“We went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s next. Because we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what’s next.” — Sam Seaborn, The West Wing
In 1959, authors Mae and Ira Freeman wrote a book geared toward young readers, “You Will Go to the Moon,” suggesting that children at the time would someday have the option of travelling to the moon and living on the lunar surface. The book seemed prescient: A full decade later, a human being set foot on the moon for the first time.
Yet, a six-year-old reading that book when it first came out is now 72 years old, and it is a mathematical certainty that none of the children who read that book have been to the moon. After all, of the 10 humans who have ever walked on the moon, the youngest in that group — Charles Duke — was already 23 when the book was published. Duke will turn 90 next month.
Even if those childhood dreams have yet to materialize, the opportunities sparked by President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 call for the U.S. to go to the moon have continued to expand. At the time, Kennedy argued that it was right to accept such challenges “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Kennedy further argued that the moon mission would “serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” In our view, he was right.
Along the way, scientists developed biosensors and life-sign monitoring that found its way into modern medical devices; water filtration systems now used in swimming pools, water fountains, and cooling towers; and flame resistant materials to help keep firefighters safe — to name just a few technologies. Thanks to R&D supporting our efforts to explore the universe, consumers now enjoy the benefits of cordless tools, memory-foam pillows, and of course, the many benefits provided by satellites.
Today, the U.S. is no longer the only country to have landed uncrewed missions on the moon: China, India, Japan, and the EU, along with the Soviet Union, can also boast this achievement.
The Soviet Union is no more, but the U.S.’s new primary rival, China, now has its own space station, the Tiangong (operational and still being expanded). China’s Chang’e 6 mission in 2024 was the first to collect lunar samples from the far side of the moon.
But the next focus is now Mars, and the way to get there is far from straightforward. Our bright space minds first have to figure out a new space station, which will help enable a new mission to the moon. That, in turn, will ultimately be used to guide us forward to Mars.
Step 1: Space station
It cost up to $150 billion by some estimates to build the International Space Station, with the first crew arriving onboard in November 2000. Since then, it has been widely viewed as an unimpeachable success.
It has become a symbol of international cooperation, built jointly by the U.S., Russia, Japan, Europe, and Canada, and hosting astronauts from 26 countries. More importantly, it has shown the value of research performed in space, where conditions allow for experiments and processes not possible on Earth. More than 4,400 peer-reviewed scientific papers stemming from research performed on the ISS have been published to date, and numerous other advances have been made. (We wrote about some of the advances made possible by the ISS in Part I.)
However, the ISS is currently nearing the end of its useful life, and sometime before the end of 2030, NASA plans to begin letting its orbit decay and deliberately crash it into Point Nemo (a point in the South Pacific widely viewed as the furthest place on Earth from any land mass — 1,670 miles.)
China’s Tiangong space station is already operational with capacity for a three-person crew and three modules (one core, two scientific). With a planned 15-year lifespan (2022-2037), China has signaled plans to add more modules and eventually host astronauts from both the private sector and other countries.
The U.S.was unsurprisingly anxious not to cede the lead in this aspect of the space race. To that end, NASA turned to private contractors to replace the ISS, with three stations currently being planned through the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program.
As originally conceived, NASA provided initial CLD funding for space stations in exchange for becoming an anchoring customer of all three stations when they eventually become operational. None of the three individually are expected to exceed what the ISS can currently deliver, but assuming they each successfully reach the operational stage, scientists hope to improve upon what can be done with the ISS. A fourth space station is being developed without NASA funding by Vast, a privately held company.
The first (and, as of this writing, closest to completion) CLD station is being led by Axiom Space, a privately held company founded and led by Kamal Ghaffarian. A longtime space contractor, Axiom won a contract to build a module that will attach to the ISS, expanding the current station’s capabilities. Before the time comes for the ISS to be decommissioned, the new module will hopefully detach and become the core of the Axiom station, on which additional modules will be built and attached. The current schedule has the first Axiom module detaching from ISS at some time in 2028. Unsurprisingly, Intuitive Machines (LUNR), also co-founded and led by Ghaffarian, will be part of this effort, helping to build that initial module. Thales Alenia (a joint venture between France’s Thales and Italy’s Leonardo) will help build additional modules, while Boeing is also listed as a partner on Team Axiom.
The next CLD station, Orbital Reef, is led by Blue Origin. It has been conceived as a “mixed use business park in space”. NASA has provided $130 million in initial funding to the project, with another $42 million since the initial award. Blue Origin is working with Boeing, which will provide a science module and Starliner transport capabilities. Redwire (RDW) has agreed to provide payload operations and solar arrays, as well as support on microgravity research, while Genesis Engineering is developing a single-person spacecraft for use for operations immediately outside the space station (and possibly for tourist excursions). The current plan calls for Orbital Reef to become operational by 2027, though some observers are highly skeptical this will happen. Although NASA will be an anchor customer at Orbital Reef (just as with the other CLD stations), Orbital Reef is designed to be highly customizable to be suitable for a wide range of customers, from commercial research and manufacturing to media production and tourism, with the station operated by a consortium that provides a range of services including broadband connectivity and transport.
The third CLD station in development is Starlab. The project has seen a changeup in the partner lineup. It was originally conceived as a partnership between Voyager Space (VOYG) and Lockheed Martin. Lockheed exited the project and was replaced by Airbus, which in turn was then replaced by Northrop Grumman. (Northrop had originally been awarded CLD funding for its own space-station project, but it abandoned its own CLD plans to join the Starlab team.) This project is unique in that unlike Axiom and Orbital Reef, Starlab will be put together in its entirety on Earth and then launched fully assembled on a SpaceX vehicle. Furthermore, Starlab will consist of just one primary module for habitat and research, with a smaller module for power and propulsion. Starlab is more international in nature, with partners that include Japan’s Mitsubishi and Canada’s MDA Space. It is also more research-focused, with other space agencies intended to make up most of its customers. Other companies involved include Palantir Technologies and Hilton Worldwide, which has been tasked with designing the residence and communal areas of the station. Current plans call for Starlab to become operational by 2030.
Bonus: It’s worth noting a fourth station is currently in development, even if it is not part of the CLD program. Vast Space, a privately held company founded by Jed McCaleb (co-founder of Ripple Labs), is a non-funded part of NASA’s Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities program, which entitles the company to NASA technical assistance. Vast’s Haven-1 station differentiates itself by being intended for stays of no more than 30 days and a maximum crew size of four. Access will be sold to the private sector. As a result, Vast is able to utilize a simpler, smaller design that will hopefully lead to a shorter development time. Vast intends to experiment with spinning artificial gravity, in contrast to the ISS and the three CLD stations in development. Haven-1 was originally planned to launch and become operational this month (Aug. 2025), but the timeline has been pushed back to sometime after May 2026.
Step 2: Heading back to the moon
NASA’s long-term, long-shot objective is a manned mission to Mars. However, just as the space agency used the Mercury and Gemini programs as intermediate steps on the way to the Apollo moon landing, the space-station initiative is conceived as a first intermediate step on the way to Mars. The second intermediate step involves Project Artemis – another moon shot.
The first moon shot involved three projects: Mercury, Gemini, and finally, Apollo. Those earlier NASA programs involved a plethora of private contractors, many of whom survive to this day, either as aerospace giants or their constituents. For example:
- Boeing Co. (BA) manufactured the first stage of the Saturn V rocket, used in the Apollo missions. It would later acquire McDonnell Aircraft, which built the Mercury and Gemini capsules, along with Douglas Aircraft and North American Aviation, two other Saturn V contractors.
- Grumman Aircraft, which later merged with Northrop Corp. to form Northrop Grumman (NOC), built the Apollo program’s lunar module.
- Martin Company, which ultimately became part of Lockheed Martin (LMT), built the Titan II rocket for the Gemini missions.
All three will be part of Project Artemis and related lunar projects as well. Yet they have been joined by an ambitious new cohort of nascent companies.
The current backbone of Artemis is the Space Launch System (SLS), basically an update to old Space Shuttle launch technology developed by Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Teledyne Brown (a subsidiary of Teledyne (TDY)) and Aerojet Rocketdyne (a subsidiary of L3Harris (LHX)). Though based on antiquated technology, the SLS is – as NASA describes it — “the only rocket capable of sending the Orion spacecraft, four astronauts, and large cargo directly to the Moon on a single launch.” Yet the SLS deserves criticism for its massive budget overruns (>$20 billion), delays, and operating costs (roughly $4.1 billion per launch).
As for the Orion, NASA has tasked Lockheed Martin to be lead contractor for the design, development, and testing of the spacecraft, intended to carry humans on long-duration missions into deep space. Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne will partner with Lockheed to provide launch abort systems and propulsion engines, respectively, while Honeywell (HON) will serve as a subcontractor providing guidance and navigation systems, including displays, controls, and avionics software.
The Europeans will also contribute to the development of the Orion craft, with the European Space Agency, Airbus, and Thales Alenia contributing components and designs related to propulsion, thermal control, electrical power, and micrometeoroid protection.
Project Artemis is currently in its second out of 10 phases. As part of this phase, fueling for the Orion spacecraft completed fueling on Aug. 10 in preparation for an April 2026 mission around the moon and back, the first crewed mission for the Artemis project.
Phase III of the project will then hopefully see the first American crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17, though it involves a dauntingly complex plan (illustrated by NASA below). Artemis III is tentatively scheduled for some time after mid-2027. However, with SpaceX having yet to test the intravehicle fuel transfer pivotal to getting its HLS into lunar orbit, and with engineers still trying to fix problems with heat shields on the Orion craft transporting the astronauts, there is a very real possibility that this schedule could be pushed back yet again from its original 2024 target date.
Step 3: A sustained human presence on the moon for a future in Mars
A successful Phase III will further pave the way for the Lunar Gateway, a planned space station that will orbit the moon (hopefully scheduled for some time after 2028 – more on that below). Northrop Grumman has been named the lead contractor for the Lunar Gateway, with Thales Alenia Space Italia having already designed, built, and delivered one of the two habitation modules on the Gateway. Privately held Maxar Technologies will be building the module that provides power, thrust, and attitude control. The Lunar Gateway is conceived as a multinational effort, with contributions from the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the UAE’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC).
The Gateway would enable the testing of long-duration life support systems (including their effects on human physiology), as well as the shielding against the enhanced radiation to which astronauts headed to Mars will be exposed. (Astronauts in low-earth orbit are largely shielded from this radiation by the Earth’s magnetosphere).
The ultimate takeaway: Scientists are also eyeing the Gateway as a likely staging area for a crewed Mars mission, where the Mars spacecraft would be assembled and launched.
Among the companies developing hardware and technologies for this sustained lunar presence are:
- SpaceX and Blue Origin: The two companies are developing “human landing systems” (HLS) that will carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon and serve as a temporary base and residence for their operations for as long as a week at a time. (Despite the moniker, the HLS systems will also deliver cargo to the lunar surface.)
- Intuitive Machines (LUNR), Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab are each designing lunar terrain vehicles. Intuitive Machines also has a $4.8 billion contract to build lunar communications relay systems.
- Axiom Space is designing spacesuits that will feature significantly improved range of motion and flexibility, significantly stronger radiation shielding, and advanced life support with multiple redundancies/failsafes. (The company is consulting with familiar brands like Oakley and Prada in this effort.)
Also slated to play a significant role in lunar operations is Firefly Aerospace (FLY). The company, which went public on Aug. 6, has been awarded a broad NASA contract to launch and deliver cargo to the lunar surface. This effort will involve Firefly’s own Blue Ghost lunar lander and Elytra Dark orbital vehicle, which will be used to deliver various autonomous scientific instruments to investigate the moon’s Gruithuisen Domes. (In March 2025, Firefly’s Blue Ghost became the first successful commercial soft landing on the moon.) Firefly also provides launch services on certain Lockheed Martin satellite projects, and the company has a partnership agreement with Northrop Grumman to develop its new Antares rocket and Eclipse launch vehicle.
NASA has ambitions to build an inhabitable, nuclear-powered lunar base. This will require a design that is light (to reduce launch costs) and can control the massive amounts of heat generated by a reactor core without any air available to dissipate it. Design work for the lunar fission reactors is in its early stages, with three initiatives currently underway. The first is led by Lockheed Martin, partnering with BWX Technologies (BWXT), and Creare; the second is being led by Westinghouse, partnering with Aerojet Rocketdyne; and the final one is being spearheaded by IX (a joint venture between Intuitive Machines and X Energy, another company chaired by Kam Ghaffarian), partnering with Boeing and Maxar.
There are also proposals to install data centers on the moon. This has some obvious benefits — simplified physical security and vastly more efficient solar-power generation come to mind. (It’s worth noting that while the moon’s lack of atmosphere makes sunlight more intense and solar-power generation thus more efficient, any given location on the moon alternates between roughly two weeks of uninterrupted sunlight and two weeks of constant darkness.) However, as with the nuclear power plant, the servers would need to be cooled, and achieving this in a largely atmosphere-less environment remains an unsolved challenge. Thales, Leonardo, and the Texas startup Lonestar Data Holdings are conducting R&D on the possibility, hoping to begin deployment by 2030 and achieve commercial viability by 2037.
Other challenges: A space program in flux
Space exploration involves successful cutting-edge science in numerous fields of study, and that in and of itself is already enormously difficult. This challenge is compounded by the unavoidable involvement of politics and politicians.
This isn’t a Trump critique — though the Trump administration has made its own contribution to the challenge.
“Getting cast to and fro from one administration to the next has been very damaging over time, and that’s the challenge with NASA,” former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine explained. “What we do is multi-decadal in nature, and sometimes it’s multi-generational, and you can’t just have it go back and forth.”
Take the Lunar Gateway project described above, for example. It’s true that the Lunar Gateway is seen by many critics as an unnecessary expense. Some of them argue that it would be more economically efficient to use robots to explore space, while others simply believe it would be more expedient to simply skip to building a moon base.
As George Abbey, a former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, wrote in the Houston Chronicle, “If we are going to return to the Moon, we should go directly there, not build a space station to orbit it.” Moonwalker Buzz Aldrin and former NASA administrator Michael Griffin have voiced similar sentiments.
Yet Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made a sensible point when the Trump administration in May 2025 abruptly called for eliminating the Gateway project and the SLS Orion initiatives altogether: Cruz argued that “it would be folly to cut short these missions after much of the hardware has already been purchased and, in some cases, delivered with no commercial alternative readily available.” The White House ultimately rescinded its proposal and included funding in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but the incident illustrates the ability of each succeeding occupant of the Oval Office to make sudden and significant changes to decades-long projects.
Trump’s general approach to space exploration — though he supports the effort in general — has incorporated his intention to shake things up in the federal government. His “skinny budget” for NASA, a 24%, $6 billion cut to the agency’s budget for FY 2026 is projected to result in roughly a 4,000-person, 20% reduction to the space agency’s personnel.
Could that change? In 2023, China announced its own plans of landing astronauts on the moon by 2030, with observers agreeing that the Chinese space program remains broadly on track to achieve its timeline. Last week, former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine testified to the Senate Commerce Committee (which oversees NASA) that “unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface.” Perhaps that testimony could cause Trump, never known for being non-competitive, to alter his approach to NASA policy – and leave it alone afterwards. That would be a positive for the companies working with NASA, as well as their shareholders.
Conclusion
Since the U.S. and Soviet Union began the space race more than six decades ago, it has greatly expanded to include numerous companies in the public and private sectors. The strategic and economic potential of space exploration has yet to be fully realized or defined, but its existence is undeniable.
It is the nature of competition for new players to emerge and, in some cases, take over leadership. This arguably is what leads to investment opportunities.
As always, Signal From Noise should not be used as a source of investment recommendations but rather ideas for further investigation. We encourage you to explore our full Signal From Noise library, which includes deep dives on power-generation stocks, the military drone industry, the presidential effect on markets, the America First trade, ChatGPT’s challenge to Google Search, and the rising wealth of women. You’ll also find a recent update on AI focusing on sovereign AI and AI agents, the TikTok demographic, and weight loss-related investments.