Discover the cutting-edge launch systems, orbital infrastructure, and commercial space innovations expanding humanity's footprint and building the new space economy.
Lunar Outpost raised $30M and won a $220M NASA contract for the Pegasus rover — an autonomous robotic workforce that will build Moon base infrastructure before astronauts arrive. NASA plans 25 robotic missions in Phase 1 alone.
$2.5 billion. That's what satellite network failures cost the industry every year. And the number is about to get much worse. There are roughly 10,000 active satellites in orbit today. By 2030, that number is expected to exceed 70,000, a 7x increase in less than
The Bothell-based space mobility startup secured $50M from Geodesic Capital, Mach33 and Booz Allen to scale production of its solar thermal propulsion spacecraft.
deltaVision, a German fluidic systems manufacturer, raised €10.2M in its first external round to scale production of valves and pumps for in-orbit refueling. Profitable since 2022.
Rendezvous Robotics raised $3M to commercialize self-assembling orbital infrastructure. The TESSERAE technology, invented at MIT, uses electromagnetic docking to build large structures in space.
Space startups raised $43.5B in private funding in H1 2026 — a record pace driven by sovereign wealth funds, infrastructure PE, and defense VCs. Concurrently, the SpaceX IPO created a new public market benchmark. The orbital economy is becoming a permanent institutional allocation.
The space economy crossed $630 billion in 2026. This guide maps every major business opportunity — from billion-dollar government contracts to emerging startup niches.
SpaceX launched 120 Starweave satellites with onboard AI inference in June 2026, signed $76B in compute deals, and filed for a million-satellite orbital data center constellation. The physics is harder than the hype suggests.