What happened
This week is looking like an exciting week for space investors, with good news from SpaceX last night, and hopefully some more good news from Virgin Galactic Holdings (SPCE +2.20%) arriving in a couple of days. Investors are accordingly acting pretty excited about all the goings on "up there" today.
In late Monday-morning trading, as of 11:10 a.m. ET, shares of space tourism pioneer Virgin Galactic notched a 9.7% gain, followed closely by cellphones-in-space company AST SpaceMobile (ASTS +0.78%), up 7.2%, and spy satellite operator BlackSky Technology (BKSY 1.54%), up 6.6%.
NYSE: SPCE
Key Data Points
So what
On Sunday evening, SpaceX launched the second Axiom Space "all-private astronaut mission" to the International Space Station.
The second all-private astronaut mission has lifted off! Go #Ax2 #TeamAxiom https://t.co/KXNhuv0LSk
-- Axiom Space (@Axiom_Space) May 21, 2023
The Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying these astronauts docked with ISS just after 9 a.m. ET this morning, and by the time you read this article, the astronauts should be safely aboard the space station. There, they'll stay and conduct research for approximately eight days before returning home and landing at sea, concluding the Ax-2 mission.
Meanwhile, as Ax-2 gets underway, Virgin Galactic is expected to conduct a space mission of its own, Unity 25, in which four Virgin Galactic employees fly their space plane to space and back and confirm that the system is ready to begin commercial space tourism flights. That flight could take place as soon as Thursday, May 25, and if all goes well with it, commercial flights should begin with the inaugural Galactic 01 mission scheduled for late June.
Now what
So that's obviously good news for Virgin Galactic, which may soon begin cashing in on the hundreds of tickets it has presold for space tourism flights and begin generating significant revenue for its business. But why are AST SpaceMobile and BlackSky stocks joining Virgin Galactic up there in orbit today?
Well, there's been no actual news from either of these companies since they reported Q1 2023 earnings results on May 15 and May 10, respectively. Nor were their earnings news particularly great. AST reported losses of $0.23 per share, while BlackSky reported $0.14 per share in losses and a sales miss.
Nevertheless, the more positive "space" news appears in the press this week -- and there's going to be a lot of it -- the more interest there's going to be in the space sector, and in space stocks like AST and BlackSky. That's just logical. Granted, in the long term, all three of these stocks need to find a way to turn their businesses profitable before they can be considered anything more than speculative investments.
Luckily for shareholders, though, it appears that a lot of people are willing to do a bit of speculating today.
