Satellite Mega-Constellations

SpaceX

S

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. SpaceX absorbed xAI in February 2026 and on May 20, 2026 filed a public S-1 to list on Nasdaq (ticker SPCX) at an implied valuation near $1.75 trillion. Two days later, the first Starship V3 completed a full-duration suborbital test flight (Flight 12).

CASC

S

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 passed its 600th launch in October 2025 — 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. CASC set a national record with 73 orbital launches in 2025 and is developing the partially reusable, super-heavy Long March 10 to land Chinese astronauts on the Moon before 2030.

Blue Origin

A

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. New Glenn remains grounded after NG-3's upper-stage BE-3U underperformance lost AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7, and on May 28, 2026 a New Glenn exploded during a static fire test at Cape Canaveral's LC-36 — Blue Origin's only New Glenn pad — damaging the launch complex while the company readies its first Blue Moon MK1 lunar mission.

Amazon

A

Public (NASDAQ: AMZN)

Amazon is building Amazon Leo, formerly Project Kuiper, as a low Earth orbit broadband network for customers and communities beyond the reach of existing terrestrial infrastructure. The system combines thousands of satellites with a global ground network and a three-terminal hardware lineup: Leo Nano, Leo Pro, and Leo Ultra. Amazon began enterprise preview in November 2025 and says broader service rollout will follow in 2026 as coverage and capacity increase. After LA-06 and LE-02 in late April 2026, Amazon had launched 302 production satellites, and its planned acquisition of Globalstar adds a direct-to-device path for future Leo generations.

Eutelsat OneWeb

A

Public (EPA/LSE: ETL)

Eutelsat OneWeb is the LEO connectivity business within Eutelsat Group, operating a globally deployed broadband constellation in ~1,200 km orbit. The business combines a 650+ satellite OneWeb network with Eutelsat's GEO fleet to serve government, enterprise, maritime, aviation, and telecom customers. After completing a EUR 1.5B capital raise in December 2025, Eutelsat moved into the next refresh cycle with 440 follow-on satellites procured, roughly EUR 1B of export-credit backing secured, and a central role in Europe's IRIS2 sovereign constellation program.

AST SpaceMobile

A

Public (NASDAQ: ASTS)

AST SpaceMobile is building a direct-to-cell satellite network designed to connect standard smartphones to space-based 4G and 5G service without special hardware. After proving the concept with BlueWalker 3 and launching BlueBird 1-6, the company entered 2026 with seven satellites in orbit, more than 50 mobile-network-operator partners covering nearly 3 billion subscribers, and its first meaningful revenue from gateway deliveries, MNO milestones, and government work. BlueBird 7 was lost after an April 2026 New Glenn upper-stage issue, but AST says BlueBird 8-10 are next in the queue and it is still targeting about 45 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026.

Space Epoch

B

Private

Space Epoch (箭元科技), legally Beijing Jianyuan Technology and branded 'Sepoch', is a Chinese commercial launch startup developing the Yuanxingzhe-1 ('Hiker-1') — a stainless-steel, methane–liquid oxygen, partially reusable medium-lift rocket whose sea-recovery, low-cost design draws frequent comparisons to a smaller SpaceX Starship. On May 29, 2025 it pulled off China's first sea-based vertical-takeoff/vertical-landing recovery test: a single-engine demonstrator flew a ~125-second suborbital hop to roughly 2.5 km and executed a controlled splashdown off Haiyang, Shandong, with the stainless stage recovered largely intact. Rather than build its own engines, Space Epoch buys methalox powerplants from engine maker Jiuzhou Yunjian. In January 2026 it broke ground on a 5.2 billion yuan (~$740M) sea-recovery rocket plant in Hangzhou sized for up to 25 vehicles a year, aiming to cut launch costs toward 20,000 yuan/kg. Three Yuanxingzhe-1 rockets are in production for a first orbital launch and recovery attempt targeted by the end of 2026. The company has also signed a headline-grabbing Taobao/Alibaba partnership exploring rocket-based parcel delivery and a cooperation toward a new MEO satellite constellation.

Telesat

B

Public (NASDAQ: TSAT / TSX: TSAT)

Telesat is a Canadian satellite operator running a legacy GEO communications business while building Telesat Lightspeed, its planned LEO network for telecom, enterprise, mobility, government, and defense users. Management says the first two production satellites remain targeted for late 2026, demand is particularly strong from government and defense customers, and full global commercial service is now expected around the end of Q1 2028. In March 2026 the company also added military Ka-band capacity to the initial 156 satellites, sharpening Lightspeed's sovereign-defense positioning.

Qianfan (千帆, also branded internationally as SPACESAIL) is China's first commercial LEO mega-constellation to enter formal network deployment. Operated by Shanghai Spacesail Technologies, the program launched its first batch in August 2024 and reached 162 satellites in orbit after the ninth 18-satellite mission on May 17, 2026. The company is targeting 324 satellites in orbit and initial global coverage during 2026, with a longer-term three-stage roadmap of 648 satellites for regional coverage, another 648 for broader global coverage, and a total constellation of nearly 15,000 satellites.

Cosmoleap

C

Private

Cosmoleap (大航跃迁), legally Dahang Yueqian Technology, is a Chinese launch startup founded in March 2024 by Chen Shuguang to build the Yueqian-1 ('Leap-1') — and notably is the first Chinese company to pursue a SpaceX Starship-style 'chopstick' tower-catch recovery instead of landing legs. The roughly 70 m-tall, 4.2 m-diameter, methane–liquid oxygen two-stage rocket is designed to lift about 18,000 kg to LEO when expended or ~12,000 kg with the first stage recovered, on a cluster of nine ~80-ton-class engines reusable up to 20 times. It initially flies the YF-209 engine sourced from CASC's Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsion Technology while developing its own 100-ton-class Qingyu-11 methalox engine (targeting ~150 t thrust, deep throttling, and up to 50 reuses). Cosmoleap raised roughly 100 million yuan (~$14M) in November 2024 and a 500 million yuan (~$73M) Series A in April 2026 — about 600 million yuan (~$84M) total — led by Qianhai Ark and Puhua Capital. With its design review passed and a tower-catch verification platform and drop tests underway, the company plans final assembly and integrated testing in the second half of 2026 and a debut orbital flight in 2027.