“2025: The Year Stocks Are Set to Rocket to New Heights!”

A lot can evolve in a decade.

Ten years ago, when NASA commenced its plan to return to the moon, I expressed discontent that the agency’s contracts were primarily awarded to private space enterprises. NASA was venturing to the moon, yet the absence of public stocks made it challenging for investors to join the journey.

Fast forward ten years, and a select few New Space firms have finally entered the public market. As NASA continues to distribute contracts and amplify the revenues of space startups, the likelihood of additional companies going public in the years to come is increasing. Within the ambit of NASA’s prominent Project Artemis, aerospace industry leaders such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and L3Harris may secure the majority of the contracts. Larger private entities like SpaceX and Blue Origin, who are constructing lunar landers, continue to make headlines as well.

However, in the near term, some of the most significant advancements in lunar exploration will emerge from a few lesser-known space stocks that you may not be familiar with. Here are four space companies worth monitoring as we enter 2025.

Firefly Aerospace

This week on Wednesday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Kennedy Space Center. Aboard were two distinct small lunar landers from different space firms — both en route to the moon.

The first lander, designed by Firefly Aerospace, is known as the Blue Ghost. This trapezoidal vehicle stands two meters tall and 3.5 meters wide at its base, engineered to transport 150 kg of cargo to the lunar surface. From launch to touchdown, Blue Ghost is anticipated to take 45 days to reach the moon, with an arrival date of March 2.

Interestingly, Firefly Aerospace operates its own fleet of Alpha-class rockets. You might not expect it would require SpaceX’s assistance in reaching the moon. However, the Alpha’s payload capability is only 1 ton to low Earth orbit (much less to the moon), whereas Blue Ghost weighs 2.7 tons. Nonetheless, Firefly is developing a new, sturdier rocket named the MLV, projected to be operational by 2026.

If the MLV is successful — and if this lunar mission is successful too — it’s entirely feasible that within a couple of years, Firefly can independently transport payloads to the moon.

ispace Japan

The second lunar lander launched by SpaceX on Wednesday is ispace’s Resilience. Smaller than Firefly’s lander, Resilience weighs only one ton and can carry a payload of just 30 kg. Its payload does include a small lunar rover named Tenacious, which could lead to an exhilarating mission if everything proceeds as planned.

Resilience represents ispace’s second attempt at a lunar landing. In 2023, a Hakuto-R lander akin to Resilience crash-landed on the moon due to fuel depletion. This next attempt is slated to make its lunar arrival no sooner than May 2025.

Intuitive Machines

Notably, this indicates that the only one of these three space companies that is also publicly traded is likely to land on the moon before Resilience, even though it launches later.

In 2024, Intuitive Machines (LUNR -2.89%) amazed the global audience with a mostly successful landing of its IM-1 Odysseus lander on the moon. NASA has awarded Intuitive a total of three more lander contracts, with the first (designated the IM-2 mission) expected to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 sometime in Q1 this year, and to reach the moon about a week after that.

Once again, Intuitive will deploy a NOVA-C lander, this one named Athena, with a payload size similar to Firefly’s — around 100 to 130 kg. The company’s main objective will be to drill for signs of water near the Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole. Intriguingly, Athena will also house communications gear from Nokia, and will test the viability of Nokia’s LTE 4G communication system on the moon.

This segment of the mission seems to align with a substantial NASA contract that Intuitive Machines secured shortly after its initial landing achievement: a ten-year contract potentially valued at up to $4.8 billion for the company to develop a communications relay system between Earth orbit and the moon.

As the first U.S. company to accomplish a lunar landing since the Apollo program, and the only company on this list going to the moon this year that has already landed on the moon, Intuitive Machines appears to possess the best prospects for success this year.

From an investor’s point of view, a second success for Intuitive Machines would provide the most cause for celebration, seeing as it is currently the only one of these three firms that is publicly traded.

Astrobotic

Lastly, there is another 2025 lunar mission worth highlighting: Astrobotic. As reported by Payload Space, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is set to transport the largest lander ever to the moon later this year. Astrobotic’s Griffin measures 2 meters tall and 4.5 meters at its base. With a payload capacity of 625 kg, it is about four times more capable than the landers from the other companies.

Griffin also has a substantial weight, totaling six tons, which likely exceeds the capacity for a Falcon 9 to launch, justifying its mission aboard a Falcon Heavy.

To summarize, investors have a lengthy wait ahead until either SpaceX or Blue Origin lands people on the moon. Yet, SpaceX is playing a significant role in transporting other companies’ uncrewed landers to the lunar surface in 2025. This will help pave the way for future crewed missions by collecting data on optimal landing sites and delivering supplies for the astronauts’ arrival.

If, in doing so, it enables some of these private aerospace firms to go public and become traded stocks, that would simply be the finishing touch on this lunar endeavor.