Kuaizhou Aerospace

Blue Origin

Rockets +1

Blue Origin is a privately held aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos that develops reusable launch vehicles, rocket engines, lunar landers, in-space mobility systems, and satellite communications infrastructure. Its current programs span the New Shepard suborbital system, the New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, the BE-4 engine family that also powers ULA's Vulcan, the Blue Moon lunar lander family, the Blue Ring spacecraft platform, and the TeraWave network. The FAA closed its NG-3 mishap investigation and lifted the New Glenn grounding on May 22, 2026 - pinning the BlueBird 7 deployment failure on a cryogenic leak that froze a hydraulic line - but six days later, on May 28, a New Glenn exploded during a hotfire at Cape Canaveral's LC-36, destroying the transporter-erector at Blue Origin's only New Glenn pad. CEO Dave Limp said the rocket will fly again before year-end via a hybrid horizontal-integration/crane-erect path that skips replacing the destroyed transporter-erector, with the propellant farm, a second flight-ready booster, and three upper stages intact; on July 24, 2026 NASA and Blue Origin agreed to conduct New Glenn second-stage (GS2) hot fire testing at Stennis Space Center's B-2 stand beginning this fall while LC-36 recovers, and NASA's Pegasus barge is due at Kennedy Space Center around August 10-12, 2026 to carry the completed GS2 to Stennis. The Blue Moon MK1 'Endurance' cargo lunar lander has completed thermal vacuum testing at NASA Johnson, but with New Glenn grounded its launch to the Moon has slipped from a fall-2026 target to early 2027. Separately, a February 2026 NASA Artemis architecture overhaul reassigned the crewed Blue Moon Mark 2 lander to compete with SpaceX's Starship for the program's first Moon landing (now targeted for Artemis IV, as soon as early 2028) following a 2027 crewed low-Earth-orbit docking test on the restructured Artemis III. In a landmark shift after 26 years of near-total self-funding (roughly $30B cumulative), Blue Origin raised about $10B at a $130B valuation in July 2026 - its first-ever outside round, led by Coatue (~$4B) with Jeff Bezos adding ~$2B - to bankroll Limp's target cadence of roughly 100 launches a year against an estimated ~$4.8B 2026 spend. The company broke ground on a new ~120,000-square-foot Cape Canaveral payload processing facility on August 31, 2026, and on September 1, 2026 NASA awarded it a $700M contract to build and deliver a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter - built on the Blue Ring platform - by December 31, 2028, extending Blue Origin's business beyond Earth-orbit launch and lunar landers into deep-space communications infrastructure.

Boeing

Rockets +1

Boeing is one of the world's largest aerospace companies, spanning commercial airplanes, defense and space systems, and aftermarket services. The 2026 turnaround gathered pace through the first half of the year: 314 commercial deliveries in H1 2026 (its best first half since 2018), a Q2 net loss of $428M on $24.6B of revenue that nonetheless produced the company's first positive free cash flow quarter (+$631M) in over a year, and a record total backlog of $715B including more than 6,200 commercial aircraft. The 737 MAX line reached rate 47 per month in May 2026 and gained a fourth final-assembly line - the Everett 'North Line' - in July, with rate 52 targeted for early 2027. At the Farnborough Airshow (July 20-24, 2026) Boeing booked 170+ aircraft led by SMBC's 100-jet 737 MAX order, while the long-delayed 777X neared its certification finish line even as Emirates declined to accept the first 10-11 early-build 777-9s over their age and GE Aerospace temporarily paused GE9X engine shipments pending a durability fix. The FAA certified the 737 MAX 7 on August 3, 2026, clearing the smallest MAX variant after nearly a decade of review, and on August 10 Boeing agreed to sell its Wisk Aero, Insitu, and SkyGrid subsidiaries to Archer Aviation for a near-20% equity stake. July's delivery pace cooled to 53 aircraft (down 17% from June and now trailing Airbus by 51 aircraft year-to-date, 367 vs 418), and on August 21 Boeing's roughly 17,000 SPEEA-represented engineers and technicians rejected the tentative contract their own bargaining councils declined to endorse (64.3% and 71.9% against, respectively) and authorized a strike if no new deal is reached before the current contracts expire October 6. Boeing shares fell about 7.5% on the news, cutting market cap to roughly $170B (from ~$183B in mid-August). On August 26 the FAA finalized an airworthiness directive requiring inspections of certain 787 Dreamliners over shim gaps at lower side-of-body splice plates. Boeing remains one of the two central global commercial-jet manufacturers alongside Airbus, with its trajectory now hinging on sustaining the 737 ramp without reintroducing defects, closing out 737 MAX 10 certification, avoiding an engineers' strike, and steering the 777X's remaining ETOPS testing toward 2027 certification.

CASC

Rockets +1

China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) is the state-owned prime contractor for China's space program and the world's most prolific launch organization by missions flown. Wholly owned by the central government through SASAC and led by chairman Chen Mingbo, it develops and operates the Long March (Changzheng) rocket family - which flew its 661st cumulative mission on August 4, 2026, delivering a 23rd batch of GuoWang broadband satellites - along with the Shenzhou crewed spacecraft, Tianzhou cargo vehicles, the Tiangong space station, BeiDou navigation and GuoWang broadband satellites, the Chang'e lunar and Tianwen planetary probes, and China's strategic missiles. After a national-record 73 launches in 2025, CASC is targeting over 100 launches in 2026 amid an industry-wide national push toward ~140, debuted the partially reusable Long March 12B in June 2026, and saw its Tianwen-2 probe reach the quasi-moon asteroid Kamo'oalewa on July 6, 2026. On July 10, 2026 it made China the second nation ever to recover an orbital rocket first stage, when the new single-stick, partially reusable Long March 10B flew its maiden mission from Hainan and captured its booster in a sea-based net - a landmark step toward closing the reusability gap with SpaceX, with a reflight of the recovered booster still targeted before the end of 2026. That momentum was interrupted on August 10, 2026, when a Long March 7A broke apart shortly after liftoff and lost its satellite payload - only the vehicle's second failure ever - triggering an engine investigation that put a question mark over the timing of Chang'e 7; CASC kept other Long March variants flying through the investigation, with a Long March 5B launching an eighth GuoWang satellite batch on August 13, 2026, and on August 19, 2026 rolled the Chang'e-7 probe and its Long March 5 (Y14) rocket out to the Wenchang pad ahead of a planned August 24, 2026 launch, but the mission was then postponed by Typhoon Narra and, per an August 23 China Manned Space Agency statement, cannot fly within the 2026 window at all - multiple outlets report a possible slip into 2027 - with no root cause or formal fleet clearance yet announced for the 7A investigation either. CASC is also advancing the triple-core Long March 10 toward a crewed Moon landing before 2030: the Long March 10A's own orbital debut is separately reported to carry a lunar navigation satellite ahead of the uncrewed Mengzhou 1 capsule test, still targeted around September 2026 but flagged in one report as at risk of slipping into early 2027.

Firefly Aerospace

Rockets +1

Firefly Aerospace is a public space and defense company that launches the Alpha small-lift rocket, is co-developing the Eclipse medium-lift vehicle with Northrop Grumman, flies Blue Ghost lunar landers, and builds Elytra orbital vehicles for maneuvering, communications, imaging, and other cislunar services. After becoming the first commercial company to complete a fully successful Moon landing, Firefly expanded further into defense software and data systems through its SciTec acquisition, which won a U.S. Space Force Space-Based Interceptor OTA agreement in May 2026 and a $5.5M Air Force CBC2 data-fusion option in June 2026 as part of the Golden Dome architecture. Firefly doubled its Cedar Park campus to 144,000 sq ft to industrialize Blue Ghost and Elytra production, closed a 12M-share follow-on at $48/share on June 1, 2026, and - per June 23, 2026 Reuters reporting - is set to secure a ~$110M EXIM loan to fund further Texas production expansion. In July 2026 Firefly also won a $13M NASA JPL subcontract - the first out of its new Gloworks innovation lab - to build the aeroshell for NASA's SkyFall Mars helicopter mission, extending it into planetary entry-descent-and-landing hardware. On August 11, 2026 Firefly reported record Q2 2026 revenue of $117.7M (up 659% YoY, its first quarter above $100M) and ~$1.5B backlog, reaffirmed full-year guidance of $420M-$450M, and said the first full Alpha Block II flight (Flight 8) has slipped from a late-summer target to Q4 2026. The same day SciTec won a $93.7M Space Force contract to digitize ground-based radar systems and Firefly extended its Lockheed Martin multi-launch deal to up to 25 Alpha missions through 2031; CEO Jason Kim said in late August that Alpha production is at an all-time high even as launch cadence continues to lag sustained, industry-wide demand for launch capacity.

Relativity Space

Rockets +1

Relativity Space, led by CEO Eric Schmidt, is building Terran R, a reusable medium-to-heavy-lift rocket aimed at commercial, government, national-security, and telecommunications missions. After flying Terran 1 as a 3D-printing pathfinder in 2023, the company shifted fully to Terran R, pairing large-scale additive manufacturing with conventional structures for scale and cost. As of mid-August 2026 Relativity is in integrated vehicle build and testing - the stage-one structural qualification campaign is complete (420 pressure cycles, 62 load cases, and 4.3 million lbf of axial compression), the first flight-ready second stage has completed cryoproof and COPV manifold proof testing at NASA Stennis Space Center's A-2 test stand (marking the stand's formal activation), and all Flight 1 engines - the 13 Aeon R first-stage engines plus the Aeon V second-stage engine - have completed acceptance testing, with the first Aeon R engines now being installed onto the thrust structure at Long Beach. The LC-16 Horizontal Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral is structurally complete and pad infrastructure (water tower, flame diverter, lightning protection towers, transporter-erector) continues to come online, against a backlog of roughly $3 billion across 12+ customers including OneWeb Gen-2 and SES. In June 2026 NASA selected Relativity to privately develop a Mars orbiter (carrying NASA's Aeolus instruments, targeting a 2028 launch), and on July 7, 2026 the U.S. Space Force added Relativity Federal to the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 national-security launch pool. On July 21, 2026 Relativity and Space Florida unveiled a statewide expansion anchored by a planned $350 million advanced-manufacturing and R&D campus in Titusville (room for more than 2,000 employees) to scale Terran R production alongside the company's Long Beach, California plant, and the company continues active engineering hiring. Terran R's first launch is targeted for the second half of 2026, though some industry observers expect a slip into 2027.

Rocket Lab

Rockets +1

Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company spanning launch, hypersonic test launch, spacecraft, payloads, satellite components, laser optical communications, and space robotics, with total headcount reaching 3,217 by the end of Q2 2026 after the Mynaric and Motiv acquisitions. Electron remains the second most frequently launched U.S. rocket - Rocket Lab reached 94 missions with the September 2, 2026 'Owl Around the World' Synspective StriX launch, following the August 21 'Lightning God Defends' iQPS flight, putting it on track for a record year and its 100th launch - and Rocket Lab is developing the medium-lift Neutron rocket for constellation, national-security, and exploration missions; first launch is still guided to Q4 2026, though CEO Peter Beck told analysts on the August 10 earnings call that the end-of-year window is narrowing and a slip into 2027 is a real possibility. The company posted record Q1 2026 revenue of $200.3M and record Q2 2026 revenue of $234M (+62% YoY), guiding to $250M-$265M in Q3 2026 revenue, and completed the $155.3M Mynaric and the Motiv Space Systems acquisitions in April and May 2026 to add laser comms, a European footprint, and Mars-proven robotics in-house. On May 27, 2026 Rocket Lab cleared the System Requirements Review for the Space Development Agency's $816M Tracking Layer Tranche 3 missile-defense constellation, taking total SDA awards above $1.3B, and on June 22, 2026 the company joined the Nasdaq-100 Index. On June 29, 2026 Rocket Lab announced its largest-ever deal - an agreement to acquire satellite-communications operator Iridium Communications for about $8B in cash and stock ($54.00/share, roughly half cash and half Rocket Lab stock), adding an operational 66-satellite L-band constellation, ~2.55M subscribers, $871M of 2025 revenue, and globally harmonized spectrum; the deal has since cleared U.S. antitrust review, Rocket Lab filed a Form S-4 registration statement and a $1.94B at-the-market equity program to help fund the cash portion and reduce its $3.6B bridge loan, and Iridium stockholders are set to vote at a September 24, 2026 special meeting, with closing still expected in mid-2027. On July 27, 2026 Rocket Lab won a $266M U.S. Space Force RSLP contract for 12 (plus an option for six more) HASTE suborbital missile-defense launches through 2028, opening a fourth launch pad at Kodiak, Alaska, and on August 4, 2026 the U.S. Space Force awarded Rocket Lab a $397M contract under the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator program to build, launch on the still-unflown Neutron rocket, and operate 'Flatellite' tracking satellites. Rocket Lab also added a second GEO satellite production award (Viasat's PTS-G program, August 17), was onboarded to the Space Force's $981M-ceiling NITE-STAR space test infrastructure IDIQ (August 17), and was selected for the Space Force's Space Data Network Consortium with $12M in initial delivery orders (August 18). On August 10, 2026 Rocket Lab reported record Q2 backlog of $2.36B and unveiled GHOST, a containerized Deployable Launch System giving Electron and HASTE launch-anywhere responsive capability, with its first site standing up at Kodiak, Alaska.