects a loss of 15 cents per share for 2026 followed by earnings of $1.63 per share in 2027.

Raymond James launched coverage of Rocket Lab Corporation on September 11 with an Outperform rating and an $80 price target, implying roughly 29% upside from current levels. Analyst Brian Gesuale framed Rocket Lab as an emerging, vertically integrated space platform spanning launch, spacecraft, components, payloads and optical communications, and projected a path to positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow by 2027-2028. The firm flagged two upside drivers beyond the core launch business: Neutron, Rocket Lab's medium-lift reusable rocket, which is now under testing with launch pad delivery scheduled for the fourth quarter and is expected to expand its addressable market in 2027, and its push into satellite operations and optical communications through its completed $155.3 million purchase of Mynaric in April 2026 and its pending roughly $8 billion acquisition of Iridium Communications, which would bring Iridium's operating satellite network, L-band spectrum and more than 2.55 million billable subscribers. Raymond James also cited substantial execution risk, including aggressive Street gross-margin assumptions, the complexity of transitioning Neutron from development to commercialization, and the integration risk of absorbing both Iridium and Mynaric, with the Iridium deal still seeking regulatory approval. On the launch side, Rocket Lab completed its 16th Electron mission of 2026 on September 11, launching an Earth-observation satellite into a 500-kilometer low-Earth orbit for a confidential customer from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, and added another Electron mission on September 19 to reach 96 total launches, closing in on its annual record of 21 set in 2025. Institutional ownership rose from 43 funds in the first quarter to 52 in the second for Rocket Lab, and from 31 to 37 for Iridium.