Investing in space can offer stellar opportunities as companies push back the frontiers with out-of-this-world ideas.
Space investment is not just about asteroid mining and tourism.
Many companies firmly rooted on Earth offer equity stakes to investors in commercial technology deployment now NASA has turned developing and funding space missions over to the private sector.
Essentially, many of these opportunities are an offshoot of the aerospace industry.
Not all space companies are ‘pure space’ companies, for many the space industry is one part of their business, aerospace another.
Space technology
Among the largest are:
- Thales Space Stock – listed on the Euronext Paris exchange, the group provides the hardware for space science missions, like Thales Group (Thales SA) provides solutions for various types of science missions, including satellites and instruments for astronomy, and landers for the exploration of Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan.
- Astrotech Spacehub – on NASDAQ is another firm specialising in helping governments design and make hardware for space missions
- Magellan Space Stock – found on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Magellan has had 40 years of working with NASA providing rockets and payloads for the NASA’s space shuttle and the International Space Station
- Loral Space Systems European Space Stock – listed on NASDAQ, Loral is a satellite communications company
- Invest in Satellite Stocks – on the London Stock Exchange, the firm is involved in global mobile satellite communications services, including a flotilla of 10 geostationary satellites
Other off-planet investments can be found on crowdfunding web sites.
Crowdfunding space exploration
One of the best known crowdfunded space investments is the Arkyd Telescope, a project led by Planetary Resources, a company based in Seattle, USA.
The firm raised just over $1.5 million on Kickstarter from 17,600 backers to soar over the investment goal of $1 million.
In return for their investment, backers receive no dividend or return on their investment, but do get merchandise and, depending on the level of investment, private use of the telescope for their own celestial projects.
Planetary Resources is also looking at the possibility of asteroid mining. This involves sending a space probe to land on an asteroid to prospect for minerals.
The plan is that asteroids have the same geological composition as Earth, so could be a rich source of minerals.
However, the cost and logistics of sending and landing a probe that can then bring back enough minerals to be of value remains questionable.
Nevertheless, space technology and exploration offers investments with various degrees of risk that could bring sky rocketing returns.