Launch Services & Propulsion

Firefly Aerospace Inc. was awarded a Spacecraft Processing Operations Contract from NASA on August 17, a multiple-award contract that also includes All Points Logistics, Blue Origin, and L3Harris Technologies and carries a total ceiling value of $100 million with an ordering period extending through February 2033. The contract positions Firefly to compete for task orders providing payload processing facilities and services for NASA missions launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base. "Reliable access to space depends on more than rockets — it depends on the infrastructure that gets payloads ready to fly," said Adam Oakes, Vice President of Launch at Firefly Aerospace. Two days later, on August 19, Firefly announced it is onboarding Zeno Power to its upcoming Blue Ghost lunar mission to demonstrate radioisotope technologies designed to survive the lunar night. On September 9, Firefly signed a multi-launch agreement with SSC Space for two Alpha rocket launches from Sweden's Esrange Space Center.

NASA has awarded SpaceX a $946 million contract for three additional astronaut missions to the International Space Station, extending the company's crewed flights to the orbiting laboratory through 2030. The award brings SpaceX's total NASA astronaut missions under the contract to 17 and raises its total value to $5.92 billion. The contract covers astronaut and spacecraft preparations, launches, in-space mission operations, crew returns and capsule recovery, and also includes transporting supplies and keeping the spacecraft at the station as an emergency escape vehicle. NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to develop spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to the station, and SpaceX's role has grown after Boeing's Starliner encountered problems during its 2024 crewed test flight, which returned the capsule without its crew while astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams came home aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon after their planned 10-day mission stretched beyond nine months. NASA said it wants both companies operating crew flights so a technical problem or accident involving one provider does not interrupt US access to the station.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas reiterated a Buy rating and $300 price target on SpaceX, implying roughly 99% upside, as investors await Starship's first orbital test on September 22. The 14th Starship flight is expected to send the vehicle into orbit and deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites, tying the launch directly to one of SpaceX's biggest growth businesses. CEO Elon Musk has said Starlink V3 deployment will begin in September and that the next-generation satellites could eventually deliver more than 100 times the bandwidth of the current constellation. Bernstein analyst Douglas Harned maintained an Outperform rating with a $248 target, implying about 64% upside, and said gaining Starship reusability to enable orbital data centers remains most important for SpaceX's valuation; he expects the Connectivity business to generate more than $100 billion in EBITDA by 2031. William Blair analyst Louis DiPalma called the latest deal SpaceXAI's fourth compute agreement in the past four months exceeding $11 billion in ARR, while Wall Street's average SpaceX price target stands at $232.07, implying about 54% upside.

Baron Capital holds roughly $25 billion in SpaceX shares, and founder Ron Baron projects that Starlink alone can grow into a $1 trillion revenue line within a decade. SpaceX, trading under the ticker SPCX, closed at $150.88 on September 16, 2026, up 5.15% on the session but down 6.26% from its post-IPO reference, with a market capitalization near $1.16 trillion. SpaceX's Q2 connectivity revenue reached $4.29 billion, up 66% year over year, with enterprise and government revenue inside that line growing 108%, even as consumer ARPU slipped from $85 to $66. Baron's model rests on expanding the constellation to 100,000 satellites, with each generation deorbited every five years and replaced by hardware ten times more capable, a plan that depends on Starship V3 cutting the cost to orbit by 99% or more. SpaceX spent $18.37 billion on capex in Q2 alone, including $15.83 billion on AI compute, and placed a $25 billion inaugural investment-grade bond issuance to fund the buildout, according to Baron Capital. GAO researchers reviewing space-based data centers in April 2026 flagged that cooling at scale remains unproven because heat disperses poorly in the vacuum of space, and that on-orbit servicing is underdeveloped, undercutting Baron's claim that orbital compute costs just $2 one time. The near-term milestone to watch is the Starship V3 test-flight cadence, since a launch-economics breakthrough is the single variable that decides whether the 100,000-satellite plan is arithmetic or fiction.

SpaceX is aiming for September 22nd for its Starship Flight 14, which will mark the vehicle's first attempt to reach full orbit. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during a virtual appearance at the All-In Summit that Flight 14 will be the last before the company attempts to catch the ship, with that catch attempt planned for Flight 15, and that SpaceX will more likely re-fly both the ship and the booster early next year. Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, with a payload capacity of 200 metric tons and an expected cost of between $2 and $5 million per flight, compared with roughly $20 million per flight for the partially reusable Falcon 9. Ark Invest's Cathie Wood predicted each Starship launch could generate $1 billion in revenue, with Musk aiming for 10,000 flights per year, or $10 trillion in Starship revenues, by 2030, and said that if SpaceX achieves this goal its $1.75 trillion IPO will be considered a deep value opportunity in hindsight. Musk replied to the thread saying, "It's not impossible."

Cathie Wood says SpaceX had no need for public markets until Elon Musk's push into orbital AI data centers forced it to raise outside capital. The ARK Invest CEO told Livewire she never thought SpaceX would go public, but that Musk now needs the scaling the public equity markets provide. SpaceX's Connectivity business, primarily Starlink, generated $4.42 billion in operating income in 2025, while its AI business lost $6.36 billion, and the equation shifted further when SpaceX acquired Musk's xAI in February. SpaceX raised about $85.7 billion in its June IPO and told investors the proceeds would help fund AI compute infrastructure alongside launch systems and satellite capacity, with AI capital spending reaching $15.83 billion in the second quarter, about 86% of total quarterly capex, according to company filings. SpaceX argues orbital computing could sidestep constraints on terrestrial data centers such as electricity, land, cooling water and permitting by tapping solar energy in orbit, though Microsoft's Project Natick showed a technically successful underwater data center that was never scaled commercially, and Kalshi puts the chance of a 1-megawatt orbital data center going live before 2031 at 30%, with $46,000 traded on the market. Musk said he is highly confident SpaceX will launch AI computers from Nvidia into orbit in 2027, with significant scale expected in 2028.

SpaceX shares rose 5.1% to $151 in mid-morning trading Wednesday, pushing the stock back above the $150 level it first reached when it began trading June 12 following an IPO priced at $135. The catalyst was fresh policy news: U.S. defense officials confirmed on-orbit space-control weapons and highlighted progress on the Golden Dome interceptor program, tied to multibillion-dollar SpaceX contracts awarded earlier this year, pointing investors toward Starshield, SpaceX's national security satellite business, which already holds more than $6 billion in multi-year Space Force contracts for LEO-based communications and sensing. The Pentagon's FY 2027 budget request carries a $17.9 billion Golden Dome line item covering advanced space-based and terrestrial sensors, command and control, kinetic interceptors, and next-generation non-kinetic programs, and SpaceX is the only operator with a proliferated LEO constellation at production scale. The fundamental backdrop supports the move: the August 4 8-K showed Q2 revenue of $7.81 billion, beating the $6.82 billion consensus by 15%, with EPS of -$0.09 versus the -$0.29 estimate, Starlink subscribers doubling to 12.0 million, connectivity revenue up 66% year over year, and enterprise and government revenue climbing 108% on airline partnerships and Starshield contracts. Traditional missile-defense primes Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Northrop Grumman all sit inside the Golden Dome supply chain for interceptors, sensors, and integration, while pure-play space names like Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile tend to move with SpaceX headlines; SpaceX carries a $47.50 billion backlog and $93.52 billion in cash, alongside $18.37 billion in quarterly capex, $15.83 billion of which went into AI compute, with a market cap of roughly $1.16 trillion. Even after Wednesday's rally, SPCX trades 33% below its intraday high of $226 on June 16, and the tell into the close is whether it can hold above $151 and turn the IPO open price into support rather than a ceiling, with the next Starship V3 test flight, any Pentagon follow-on Starshield task orders, and updates on the pending $60 billion Cursor acquisition expected to close in Q3 as near-term catalysts.

SpaceX stock climbed 5% to $151.12 after Barron's reported the company plans to fly Starship again on September 22, in what would be the first attempt to place the vehicle's upper stage into stable Earth orbit. The move was SpaceX-specific rather than a sector rally: Rocket Lab sat at $63.75, up 0.3%, AST SpaceMobile was at $59.27, up 0.85%, and the Procure Space ETF was up 0.8% at $43.21, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust rose 0.3% to $759.99. Starship has flown twice since SpaceX began trading in June, and both attempts stayed suborbital; reaching stable Earth orbit is the threshold at which the vehicle can begin revenue flights instead of ferrying test articles. Separately, ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood projected Starship could generate $10 trillion in annual revenue by the end of the decade and called SpaceX's $1.75 trillion valuation a bargain, a forecast that assumes essentially every flight carries Starlink capacity at a flight rate far above anything Starship has achieved. SpaceX shares remain down 7% since they began trading in June, and the September 22 attempt is the next real information point for the stock.

Berenberg analyst Michael Filatov issued Buy ratings on Rocket Lab USA and AST SpaceMobile, arguing that falling launch costs have pushed the space economy past $500bn in 2025 and put it on track to exceed $1trn by 2030. Filatov set an $83 price target on Rocket Lab, implying 33% upside, citing the company's vertically integrated launch, manufacturing and applications model, a record $2.36 billion backlog at the end of 2Q26 that was up 137% year-over-year, and 2Q26 revenue of $234 million, up 62% year-over-year and more than $3 million above forecast, alongside a GAAP loss of $0.08 per share. Rocket Lab's Electron rocket has made 95 launches to date, including 16 in 2026, and the company has pushed the first launch of its larger Neutron rocket to early next year, with delivery to the launch pad during 4Q26. For AST SpaceMobile, Filatov set a $92 target, implying 53% upside, pointing to its BlueBird satellite constellation, more than 60 mobile network operator partnerships covering roughly 3 billion subscribers, and a $1.3 billion revenue backlog, though the company's 2Q26 GAAP loss of $0.77 per share missed estimates by $0.48. Rocket Lab carries a Strong Buy consensus with a $110.13 average target, while AST SpaceMobile holds a Moderate Buy consensus with an $88.98 average target.

SpaceX's Starfall, a business that returns manufactured goods from Earth orbit, has signed a mission contract with European integrator company Space Cargo, securing the venture's first customer. Space Cargo CEO Nicolas Gaume told Reuters that the company aims to conduct an atmospheric reentry in 2028 as the first commercial mission of SpaceX's giant spacecraft Starship, and that it plans to use Starfall, a disc-shaped capsule designed to carry materials to low orbit and return them to Earth. Luxembourg-based Space Cargo plans to install its BentoBox system aboard Starfall, establishing itself as an integrator in the SpaceX program and planning to sign many more similar missions going forward. Gaume said, "With current systems we transport 200 kilograms, but using Starship and Starfall, we will be able to transport in tons. That is exactly what we are aiming for."

Elon Musk said he is highly confident SpaceX will begin launching Nvidia-powered AI computers into orbit in 2027. The systems would use Nvidia's Vera Rubin NVL72 platform, which combines 72 Rubin GPUs with 36 Vera CPUs and advanced networking hardware, and SpaceX has already said it plans to use Nvidia chips exclusively for its computing infrastructure. The company is targeting its first orbital-computing satellites next year, with significantly larger deployments expected during 2028, by modifying the same spacecraft platform used for SpaceX's V3 Starlink satellites so that instead of communications equipment they carry computing hardware and additional solar-generation capacity. SpaceX is betting orbit could eventually provide another place to build compute as AI companies are increasingly constrained by power, land and data-center capacity on Earth. For investors, 2027 will be the first meaningful test, and if SpaceX can successfully launch and operate Nvidia-powered computing satellites, Nvidia could gain an entirely new infrastructure market while SpaceX moves closer to turning orbital AI from an engineering experiment into a commercial business.

Michael Dell's family office and Sequence Holdings teamed up to acquire Baldwin Insurance Group Inc. in an all-cash deal valued at $7.7 billion, sending shares of Baldwin, ticker BWIN, moving. SpaceX shares moved after Chief Executive Elon Musk said Sunday on social media platform X that he is "highly confident" the company will launch Nvidia's Vera Rubin NLV72 artificial intelligence computers in space next year. Oracle shares fell as Chairman Larry Ellison canceled his plan to sell as many as 50 million shares in the tech company, a holding worth $7.5 billion.

Early-stage defense and space companies are increasingly turning to SPAC mergers to go public this year, drawn by flexible capital and a faster route to market amid surging investor interest in the sector. Six defense, space or satellite-related companies have announced SPAC mergers so far this year, accounting for about 10% of all deals, up from three in all of 2025, according to SPACInsider data. U.S. defense firm Ursa Major, which develops propulsion systems for missiles and rockets, agreed to a $2.3-billion SPAC deal last month, and CEO Chris Spagnoletti told Reuters that customer demand was outpacing industry supply and the transaction would provide capital to close that gap. At least seven other defense and space companies have gone public through traditional IPOs so far in 2026, according to LSEG data, while nine SPACs are currently seeking defense or space targets with about $2.35 billion held in trust, SPACInsider CEO Kristi Marvin said. National security has taken center stage as the Trump administration seeks to strengthen U.S. defenses, with President Donald Trump proposing a sharp increase in 2027 U.S. defense spending to a national defense budget totaling about $1.5 trillion, up from the enacted budget of $901 billion in 2026.

SES announced the successful launch of its eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth O3b mPOWER satellites, completing its second-generation medium Earth orbit constellation. The three satellites lifted off at 2:49 pm local time aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. They join the 10 O3b mPOWER spacecraft already in operation, bringing the full constellation to 13 satellites offering services ranging from tens of Mbps to multiple gigabits per second of capacity to any site. CEO Adel Al-Saleh called the launch a defining milestone that reinforces SES's ability to deliver resilient, secure and scalable connectivity for governments, enterprises, cloud providers and mobility customers. The newly launched satellites are expected to become operational by mid-2027, expanding high-performance connectivity capacity in underserved and remote environments and advancing SES's next-generation MEO network strategy.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas reiterated an Overweight rating and a $300 price target on Space Exploration Technologies Corp. as the company pursues a planned $100 billion Starbase Louisiana complex. The proposed facility would house 10 launch pads across five launch complexes, part of infrastructure SpaceX is developing to support thousands of Starship launches annually. Starship is designed to offer more than four times the payload capacity of Falcon 9 while potentially cutting the cost of access to orbit by roughly 90 percent. The analyst's $300 target implies significant upside from the stock's $147 a share. The company faces substantial capital requirements for the $100 billion program, along with development, regulatory and demand risks tied to Starship. As of the end of the second quarter, 119 hedge funds held stakes in SpaceX, with VY Capital's position valued at $46.44 billion and BAMCO Inc. at $24.91 billion, while short interest stood at 184.39 million shares as of August 14, about 1.41 percent of the public float.

Jim Cramer picked Space Exploration Technologies Corp. as his fantasy flex player on the September 8 episode of Mad Money, citing the company's multi-faceted growth across rockets, Starlink and AI. SpaceX reported second-quarter total revenue of $7.8 billion, up over 90% year-over-year and beating Wall Street estimates by nearly $1 billion, with a Q2 GAAP EPS of -$0.09 that also outperformed estimates. The connectivity segment, supported by Starlink, reached 12 million subscribers, while enterprise and government demand pushed segment revenue higher, and the stock trades at roughly 50x to 68x forward sales estimates with a market capitalization hovering near $2 trillion. The company still reported a net loss of $541 million for the quarter, with quarterly capital expenditures running at nearly $18.4 billion to fund Starship manufacturing and orbital compute infrastructure alongside Connectivity and Space operations. Insider Monkey's database of over 1000 hedge funds shows 119 hedge funds held SpaceX during Q2, with VY Capital holding the most prominent position at 271.8 million shares, followed by BAMCO Inc. with nearly 145.8 million shares.

Raymond James initiated coverage of Rocket Lab USA with an Outperform rating and an $80 price target, implying roughly 29% upside, sending shares up more than 2% in premarket trading. Analyst Brian Gesuale sees Rocket Lab evolving beyond its small-launch roots into a vertically integrated space company spanning launch, spacecraft, components, payloads and optical communications, with the planned medium-lift Neutron rocket expected to expand those capabilities in 2027. The call comes as Rocket Lab completed its 16th Electron mission of 2026 on Sept. 11, deploying an Earth-observation satellite into low Earth orbit for a confidential customer, marking its 95th launch overall, with another commercial Electron mission planned before the end of September. Gesuale projects positive EBITDA and free cash flow around 2027 to 2028 as investment requirements decline, and noted that Rocket Lab's $155.3 million Mynaric acquisition expands its laser-communications capabilities, though he flagged integration as a risk. Neutron remains the most important catalyst, and delays, acquisition problems or continued heavy cash consumption would make the $80 target harder to reach.

SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said the company is targeting its first orbital compute satellites for next year, with huge amounts of compute going into space by 2028. Speaking Thursday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Tech conference, Johnsen said the timeline is far shorter than people had expected. He also said another Starship flight later this month will be revenue-generating and carry production V3 Starlink satellites. Evercore ISI analyst Kutgun Maral reiterated an Outperform rating on the stock, saying the roadmap is getting more specific but Starship cadence and reuse remain the common execution dependency across broadband, Mobile and orbital compute. SpaceX shares rallied from an intraday low of $104.83 on Aug. 3 to nearly $150 this month, against a record high of $225.64 reached shortly after its June public market debut, while its second-quarter capital expenditures of $18.4 billion came in well above analyst estimates of around $6 billion.

Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile both reported second-quarter 2026 results on August 10, 2026, with Rocket Lab posting $234.07 million in revenue, up 62.0% year over year, while AST SpaceMobile's revenue of $31.52 million missed consensus by 8.36%. Rocket Lab's backlog swelled to $2.36 billion, up 137%, with Space Systems contributing $189.5 million after the Mynaric and Motiv deals closed, and CEO Peter Beck called it another fantastic quarter. AST SpaceMobile's GAAP loss ballooned to -$0.77 per share after a $125.9 million charge tied to the BB7 launch incident, though its constellation now holds 13 spacecraft with roughly 20,000 square feet of aperture, and CEO Abel Avellan said the company is preparing to initiate beta services with select strategic partners. Rocket Lab's announced Iridium acquisition adds 66 satellites, 2.5 million subscribers, and more than $870 million in annual revenue, while its Neutron rocket, priced at a $50 to $55 million ASP, is targeting a Q4 2026 pad delivery, with Beck admitting the window for an end-of-year launch is narrowing. AST SpaceMobile has 60-plus MNO partners covering 3 billion subscribers, a preliminary $1 billion J-LEO award with Rakuten in Japan, and Block 2 satellites aimed at roughly 200 Mbps peak data rates, with Q2 capex hitting roughly $610 million. Both stocks have cooled, with RKLB down 22.56% over the past month and ASTS off 16.36%.

Asia Plus Securities issued an analysis of Amazon.com, Inc. shares, noting that Amazon announced an order for six additional satellite-launch flights from Arianespace, the European rocket-launch provider, bringing Amazon's total booked flights to 24 as it accelerates construction of its low-Earth-orbit internet satellite network, or LEO. LEO has already placed more than 400 satellites into orbit and plans to begin trial service for enterprise customers this year, but launches remain behind the goal of expanding to 7,700 satellites by 2033 to compete with SpaceX's Starlink, which has more than 11,000 satellites in orbit and plans to increase that to 15,000 by 2031. Asia Plus takes a neutral view of this news, seeing the additional flight orders as helping LEO launch satellites faster, but noting the business is still very small compared with Starlink and that LEO is likely to remain unprofitable in its early years because it focuses on providing supplementary services to Amazon Web Services cloud customers rather than outside customers. However, Asia Plus maintains a positive view on the core AWS business, whose revenue and profit are likely to keep growing, and in the short term Amazon also has a supporting factor from the planned IPO of Anthropic, with Asia Plus estimating that Amazon holds more than 10% of the investment in Anthropic. It also sees volatility in the U.S. stock market from concerns about Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes as an opportunity to gradually accumulate Amazon shares. For AMZN US, the current price is 251.89 U.S. dollars, while AMZN80 is at 2.10 baht, with a one-year target price for AMZN US of 329.82 U.S. dollars and for AMZN80 of 2.73 baht, based on the Bloomberg Consensus. Technically, AMZN80 is in a sideways trend, with support at 1.87-1.98 baht and resistance at 2.20-2.30 baht. Most recently today, September 11, 2026, at 11:29 a.m., the price of AMZN80, issued by Kiatnakin Phatra Securities Public Company Limited, was 2.10 baht, up 0.02 baht, or 0.96%, with trading value of 9.39 million baht.

Rocket Lab Corporation launched its 16th Electron rocket of the year on September 11, 2026, a dedicated mission for a confidential customer. The mission, named "Happily Ever Faster," lifted off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 3:28 p.m. NZST and successfully deployed a single Earth observation satellite to a 500km circular low Earth orbit. The launch marks Rocket Lab's 16th of the year and its 95th launch overall. Rocket Lab said its next Electron launch is scheduled from Launch Complex 1 for another commercial constellation operator before the end of the month. The company said Electron's regular and reliable launch cadence provides schedule certainty and dedicated access to space as global launch availability continues to strain the market.

Pivotal Research initiated coverage of SpaceX on September 8 with a Buy rating and a $220 price target, implying roughly 49% upside from recent trading levels. Analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak framed the entire investment case around a single variable, writing that SpaceX's roughly $2 trillion valuation rests almost entirely on Starship reusability, with each vehicle needing to fly 20 to 50 times with relatively cheap, fast refurbishment between launches. He argued that success would let SpaceX deploy far more Starlink satellite capacity and collect tolls from other companies operating in orbit, while failure would leave SpaceX "a different and much smaller company." The call lands amid a wide range of Wall Street views, with targets across 37 analysts spanning $62 to $450 and roughly three-quarters rating the stock a Buy, after SpaceX priced its June IPO at $135 a share and raised $85.7 billion in the largest public offering in history. Second-quarter capital expenditures hit $18.4 billion, including $15.83 billion for AI infrastructure, prompting Bank of America to reiterate a Buy rating and $235 target, JPMorgan to raise its target to $240, Wells Fargo to cut to $215 from $230, and Piper Sandler to lower its target to $140. More than 300 million additional SpaceX shares become eligible for sale on September 9, with a second tranche of similar size scheduled for September 24.