No publicly traded company extracts or sells resources from an asteroid or the Moon as of September 2026. Every business operating as a dedicated resource extraction venture remains privately held and funded through venture capital or government research awards.
Investors looking for exposure to space mining must look through indirect channels. Those channels include lunar delivery contractors, space infrastructure manufacturers with research contracts, and exchange-traded funds that track the wider aerospace economy.
At OrbitalIntel, we read the filings, mission records, and federal contracts to show where listed markets touch space resources, and where the connection ends.
The Reality of Space Mining Stocks
No public company extracts, processes, or sells materials gathered from an asteroid or the lunar surface as of September 2026. Every company operating with the sole purpose of commercial extraction remains in private hands, financed by venture capital rounds, private equity placements, and federal development grants.
Public market exposure exists only through suppliers, delivery vendors, and diversified aerospace manufacturers. These businesses generate their revenue from commercial satellite operations, defense contracts, or government exploration programs such as NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). While some of these firms carry scientific instruments designed to test extraterrestrial soils, those missions represent government research experiments rather than commercial resource production.
To evaluate public equities linked to this sector, investors must separate direct extraction from support infrastructure. The table below outlines the primary publicly traded companies that hold verified links to space resource programs.
| Company | Ticker (Exchange) | Nature of Resource Link | Directness of Exposure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intuitive Machines, Inc. | LUNR (Nasdaq) | Carried NASA PRIME-1 drill; hosted rideshare payload for AstroForge | Indirect (Lander and delivery services) |
| Firefly Aerospace Inc. | FLY (Nasdaq) | Blue Ghost Mission 1 operated soil sorting and drill payloads | Indirect (Lander and delivery services) |
| Redwire Corp | RDW (NYSE) | Developed Mason regolith melting system under NASA contract | Indirect (Manufacturing and infrastructure hardware) |
| ispace, inc. | 9348 (Tokyo) | Holds NASA lunar regolith sales contracts; operates lunar landers | Partial (Lander services with formal regolith transfer agreements) |
| Rocket Lab Corp | RKLB (Nasdaq) | Launch and satellite manufacturing; no verified resource contracts | None (Broader space infrastructure context) |
The Private Pure-Play Miners
The businesses focused entirely on extracting resources from space do not trade on public exchanges. They rely on private financing rounds, some disclosed through Form D filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
AstroForge is a venture-funded private firm based in California targeting platinum-group metals on metallic near-Earth asteroids. An SEC Form D/A filing signed January 29, 2025, shows that AstroForge launched an equity offering of $46,360,925, with $42,487,993 sold at the time of the filing. AstroForge does not maintain a public listing.
The technical development path for private miners involves severe flight risks. AstroForge’s second mission, named Odin, launched February 26, 2025, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 as a secondary payload on an Intuitive Machines lunar launch. The spacecraft cost roughly $3.5 million to construct. According to AstroForge’s published debrief, the spacecraft suffered ground-station failures, was likely tumbling, and lost communications within roughly 36 hours of deployment, resulting in a lost mission. The company completed assembly of its next spacecraft, DeepSpace-2, on June 3, 2026. DeepSpace-2 carries Hall-effect electric thrusters and targets a near-Earth metallic asteroid, planning to fly as a rideshare on the Intuitive Machines IM-3 lunar mission in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Other private startups target different resources across deep space:
- Interlune, based in Seattle and led by co-founder Rob Meyerson, was founded around 2020 to extract lunar helium-3. A Form D filed January 28, 2026, reported an offering of $5,000,000 with $500,000 sold. An earlier Form D signed February 1, 2024, reported $15,564,982 sold from a $17,689,981 equity offering. As of July 2026, Interlune reported nearly $500 million in customer purchase agreements, $23 million in venture capital, and approximately $18 million in non-dilutive government funding.
- Karman+, based in Denver, Colorado, announced on February 19, 2025, that it raised a $20 million seed round led by Plural and Hummingbird. Karman+ plans to extract water from near-Earth asteroids for propellant, scheduling a first technology demonstration mission named High Frontier for 2027.
- TransAstra announced on September 23, 2025, a $2.5 million NASA Civil Commercial Research and Products Program award, matched by $2.5 million in private capital, to scale an inflatable Capture Bag for debris capture and asteroid enclosure.
- Asteroid Mining Corporation Ltd, based in the United Kingdom, remains a private limited company that announced a pre-seed round on May 4, 2022, to develop its SCAR-E walking-robot program.
None of these businesses offer public shares. Retail investors cannot purchase equity in their operations through brokerage accounts.
Listed Companies with Documented Resource Exposure
Because pure-play miners remain private, public market capital flows through companies providing transport, landing, or specialized manufacturing equipment. These corporations file public quarterly reports and trade on established stock markets.
Intuitive Machines
Intuitive Machines trades on Nasdaq under the ticker LUNR. In its quarterly results released August 13, 2026, the company reported a contract backlog of $1.8 billion. The firm provides robotic delivery services to the lunar surface through NASA’s CLPS initiative, as detailed in our guide to Intuitive Machines stock.
Intuitive Machines does not operate mining sites, but its landers transport resource exploration instruments. On its IM-2 mission, the Athena lander touched down on March 6, 2025, inside a crater near the lunar south pole, approximately 400 meters from its target. According to NASA, the lander rested on its side upon arrival, which prevented full operation of its primary instruments. The onboard TRIDENT drill demonstrated mechanical motion, and the MSOLO mass spectrometer detected trace gases from the lander’s propulsion system before the mission concluded on March 7, 2025. Intuitive Machines collects delivery revenue from government agencies rather than revenue from processed lunar minerals.
Firefly Aerospace
Firefly Aerospace trades on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker FLY. The company priced an initial public offering of 19,296,000 shares at $45.00 per share on August 6, 2025, with trading beginning the following day. Our Firefly Aerospace stock guide covers the IPO, its vehicles, and the filings to check.
Firefly’s link to space resources comes through its robotic lunar landing services. On March 2, 2025, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 landed near Mons Latreille in Mare Crisium carrying ten NASA instruments. The mission operated until March 16, 2025. During surface operations, the Lunar PlanetVac instrument collected, transferred, and sorted lunar regolith using pressurized nitrogen gas, while the LISTER heat-flow drill was among the payloads Firefly reported as meeting objectives. Firefly earned its revenue by meeting NASA delivery milestones rather than through the commercial sale of the sorted regolith.
Redwire Corporation
Redwire Corp trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RDW. The company supplies space components, deployable solar arrays, and manufacturing hardware, as outlined in our Redwire stock analysis.
Redwire’s exposure to space resources centers on in-situ infrastructure development. In 2023, NASA awarded Redwire $12.9 million through its Tipping Point program to develop Mason, a platform that melts or sinters regolith into a solid surface. Redwire announced on June 4, 2025, that Mason completed its Critical Design Review with NASA. This platform provides construction capabilities rather than commercial resource harvesting, making Redwire an equipment vendor to civil space agencies.
Japan’s ispace
ispace, inc. is a publicly listed lunar exploration company trading in Tokyo under the securities code 9348. The company has attempted two lunar landings, both of which resulted in loss of the spacecraft before surface operations could begin.
HAKUTO-R Mission 1 attempted a landing on April 26, 2023, but failed after a software error caused the lander to exhaust its fuel while miscalculating its altitude above the surface. Mission 2 attempted landing on June 6, 2025, and experienced a hard landing caused by an anomaly in its Laser Range Finder hardware. In an analysis released June 24, 2025, ispace estimated up to approximately 1.5 billion yen in additional development expenses across Missions 3 and 4, which ispace at that time planned for 2027; in March 2026 the company said those missions had moved to 2028 and 2029.
Despite landing failures, ispace holds commercial contracts related to space resources. On December 3, 2020, NASA selected ispace Japan and ispace Europe for lunar regolith purchase contracts valued at $5,000 each. Under these agreements, NASA pays 10 percent at award, 10 percent at launch, and 80 percent upon successful material collection, with NASA taking in-place legal ownership of the regolith on the Moon.
Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab Corp trades on Nasdaq under ticker RKLB. Our Rocket Lab stock guide covers what the company does and how to research the shares.
While Rocket Lab builds orbital launch vehicles and spacecraft components, corporate filings show no direct contracts for space resource extraction or in-situ resource processing missions as of September 2026. Investors evaluating Rocket Lab gain exposure to launch operations and satellite manufacturing rather than space mining.
Space Exchange-Traded Funds
Investors seeking broad exposure without holding individual corporate shares often evaluate aerospace and defense exchange-traded funds. There is no dedicated space mining ETF on any public exchange. The existing funds hold equity across broad aerospace, satellite communications, and military defense sectors. For an overview of fund structures, read our guide to space ETFs.
| Fund Name | Ticker (Exchange) | Annual Operating Expenses | Stated Investment Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Procure Space ETF | UFO (Nasdaq) | 0.75% | Tracks the S-Network Space Index; holds at least 80% of net assets in companies earning 50% of revenue from space |
| ARK Space & Defense Innovation ETF | ARKX (Cboe BZX) | 0.75% (net after waiver) | Actively managed; renamed from ARK Space Exploration & Innovation ETF (summary prospectus dated November 30, 2025) |
The Procure Space ETF trades on Nasdaq under ticker UFO. According to its summary prospectus dated February 28, 2026, the fund carries total annual fund operating expenses of 0.75 percent. It tracks the S-Network Space Index and mandates that at least 80 percent of its net assets go toward companies receiving at least 50 percent of their revenue or profits from space-related operations. Pure-play asteroid extraction does not generate qualifying revenue under this index methodology.
The ARK Space & Defense Innovation ETF trades on the Cboe BZX Exchange under ticker ARKX. Originally launched on March 30, 2021, as the ARK Space Exploration & Innovation ETF, the fund filed a summary prospectus on November 30, 2025, reflecting its updated name and a net expense ratio of 0.75 percent after fee waivers. The fund is actively managed. Holdings change, so check the current holdings in the UFO summary prospectus and the ARKX summary prospectus before relying on any description here.
Risk Factors in Space Resource Equities
Purchasing shares in companies with indirect space resource exposure involves structural risks distinct from traditional industrial or mining investments.
Technical risk is high. As demonstrated by AstroForge’s Odin mission and ispace’s two lunar landing attempts, hardware deployed beyond low Earth orbit faces extreme operating environments. When a deep-space payload fails, the capital expended on that mission cannot be recovered, and the next spacecraft has to be financed and built again; AstroForge built Odin in under ten months.
Development-stage operations rely heavily on government agencies. Companies such as Intuitive Machines and Redwire generate substantial portions of their space exploration revenue through NASA programs like CLPS and Tipping Point. If agency budgets contract or mission priorities shift, contractors lose predictable cash flows. Private resource agreements remain early and limited. While Interlune announced a contract on May 7, 2025, with the U.S. Department of Energy to deliver three liters of harvested lunar helium-3 by April 2029, commercial-scale off-planet transactions do not yet occur.
Dilution is the third risk. Constructing interplanetary spacecraft and operating lunar delivery systems requires continuous capital. Private ventures rely on regular equity offerings, while listed development-stage companies can issue additional stock to fund operations; the terms are in their SEC filings.
The legal architecture governing space resource ownership has not been tested by a commercial extraction case. In the United States, the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 added 51 U.S.C. § 51303. This statute establishes that United States citizens who commercially recover space resources are entitled to possess, own, transport, use, and sell them in accordance with applicable law. However, Article II of the Outer Space Treaty, maintained by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, states that outer space and celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty or through use and occupation. The interplay between domestic property rights and international non-appropriation rules has not been settled by sustained commercial operations.
Pathways to a Pure-Play Public Listing
For an asteroid or lunar mining company to list on a major public exchange like Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange, its operational profile must evolve beyond early venture grants:
- Spacecraft must achieve consistent mission rendezvous, landing, and extraction demonstrations, validating that automated systems can locate and process raw extraterrestrial ores.
- Ventures must prove unit economics by returning high-value materials to Earth or establishing an operational, paying market for resources consumed off-planet, such as water processed into rocket propellant.
- Companies must generate sustained, auditable revenue that satisfies the governance and market capitalization requirements of regulated public stock exchanges.
Until those operational milestones are reached, companies will continue to finance extraction development through private funding rounds, federal Small Business Innovation Research awards, and corporate partnerships. As of September 2026, the listed names are the launch providers, satellite manufacturers, and lunar delivery operators that carry these experimental payloads. The company closest to a commercial asteroid test, and its private status, is profiled in our AstroForge explainer.
Who This Market Does Not Suit
Direct investment in space mining stocks is not possible today, and indirect exposure through lunar suppliers does not suit every portfolio. Investors seeking current dividend income, stable operating margins, or direct exposure to underlying commodity prices should not look to the space sector.
Investors wanting exposure to precious metals or industrial raw materials are better served by established terrestrial mining corporations. Terrestrial operators report revenue from resources they actually sell.
What Would Change the Listed Market
Three documented developments would alter the landscape of space mining equities:
- A venture-backed resource firm completes a successful material extraction and sale, followed by the filing of a public registration statement (Form S-1) to list its common stock on a national exchange.
- A publicly traded aerospace contractor acquires an existing private miner to establish an in-house commercial resource division.
- Major space logistics providers establish regular, scheduled commercial transport missions that cut the cost per kilogram of returning off-planet resources to a level that supports private commercial balance sheets.
This page is a map of space mining stocks, not a recommendation; before acting on any of it, read the issuer’s filings on SEC EDGAR and the mission releases linked above.