Daily Archives: September 6, 2021

Shareholders ofAstra Space (NASDAQ:ASTR) got a reminder last week that space is hard.

The company, which went public earlier this year via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, orSPAC, saw a test launch of its new rocket fall short of expectations after one of the five main engines powering the rocket failed. The stock fell more than 20% on the first day of trading after the incident.

Space has been a hot sector among investors, thanks in part to analyst estimates that it could represent a $1 trillion opportunity by 2040. But as Astra's experience shows, few rocket companies go straight up. There are substantial risks that come with space operations, and it is possible that not all of the public companies dabbling in space today will reach their destination.

For investors willing to brave the unknown and explore this new frontier, here's why three Motley Fool contributors believe L3 Harris (NYSE:LHX),Virgin GalacticHoldings (NYSE:SPCE), andRocket Labs USA (NASDAQ:RKLB) stand to benefit from the modern-day space race.

Image source: Getty Images.

Lou Whiteman(L3 Harris): L3 Harris isn't as glamorous a choice as some of the newer companies focused on space. But it does offer strong exposure to the cosmos with a lot less risk of losing everything.

L3 Harris is the nation's newest defense prime contractor, formed by the 2019 merger of Harris and L3 Technologies. Both of those companies had a focus on electronics and communications, and together they have a formidable portfolio of space offerings.The company doesn't make the powerful rockets needed to leave Earth's atmosphere, but it does make a range of antennas, transmitters, power modules, and other electronics that go into satellites.

The company's space and airborne division, which includes not just extraterrestrial work but also components for warplanes, accounted for about 27% of total revenue in the first half of 2021. In the most recent quarter, L3 Harris space grew revenue by 10%, capturing classified awards totaling more than $300 million. CEO Chris Kubasik said on the company's second-quarter earnings call that the company has a three-year space pipeline of "nearly $20 billion."

In L3 Harris, investors get a growing space business supported by a wide range of defense electronics, communications, and avionics assets. The company pays a 1.75% dividend yield, and management is planning to spend more than $3 billion on share buybacks in the quarters to come.

L3 Harris appears well positioned to gain altitude from here.

Rich Duprey (Virgin Galactic): Going into space is for risk-takers and the adventurous, and though investors need to be much more circumspect with the businesses they put their money in, I still like Virgin Galactic precisely for its derring-do.

I'll say up front that if the allegations of Virgin purposefully sweeping aside safety considerations simply to beat some arbitrary deadline are true, then that's unacceptable. Particularly when you're going into space, the risks are already great, and ignoring safety protocols can only exacerbate them with potentially devastating impact

With that said, I think the doubts expressed about Virgin are weighing on its stock, and that gives investors an opportunity to buy in just as it is poised to begin commercial operations.

Later this month, Virgin's VSS Unity will undertake its first commercial, human-tended research mission by carrying three paying crew members from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council to evaluate the effects of the transition from gravity to microgravity on the human body.

Virgin Galactic's Unity spacecraft. Image source: Virgin Galactic.

After the mission, Virgin will upgrade the Eve mothership and then begin commercial service late next year. It has already signed up 600 people paying $250,000 or more apiece for the opportunity to participate in the launch of the space tourism industry.

While missions for NASA and other commercial enterprises have been the base motivation behind private space travel, it is the tourism aspect of it that sparks the imagination and brings rocketry down to the human level. Virgin Galactic is the vehicle through which investors can participate in that.

Analysts eye some $120 billion in potential future demand for the rocketeer that could turn into some $1.7 billion in revenue by 2030 for Virgin, though it admittedly has to get over some high hurdles to reach altitude. Some analysts worry about the Federal Aviation Administration impeding its flight path, and my colleague Rich Smith, who is pitching a different space stock today, has doubts Virgin can actually realize such sky-high estimates.

It's that risk-taking and adventurous nature of founder Richard Branson that suggests to me this is more than possible. And while it might require a bit of a leap of faith to believe he can see it through, I believe Virgin has the potential to grow into its valuation.

Rich Smith (Rocket Lab): My favorite "new space" stock is Rocket lab, a tiny rocket company and recent SPAC IPO.

"New" or not, Rocket Lab has been putting satellites into orbit for quite a while now. In fact, since May 2017, it has launched 21 separate, successful missions, and put more than 100 satellites into orbit for commercial customers and U.S. government agencies including NASA and the U.S. Space Force.

And tiny or not, Rocket Lab is big enough that it recently won a NASA contract to send two spacecraft not just into Earth orbit, but all the way to Mars. In 2024, two Rocket Lab Photon spacecraft will travel to the Red Planet to conduct environmental surveys into the effects of solar wind on the Martian atmosphere. The company even has plans to send a spacecraft to Venus on its own dime.

I admit, flight manifests and future plans notwithstanding, the stock remains something of an unknown quantity. Most financial data providers don't even have an accurate read on the company's market capitalization, much less estimates for future sales and profits.

But with a strong record of success, an established customer base for its Electron rocket, and plans underway to build an even bigger rocket (the Neutron, expected to have 27 times the payload capacity of the Electron), at the very least, I can say that Rocket Lab looks to be moving in the right direction: pointy end up.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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Space Is Hard, but These 3 Space Stocks Can Reach Orbit - The Motley Fool

What do you see when you look at the Moon? Beauty? Craters? Some people see dollar signs. Youll occasionally see our only natural satellite billed as Earths eighth continent because its full of resources that are hard to ignore. A rare form of helium, helium-3, could be used in fusion power stations here on Earth. Rare elements, such as neodymium, could be extracted and returned home for use in smartphones and other electronics.

But how do we get them here without blowing all the profits on rockets? According to a study published in 2019, a lunar elevator could be the answer. A cable anchored to the lunar surface would stretch most of the 400,000km (250,000 miles) home. It couldnt be directly attached to the Earth, due to the relative motions of the two objects, but it could terminate high in Earth orbit.

That would have the added benefit of placing it above the bulk of our space junk, a growing problem as we launch ever more satellites. Solar-powered robotic shuttles could move up and down the cable, acting as a conveyor belt to ferry precious resources our way.

It may sound like an outlandish prospect, but Zephyr Penoyre and Emily Sandford the two University of Columbia astronomy PhD candidates behind the study believe we could pull it off for a few billion US dollars.

To put that into context, Jeff Bezos liquidates $1bn (over 700m) of his Amazon stock every year to fund his Blue Origin space tourism company. NASAs Artemis programme, which is sending the first female astronaut and first astronaut of colour to the Moon later this decade, is costing $86bn (60bn). Such is the value of the Moons resources, a separate study estimated that a lunar elevator would pay for itself within just 53 trips.

The cable, which would be no thicker than a pencil, would weigh 40 tonnes well within the remit of modern rockets, such as SpaceXs Starship. Unlike a space elevator that would travel from Earths surface into space, a lunar elevator stopping slightly shy of our planet wouldnt have to contend with huge gravitational forces.

The Moon has no atmosphere either, which simplifies matters. That means the cable could be made from existing materials, such as Kevlar, instead of the yet-to-be-invented super-strong materials needed for an Earth-to-space elevator.

We could also combine the two. In April 2021, Chinese state-run media presented the countrys idea for a Sky Ladder. This would see a spacecraft winched up an elevator from Earths surface to a waiting space station, before being flung towards the Moon where it would meet another elevator that would lower it down to the lunar surface.

The idea of space elevators has been around for over a century without much progress. But if enough people or, more likely, corporations become enamoured with the chance of making big bucks, we could see the lunar equivalent of a gold rush in the decades ahead. Elevators could well turn out to be a way to keep costs down and profits literally sky-high.

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Forget rockets a lunar elevator is the future of Moon travel - BBC Science Focus Magazine

(Adds details on mission plan, background)

Sept 2 (Reuters) - Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc is launching its first commercial research mission named "Unity 23" along with the Italian Air Force to the edge of space, it said on Thursday.

The space travel company has set late September or early October as the time for the mission that will carry three paying crew members from the Air Force and the Rome-based government agency National Research Council.

The crew will study the effect on the human body as they move from gravity to a low-gravity atmosphere and provide insights for future spaceflight systems and technologies.

The mission follows a successful first crewed test flight to space by Virgin Galactic's passenger rocket in July.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a deviation in the descent of the flight that took billionaire Richard Branson to space.

The company had said in July that it plans at least two more test flights of the spaceplane before beginning regular commercial operation in 2022.

One of those flights will carry four Italian astronauts-in-training, according to Chief Executive Michael Colglazier. (Reporting by Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

Continued here:

UPDATE 1-Virgin Galactic to fly Italian Air Force on research mission to space - Yahoo Finance

The pioneering event on space and underwater tourism, which brings together the main international space agencies and private ventures, will celebrate its second edition at Les Roches from September 22nd to 24th, coinciding with the autumn equinox and in hybrid format, with one full day of face-to-face presentations and two additional days of virtual sessions.

SUTUS 2021, under the title "Tourism Beyond Natural Borders", is a unique event, organized by Les Roches, one of the most important in the world together with Medina Media Events.

This edition will feature renowned international and national professionals from the aerospace industry together with officials from NASA, ESA, and JAXA. During the three-day conference speakers and panels will discuss, among other current issues, private travel to space and the private capital ventures working to make the dream reality alongside more scientific research into areas like agriculture on other planets. Upon returning to Earth, participants at SUTUS will dive into the world of subaquatic tourism, where marine archaeologists, diving experts and intrepid explorers will show them this unexplored world.

In addition, the Les Roches campus will also host a demo area where innovative projects related to tourism from different national and international companies will be exhibited, such as the emergency shelter designed by ESA, a zeppelin floating over the campus, an educational project by The City of the Stars which consists of a 4x6 meter portable planetarium that forms part of a virtual reality walk through the solar system.

Carlos Dez de la Lastra, Managing Director of Les Roches Marbella, said SUTUS was born to become a benchmark for luxury tourism. For this new edition of SUTUS, theres no better place than Les Roches, a hotel management training school and benchmark of quality education both inside and outside our borders, to collaborate with this exciting project.

In this second edition, and through the platform by Medina Media Events that has been used in the 4K-HDR Summit, the 5GForum and Extenda Global, virtual assistants and registered companies will be able to follow all the sessions via live streaming and have B2B meetings between them and the speakers.

In-person participation, due to anti-Covid measures, will be restricted to speakers, institutions, sponsors, VIP attendees and the media.

Through the website http://www.sutusummit.com you can register and access the official program. SUTUS is an opportunity to listen to keynote speakers talk about the most ambitious challenges of the emerging space and underwater tourism sectors and to share knowledge and business opportunities.

FOR MEDIA ASSISTANCE AND INTERVIEW REQUESTS, PLEASE CONTACT:[emailprotected]

MORE INFORMATION:https://www.sommet-education.com/

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Les Roches brings together the world's leading experts in space and underwater tourism to analyze the challenges this emerging sector will face in the...

With about 20 active spacefaring nations, 90-plus space agencies around the globe, commercial space flights, and thousands of satellites in Earth orbit, its time for international space-traffic control.

Nobody wants a couple of multi-million-dollar satellites crashing into one another, and the economic loss isnt the only concern. A smash-up could raise questions of whether it was a hostile attack, and it would create hundreds of small pieces of space debris.

So far, the tracking that started at the dawn of the space age has become increasingly sophisticated and has been able to keep things orderly. But close calls and alerts to satellite operators about potential dangers are increasing.

This weeks grounding of Virgin Galactica because it strayed from its flight path on the July 11 flight that carried founder Richard Branson, two pilots, and three other passengers briefly outside the Earths atmosphere is a case in point, although its flight was regulated through airspace by the Federal Aviation Administration.

As more spacecraft travel to and from space through FAA-regulated airspace, it only increases the need for a formalized space-traffic control system was mentioned frequently at the recent 36th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, along with updating the rules for responsible behavior in space.

But it was clear that nationalism and the quest for military superiority in space could get in the way.

Space traffic management and rules are topics that have bubbled through the military, civilian and commercial space communities for years, but theres a sense of urgency as we have entered what Gen. Jay Raymond, chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force, called the second golden age of space.

Consider just a few statistics: The number of satellites in low-earth orbit rose from 2,100 in 2019 to 4,900 today; the cost of getting a payload into space has dropped from the Space Shuttle rate of $25,000 a pound to $1,250 a pound on a commercial rocket; more than 32,000 objects, including the International Space Station and small pieces of debris, are being tracked by the Space Force (an estimated 250,000 smaller pieces of debris untracked by the military are in low-Earth orbit), and the global space economy was estimated at $447 billion in 2020 with few impacts from the pandemic.

In Colorado, there are more than 500 aerospace companies and suppliers, including operations for nine of the top 10 in the country. Those companies employ more than 33,000 people for an annual payroll of $4.3 billion, according to the Colorado Space Coalitions 2021 report.

Even as symposiums speakers talked about the need to maintain a safe and stable space domain, satellite data was being relayed to assist rescue workers in Haiti, wildland firefighters in California, water managers working to allocate a shrinking resource in the parched West, and those involved with the frenzied evacuation of Afghanistan.

Indeed, the world relies heavily on space systems in many aspects of daily life.

The idea of controlling activity on a global scale for the good of all isnt a new concept. We do it in the air, on the sea, and with the telecommunication airwaves. The time has come, and were perhaps already late, to do it in outer space.

I detected some dissonance, though, in the remarks on this topic at the symposium.

Uniformed and civilian speakers connected to the Department of Defense or U.S. national security interests were nearly half of the general symposium program (16 of 35 presentations), so the drumbeat to maintain U.S. prominence in space was loud. And the drumbeat of China is a threat (and to a lesser extent, Russia) was louder.

Heres a sample of those voices:

Even NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who participated in several forums and generally spoke about civil space endeavors and international and commercial partnerships, said: Were in a space race with China.

Speakers on international panels and the director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) were more likely to talk about the importance of space systems in combating climate change and for disaster mitigation. They clearly favor a United Nations approach to space traffic control.

The United States has started this work and, you might be surprised to learn, so has New Zealand, whose space agency was created just five years ago.

In 2018, President Trump directed the Commerce Department to develop a space traffic management system and to mitigate the effects of space debris for commercial providers. The job falls to the Office of Space Commerce.

It makes sense thats where the Federal Aviation Administration started after fledgling efforts by the airlines to institute air traffic controls.

The Space Force will continue to maintain its catalog of objects in space.

Pelzer said hes glad that work is underway as it can serve as a draft for a UN solution.

Of course, China and Russia werent at the symposium to weigh in on the subject.

Neither was the New Zealand Space Agency, which is rapidly developing a regulatory regime to support the growth of a safe, responsible and secure space industry, which meets our international obligations and manages any liability arising from our obligations as a launching state.

Its working with LeoLabs, a California-based company that is building a network of ground-based radars to track even the tiniest piece of debris in low-Earth orbit and provide real-time data to satellite operators.

New Zealand is using that tracking data to ensure everything it licenses for launch about 100 satellites so far is where its supposed to be and doing what its supposed to do.

For us its a template of how to do operational space-traffic safety management, which has not been done anywhere, said Dan Ceperley, CEO and co-founder LeoLabs.

Ceperley has been talking with the Commerce Department, too.

We need a regulatory body defining the rules of the road and actually monitoring whats going on in space, he said.

He didnt want to weigh in on who should be the regulator but noted that space is an international arena and there is collaboration that crosses many borders. He believes the thing that contributes the most to good behavior in space is transparency.

The new space race is primarily commercial, and we want to make that successful, he said. We really dont want a conflict in space and transparency can drive deterrence.

With tracking, aggressive behavior or irresponsible behavior will be spotted and discussed, and that encourages good behavior, he said.

UNOOSA has played a significant role in shaping good behavior with the formation of international space law since its creation in 1959. The cornerstone is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which allows for freedom of exploration and the non-appropriation of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies.

Four subsequent treaties have reinforced and updated the original treaty, but the last of those was the 1979 Moon Agreement.

UNOOSA also issued guidelines on debris mitigation and sustainability. Those are guidelines still, they encourage good behavior.

Updating those agreements and expanding them to include space traffic control is badly needed, and some speakers spoke to that.

It might have been easier before the United States and other nations realized that lunar resources could likely be used to create a space outpost and to get humans to Mars and beyond. Thats why everyone is rushing to get back on the moon and to be first.

We need to be there first and greet others, said U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), who serves in the Senate aerospace caucus and the Space Force caucus. We are behind in this new space race.

Dominance in space will be a key factor in ensuring our security in years to come.

Others leaned in more toward international cooperation.

Aschbacher noted that Russia and China have invited ESA to participate in lunar missions, and the agency provided tracking for Chinas lunar probes, the latest of which was launched last year. ESA also has what he termed valuable partnerships with NASA, including for the Artemis lunar mission.

Thats the general backdrop for figuring out international space traffic control and debris mitigation.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in July issued a memorandum on five Tenets of Responsible Behavior in Space.

They are: operate in, from, to and through space with due regard to others and in a professional manner; limit the generation of long-lived debris; avoid the creation of harmful interference; maintain safe separation and safe trajectory, and communicate and make notifications to enhance the safety and stability of the domain.

Thats a lot like what the UNOOSA promotes in its treaties and guidelines.

And a lot like what Ceperley means when he talks about good behavior.

So maybe theres hope for more international agreement especially if the United States tones down its dominance in space rhetoric.

Sue McMillin is a long-time Colorado reporter and editor who worked for The Gazette and Durango Herald. Now a regular columnist for The Denver Post and a freelance writer, she lives in Caon City. Email her at suemcmillin20@gmail.com.

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McMillin: Virgin Galactica grounding shows need for international space-traffic control - The Denver Post