Orbital Economy

Axiom Space

Private

Axiom Space, founded in Houston in 2016 by former NASA ISS program manager Michael Suffredini and entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian, is the leading commercial human-spaceflight company, built around three lines of business: private astronaut missions to the ISS, the Axiom Station commercial space station, and next-generation spacesuits. It flew Ax-1, the first all-private crewed mission to the ISS, in April 2022, and has since flown four missions carrying 16 astronauts - most recently Ax-4 (June–July 2025), which returned India, Poland, and Hungary to human spaceflight; NASA has ordered a fifth mission (Ax-5) for no earlier than January 2027. In 2020 NASA awarded Axiom a $140 million contract to attach the first commercial module to the ISS, and in September 2022 a $228.5 million task order (under a contract worth up to $1.26 billion) to build the Artemis moonwalking spacesuit, the AxEMU - Axiom became NASA's sole suit developer after Collins Aerospace was descoped in 2024, though a NASA OIG report in April 2026 warned the suit could slip to 2031. The company hit severe financial turbulence in late 2024 - roughly 100 layoffs, voluntary 20% pay cuts, and late payments to contractors including SpaceX - followed by rapid CEO churn (Suffredini out August 2024, Ghaffarian interim, Tejpaul Bhatia April–October 2025, then NASA-veteran astrophysicist Jonathan Cirtain). In December 2024 it re-sequenced station assembly to launch a Payload Power Thermal Module first (NET 2027) so a free-flying station could form as early as 2028. Finances have since stabilized: a $100M round at a ~$2B valuation (March 2025), $100M from Hungary's 4iG (December 2025), and an oversubscribed $525M+ round closed June 2026 with Qatar Investment Authority, Type One Ventures, and MUFG Bank. With ~700 employees, Axiom launched its first two orbital data center nodes in January 2026 and is competing for NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations Phase 2 award expected in spring 2027.

Blue Origin

Active

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. 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. 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.

CASC

State-Owned (SASAC)

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, it develops and operates the Long March (Changzheng) rocket family - which flew its 650th cumulative mission on June 11, 2026 - 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 June 7, 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. It is preparing to fly Chang'e 7 to the lunar south pole no earlier than August 2026 while advancing the triple-core Long March 10 toward a crewed Moon landing before 2030.

Firefly Aerospace

Public (NASDAQ: FLY)

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. Q1 2026 revenue was $80.9M against $1.3B of backlog, 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 as it prepares the first full Alpha Block II flight (Flight 8) for late summer 2026. 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.

Rocket Lab

Public (NASDAQ: RKLB)

Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company spanning launch, hypersonic test launch, spacecraft, payloads, satellite components, and now laser optical communications and space robotics. Electron remains the second most frequently launched U.S. rocket - Rocket Lab reached 92 missions with the July 1, 2026 'Grain Goddess' launch of iQPS' QPS-SAR-13 radar satellite, 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, with first launch still targeted for Q4 2026. The company posted record Q1 2026 revenue of $200.3M and backlog above $2.2B, completed the $155.3M Mynaric acquisition in April 2026 to add laser comms and a European footprint, and closed the Motiv Space Systems robotics acquisition in May 2026 to bring 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, with the transaction expected to close in mid-2027.

SpaceX

Active

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) designs, manufactures, and launches reusable rockets and spacecraft. The company operates Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Dragon, Starlink, and the government-focused Starshield line while continuing to develop Starship for high-cadence heavy-lift missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Starlink crossed 12 million customers across 160+ countries on June 4, 2026 and the constellation now exceeds 10,400 working satellites in orbit. Following the February 2026 xAI merger, SpaceX also operates the Memphis Colossus 1 supercomputer as an AI hyperscaler - disclosing roughly $70B+ of contracted compute revenue across an Anthropic deal ($1.25B/month through May 2029) and a Google deal ($920M/month from October 2026 through June 2029). SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history on June 12, 2026, debuting on Nasdaq under ticker SPCX at its fixed $135-per-share price for a roughly $1.77 trillion valuation and about $75B in proceeds, with Elon Musk retaining ~82% voting control, though SPCX has since traded below its IPO price (~$115 in late July 2026). Starship returned to flight after the FAA closed the Flight 12 mishap investigation on July 13, 2026: on July 24, 2026 Flight 13 - the second flight of the Version 3 vehicle - deployed the program's first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites and made the softest ship splashdown yet.

Voyager Technologies

Public

Voyager Technologies is a Denver-based defense-technology and space-infrastructure company best known for leading Starlab, the international joint venture building a commercial successor to the International Space Station. Founded in October 2019 by Dylan Taylor as Voyager Space Holdings, the company grew by rolling up twelve space and defense firms - including Altius Space Machines and Pioneer Astronautics (2020), The Launch Company, Valley Tech Systems and Nanoracks (2021), Space Micro (2022), ZIN Technologies (2023), and Estes Energetics, ExoTerra Resource and LEOcloud (2025). Through Nanoracks it owns the Bishop Airlock, the first and only permanent commercial module on the ISS, operating since December 2020. Starlab won a $160M NASA Commercial LEO Destinations award in December 2021 (later raised to $217.5M) and evolved into Starlab Space LLC, a US-led JV with Airbus, Mitsubishi Corporation and MDA Space, with Palantir supplying station software, Hilton designing crew quarters and Northrop Grumman providing Cygnus resupply. The single-launch, 8-meter-class station - with roughly half the ISS's pressurized volume - is contracted to fly on SpaceX's Starship, now targeted for 2029, and completed its Commercial Critical Design Review with NASA in February 2026, clearing the way for flight manufacturing. Voyager rebranded to Voyager Technologies in early 2025 to emphasize national security and went public on NYSE in June 2025, raising $382.8M and briefly touching a ~$3.8B valuation. Its Defense & National Security segment - solid and electric propulsion, energetics, signals intelligence and communications - is its fastest-growing business and put it on the Anduril-led team named among the Space Force's Golden Dome space-based-interceptor awardees in April 2026. On July 13, 2026 it closed its acquisition of Pittsburgh lunar-lander developer Astrobotic Technology ($162M cash and stock plus up to $129M in earnouts and $9M assumed debt) and, the same day, disclosed a roughly $298M NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services task order won under the deal - funding Astrobotic's Peregrine-2 lander to carry three NASA payloads to the Moon's Gruithuisen Domes in 2028 - adding an end-to-end lunar business alongside space stations and defense. As of late July 2026 Voyager trades near an $1.8B market cap, posted $166.4M of 2025 revenue (net loss $116.1M), guides to $230-255M for 2026 on a record $275.3M backlog, and awaits NASA's CLD Phase 2 competition, whose draft RFP was released July 7, 2026 (industry feedback due July 27).