Organizations

The defence and space division of Airbus SE, formed in 2014 from Airbus Military, Astrium and Cassidian. In space it builds the European Service Module for NASA/ESA's Orion spacecraft, the Eurostar and OneSat telecommunications satellite platforms, the Pléiades and Pléiades Neo Earth-observation satellites, and Ariane launcher structures. Its results consolidate into Airbus SE.

Amazon.com's low-Earth-orbit satellite-broadband division, renamed from 'Project Kuiper' in November 2025. It is deploying a planned 3,236-satellite constellation across three shells to deliver internet to consumers, enterprises and governments. Prototypes flew in 2023 and production satellites began deploying in 2025, exceeding 375 in orbit by late 2025, launched on ULA, Blue Origin, Arianespace and SpaceX rockets.

Builds Europe's Ariane launch vehicles and the engines that power them.

The Agenzia Spaziale Italiana — Italy's space agency, a major ESA contributor and provider of instruments for planetary missions.

Builds a space-based cellular broadband network designed to connect ordinary mobile phones directly to satellites.

Lunar-logistics company developing the Peregrine and Griffin landers under NASA's CLPS programme.

US asteroid-mining startup aiming to refine platinum-group metals from small, accessible metallic (M-type) near-Earth asteroids; its announced target is the small NEA 2022 OB5. Its two precursor flights both fell short: Brokkr-1 (2023) was a low-Earth-orbit refinery demo whose payload never activated, and Odin (2025), aimed at deep space, lost contact shortly after launch.

A Japanese on-orbit servicing and space-sustainability company focused on orbital debris removal, satellite life extension and space situational awareness. Its ELSA-d demonstrator (2021) tested magnetic capture, and ADRAS-J (2024) rendezvoused with and inspected a spent H-IIA upper stage. It is developing ELSA-M for commercial debris removal and LEXI servicers for GEO. Listed on the TSE Growth Market in 2024.

Italian aerospace company that builds the Vega launch vehicle and solid rocket motors for Ariane.

A privately held American company that has flown four crewed private missions to the International Space Station — Ax-1 (2022) through Ax-4 (2025) — carrying commercial and government-sponsored astronauts. Axiom is building Axiom Station, a commercial space station whose first modules attach to the ISS before it becomes free-flying, and it developed the AxEMU spacesuit selected by NASA for the Artemis III landing.

Blue Origin is a privately held American spaceflight company founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000 and based in Kent, Washington. It developed the reusable New Shepard suborbital vehicle, which flies crewed and research flights past the Kármán line, and is bringing the orbital-class New Glenn rocket into service. The company manufactures the BE-3 and BE-4 rocket engines, the latter supplying United Launch Alliance's Vulcan, and is developing the Blue Moon lunar lander under a NASA Human Landing System contract. It is not publicly traded.

The Boeing Company is a publicly traded American aerospace and defence corporation founded in 1916. Its Defense, Space & Security division is the prime contractor for the International Space Station's US orbital segment and builds the core stage of NASA's Space Launch System. Boeing also developed the CST-100 Starliner crew capsule and, through United Launch Alliance, its joint venture with Lockheed Martin, supplies Atlas and Delta launch vehicles. The company has faced scrutiny over cost overruns and delays on several fixed-price government programmes. It trades on the NYSE under the ticker BA and files annual 10-K reports with the SEC.

China's principal state-owned space contractor and the main contractor for the national space programme. Through academies such as CALT and CAST it builds the Long March launch vehicles, satellites, the crewed Shenzhou spacecraft and the Tiangong space station, and runs robotic exploration including the Chang'e lunar missions and the Tianwen deep-space programme, alongside missiles and other defence and civil aerospace systems.

The Centre national d'études spatiales — France's space agency and the largest national contributor to ESA.

The China National Space Administration is the government body that oversees China's civil space activities, established in 1993. Chinese space hardware is built and flown largely by state enterprises under CNSA's coordination. Programmes include the Tiangong space station, the Chang'e lunar missions (which returned samples from the near and far sides of the Moon), the Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and Zhurong rover, and the Long March launch-vehicle family. China's space budget is not published in detail.

The Canadian Space Agency — known for robotics such as the Canadarm.

Asteroid-mining startup (2013–2019) planning water/propellant extraction and small prospecting spacecraft; acquired by Bradford Space in 2019, ending its mining plans.

The German Aerospace Center — Germany's national centre for aerospace, energy and transport research and its space agency.

The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organisation of 22 member states, founded in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, that pools Europe's civil space budget. ESA develops launch vehicles (the Ariane and Vega families), science missions (Gaia, Euclid, JUICE), Earth-observation satellites and human-spaceflight contributions such as the Columbus module and the European Service Module for NASA's Orion. Member states fund programmes roughly in proportion to their economies, and ESA's 'geographical return' rule directs industrial contracts back to each country accordingly. It collaborates closely with NASA, JAXA and Roscosmos.

A US launch and space-services company near Austin, Texas. It flies the Alpha small-lift rocket and the Blue Ghost lunar lander — whose Mission 1 made the first fully successful commercial soft landing on the Moon on 2 March 2025 — and develops the Elytra orbital-transfer vehicles and, with Northrop Grumman, the medium-lift Eclipse rocket. The company went public on the Nasdaq in August 2025.

A lunar space-resources startup founded by former Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson with Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, aiming to extract helium-3 from lunar regolith and return it to Earth for quantum-computer cooling and future fusion fuel. In 2026 it won a NASA contract to build a gas-extraction payload; separately, in May 2025 the US Department of Energy agreed to buy three litres of its lunar helium-3 — the first purchase of a non-terrestrial natural resource.

Lunar-lander company; its Nova-C 'Odysseus' made the first US soft Moon landing since Apollo.

Operator of a 66-satellite low-Earth-orbit constellation providing global voice and data communications.

A publicly traded Japanese lunar-exploration company (Tokyo: 9348) building robotic lunar landers and micro-rovers to deliver customer payloads to the Moon, and pursuing lunar resource exploration including water. Under its HAKUTO-R programme, Mission 1 (2023) and Mission 2 'RESILIENCE' (2025) both fell short at landing. ispace holds a NASA agreement to sell collected lunar regolith and is developing a larger Apex lander.

The Indian Space Research Organisation, founded in 1969 and headquartered in Bengaluru, is India's national space agency. ISRO is known for delivering missions at comparatively low cost: the Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan) reached Mars on its first attempt, and Chandrayaan-3 achieved the first soft landing near the lunar south pole in 2023. The agency operates the PSLV and GSLV/LVM3 launch vehicles, a fleet of communications and remote-sensing satellites, and is developing the crewed Gaganyaan programme. It is funded through the Indian government's Department of Space.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was formed in 2003 by merging three predecessor bodies and serves as Japan's national space agency. JAXA develops the H-IIA, H-IIB and H3 launch vehicles, the Kibo laboratory module on the International Space Station, and the HTV/HTV-X cargo craft. It is best known for the Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return missions, which returned material from Itokawa and Ryugu, and it partners with ESA on the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. The agency is funded through the Japanese government's annual budget.

Asteroid-mining startup founded in 2021 and headquartered in Denver, Colorado (relocated from the Netherlands), developing spacecraft to extract water and materials from small near-Earth asteroids. Its first mission, High Frontier, targets the near-Earth asteroid Apophis; early stage.

A privately held Canadian satellite company developing a low-Earth-orbit network for in-space communications and data relay. Early satellites targeted Internet-of-Things and store-and-forward connectivity; the company later shifted toward an optical inter-satellite data-relay constellation intended to provide near-real-time connectivity to other spacecraft, reducing reliance on ground stations.

South Korea's national space agency, established on 27 May 2024 and headquartered in Sacheon. It is the central government body directing the country's civil space policy, research and exploration, consolidating functions previously spread across institutions; the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute now operate under it. Its goals include expanding launch-vehicle and satellite capability and lunar exploration.

American defence and space technology company formed from the merger of L3 Technologies and Harris Corporation; builds weather and reconnaissance payloads.

Lockheed Martin is a publicly traded American aerospace, defence and security company formed in 1995 by the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta. Its Space division is the prime contractor for many of NASA's planetary spacecraft, including the Juno orbiter, MAVEN, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, OSIRIS-REx and the Orion crew capsule's structure. Lockheed builds the aeroshells that deliver Mars rovers through entry and descent, and it co-owns United Launch Alliance with Boeing. The company is one of the largest US defence contractors by revenue, trades on the NYSE as LMT, and discloses its financials in SEC filings.

Builds lunar surface-mobility and resource-prospecting hardware. Its MAPP rover flew on Intuitive Machines' IM-2 mission to the lunar south pole (2025), and the company holds NASA's contract to collect and transfer a sample of lunar regolith — structured as the first commercial sale of space resources to a government — but the IM-2 lander came to rest on its side and MAPP was never deployed, so that sale has not yet been fulfilled. It is part of a team on NASA's Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services programme.

Lunar space-resources startup pursuing sustainable extraction of helium-3 from the Moon's regolith for terrestrial quantum-computing and energy markets — a direct competitor to Interlune; early stage.

Maxar Technologies is a space-infrastructure and Earth-intelligence company that builds large communications and imaging satellites, robotic arms and high-resolution imaging spacecraft. Its WorldView fleet supplies much of the commercial high-resolution Earth imagery used by governments and mapping services, and its Space Systems division has built planetary-mission hardware including robotic arms for NASA Mars landers. Maxar was taken private by Advent International in 2023. In October 2025 it was rebranded: the Earth-intelligence business became Vantor and the satellite-manufacturing business became Lanteris Space Systems.

European missile-systems company; a partner in several space-defence programmes.

A Canadian publicly traded space-technology company providing geointelligence, robotics, satellite systems and space operations. It is the prime contractor for Canada's robotic arms — the Space Shuttle's Canadarm, the ISS Canadarm2 and Canadarm3 for the lunar Gateway — and builds the RADARSAT Earth-observation satellites. It is developing its Aurora digital-satellite line and the Chorus Earth-observation constellation.

A Japanese heavy-machinery and engineering conglomerate listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (7011), with businesses spanning power generation, aircraft, ships, defence and aerospace. Through its launch-services business it manufactures and launches Japan's flagship H-IIA and next-generation H3 orbital rockets, and it builds major JAXA spacecraft. The company traces its origins to an 1884 Nagasaki shipyard; the present entity was established in 1950.

A Dubai Government space organisation and the incubator of the UAE National Space Programme. MBRSC develops and operates Earth-observation satellites (DubaiSat-1/-2, the nationally built KhalifaSat and MBZ-SAT) and runs the UAE Astronaut Programme. It led the Emirates Mars Mission, whose 'Hope' (Al Amal) probe entered Mars orbit in February 2021, and the Emirates Lunar Mission carrying the Rashid rover.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the civil space agency of the United States, established in 1958 in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik. It runs the country's human-spaceflight, science and aeronautics programmes from a network of field centres including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Goddard, Johnson and Kennedy. NASA operates flagship observatories (Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope), the Mars rover programme, the Voyager and New Horizons deep-space probes, and the US segment of the International Space Station. Its Artemis programme aims to return crews to the Moon. The agency funds most of its hardware through contracts with private aerospace primes.

The commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), incorporated in 2019 as a wholly government-owned company under the Department of Space. It commercially exploits ISRO's research, produces and markets launch vehicles (PSLV, SSLV, LVM3), owns and operates communication and Earth-observation satellites, and provides launch and satellite services to Indian and international customers.

Northrop Grumman is a publicly traded American aerospace and defence company in its modern form since the 1994 Northrop-Grumman merger. In space it was the prime contractor for the James Webb Space Telescope, building the observatory, its deployable sunshield and spacecraft bus. The company also produces the Cygnus cargo vehicle that resupplies the International Space Station, solid rocket motors, and national-security satellites through its Space Systems sector. It acquired Orbital ATK in 2018. Northrop Grumman trades on the NYSE under NOC and reports annually to the SEC.

A German space and technology group and one of Europe's leading satellite prime contractors. Through its Space Systems division it builds navigation spacecraft for the European Galileo constellation and the Meteosat Third Generation weather satellites for EUMETSAT and ESA, along with launcher structures and reconnaissance and science satellites. Grown from the earlier Otto Hydraulik Bremen firm, OHB is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Chinese space-resources company pursuing asteroid prospecting and utilisation. It launched the NEO-1 small satellite (2021) to test resource-prospecting technology and operates the Yangwang space-telescope constellation for asteroid detection, and is developing the NEO-X robot for future asteroid mining; the leading Chinese player in the field, still early stage.

Planet Labs is a publicly traded Earth-imaging company founded in 2010 and based in San Francisco. It operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites, including its small Dove cubesats and higher-resolution SkySats, which together image the entire Earth landmass daily. Planet sells imagery and analytics to agriculture, government, mapping and defence-intelligence customers. The company went public via a SPAC merger in 2021 and trades on the NYSE under PL.

Asteroid-mining pioneer (2012–2018) backed by high-profile investors, planning water and platinum-group-metal extraction. Launched test satellites before its assets were acquired by ConsenSys in 2018.

Rocket Lab is a publicly traded small-launch and space-systems company founded in 2006, with operations in the United States and New Zealand. It operates the Electron rocket, one of the most frequently flown dedicated small-satellite launchers, and is developing the larger, reusable Neutron vehicle. Beyond launch, Rocket Lab builds spacecraft platforms, reaction wheels, solar panels and flight software, and has supplied buses for NASA missions such as the CAPSTONE lunar cubesat and the twin ESCAPADE Mars probes. It trades on the Nasdaq under RKLB.

Roscosmos is the Russian state corporation responsible for the country's space programme, organised in its current form in 1992 as successor to the Soviet space effort. It operates the Soyuz crew vehicle and Progress cargo ship, built and maintains the Russian segment of the International Space Station (the Zarya and Zvezda modules), and runs launch operations from Baikonur and Vostochny. Roscosmos oversees the long-running Soyuz launch vehicle family. Its civil budget is funded by the Russian government.

Develops the Dream Chaser spaceplane and inflatable space-station modules for the commercial Orbital Reef station.

A private Indian launch-vehicle company founded in 2018 by former ISRO engineers, developing the 'Vikram' family of small-satellite rockets. On 18 November 2022 its Vikram-S became the first privately developed Indian rocket to fly (suborbital), and on 18 July 2026 its four-stage Vikram-1 reached orbit from Sriharikota — making Skyroot the first private Indian company to launch a satellite to orbit.

Develops ForgeStar, small returnable satellites that manufacture high-value materials — particularly semiconductor and crystal substrates — in the vacuum and microgravity of orbit, then reenter and land for recovery. Founded in 2018 in Cardiff, it flew the ForgeStar-1 demonstrator and is building the next-generation ForgeStar-2 returnable platform; in 2025 it raised the largest Series A in UK space-tech and signed a semiconductor-manufacturing agreement.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is a privately held American launch and spacecraft manufacturer founded by Elon Musk in 2002. Its headquarters moved to Starbase, Texas in 2024; the original factory remains in Hawthorne, California. It develops and flies the partially reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the Dragon cargo and crew capsules, and the fully reusable Starship system under development. SpaceX operates Starlink, the largest satellite constellation ever deployed, providing broadband internet. The company is the primary commercial-crew and cargo provider to the International Space Station for NASA and conducts the majority of the world's orbital launches by mass. It remains private, with valuation set in secondary share sales.

A Canadian satellite-communications operator and one of the world's largest fixed satellite-services providers, operating a fleet of geostationary satellites for broadcast, broadband and enterprise connectivity. It is developing Telesat Lightspeed, a low-Earth-orbit constellation for low-latency broadband. Established in 1969 as Telesat Canada, it became publicly traded in 2021 (Nasdaq/TSX: TSAT).

A Franco-Italian space manufacturer, a joint venture owned 67% by Thales and 33% by Leonardo. It builds telecommunications, navigation and Earth-observation satellites (Spacebus Neo, Space Inspire, Galileo, COSMO-SkyMed) and human-spaceflight hardware — pressurised cargo modules for Northrop Grumman's Cygnus, modules for Axiom Station, several ISS modules (Cupola, Nodes) and elements of the ExoMars programme.

US in-space-resources company developing 'optical mining' and inflatable capture bags to extract water from carbonaceous asteroids for propellant; works under NASA technology contracts.

The United Kingdom's space agency, coordinating UK civil space activity and contributions to ESA.

United Launch Alliance is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin formed in 2006 to consolidate the two companies' expendable launch vehicles. ULA has been the launch provider for most US national-security and NASA flagship missions, flying the Atlas V and Delta IV families and, more recently, the Vulcan Centaur. Its rockets have launched planetary missions including Curiosity, Perseverance, Juno, New Horizons and MAVEN. The company is privately held by its two parent corporations.

Designs and flies small autonomous capsules that manufacture pharmaceuticals in microgravity and return them to Earth by reentry, exploiting how zero-g improves drug crystallisation. Founded by ex-SpaceX engineer Will Bruey and Founders Fund's Delian Asparouhov, it is the best-funded firm in in-space manufacturing; its W-series capsules have flown and recovered active-ingredient payloads, and it also markets its reentry vehicles for hypersonic testing.

Suborbital human-spaceflight company flying the air-launched SpaceShipTwo vehicle for space tourism and research.