Top 5 Stocks That Will Profit From SpaceX’s NASA Launch Monopoly After Blue Origin’s Pad Collapse

Blue Origin’s New Glenn pad will take a minimum of a year to rebuild after a hot fire test obliterated the company’s only launch infrastructure for the vehicle, marking the first pad explosion since the Soviet N1 rocket in 1969. NASA’s Artemis lunar rover ride just vaporized, SpaceX inherits the entire federal manifest by default, and public investors can’t buy SpaceX. They can buy the proxies. Here are the five I’m watching, and the #1 name is not the one you think.

1. Rocket Lab (the surprise lead)

Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB | RKLB Price Prediction) sits in the bullseye for a reason most generalist investors miss: Neutron, the company’s medium-lift rocket, is targeted for a Q4 2026 debut, which makes Peter Beck’s team the only credible near-term US alternative to Falcon 9 in the medium-lift class with New Glenn sidelined. The SpaceX S-1 itself names Rocket Lab as a launch competitor “expanding into medium-lift payloads”. That sentence just got a lot more valuable.

The Q1 26 earnings report backs it up. Revenue hit $200.35M, up 63.5% year over year, beating $189.41M estimates, backlog jumped to $2.20B, up 20.2% sequentially, and Beck disclosed an $816M SDA contract for 18 Tracking Layer Tranche 3 satellites alongside selection for the Department of War Space Based Interceptor program under Golden Dome. Shares are up 52% in the last month and 346% over the past year, closing Thursday at $119.95.

I’ve been tracking Rocket Lab since the SPAC days and the composite sentiment now sits at 60.84, bullish. The breadcrumb to stock #2: if Falcon 9 is now the only show in town, who needs the most flights on it?

2. AST SpaceMobile

AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS) is building a direct-to-cell broadband constellation, and every BlueBird satellite rides a SpaceX rocket to orbit. Abel Avellan’s roadmap calls for BlueBird 8/9/10 launching mid-June on Falcon 9, with roughly 45 BlueBirds in orbit by year-end 2026 and launches every 1 to 2 months. Blue Origin’s exit tightens ASTS’s lock on the only launch provider that can actually deliver the cadence.

Q1 26 was lumpy. Revenue came in at $14.73M, up roughly 1,950% year over year but missing the $36.58M consensus, and net loss landed at $191.01M. The balance sheet absorbs that: pro forma liquidity sits above $3.9B after the $1.07B convertible, and management is guiding 2026 revenue of $150M to $200M with roughly 60 MNO partners covering 3B+ subscribers.

The trade is asymmetric. Shares ran 68% in the past month to $107.29, sit well above the $87.67 50-day moving average, and the analyst target of $82.02 is now below the tape. That gap closes one of two ways. Next up, the obvious anchor.

3. Lockheed Martin (the heavyweight)

Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) is the prime contractor on Orion, the NASA crew capsule that just completed the Artemis II lunar flyby and splashdown. With New Glenn out of the human-rated picture for the foreseeable future, Artemis architecture rides SpaceX-adjacent infrastructure and a Lockheed-built crew vehicle. That is a contractual moat you cannot replicate in a year.

Q1 26 delivered $18.02B in revenue, with Space segment sales of $3.43B up 7% year over year, and Jim Taiclet reaffirmed FY26 guidance of sales of $77.5B to $80B, EPS of $29.35 to $30.25, and free cash flow of $6.5B to $6.8B. Backlog set a fresh record. EPS for Q1 came in at $6.44 versus $6.70 expected, a miss the market shrugged off because of the production rate guidance: Patriot, THAAD, and PrSM ramping 3 to 4 times.

LMT trades at $519.05, up 3% over the last month and 9% year to date. This is the boring compounder of the basket. The next name is anything but boring.

4. Northrop Grumman

Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC) makes the GEM 63 and GEM 63XL solid rocket motors that strap onto ULA’s Vulcan rocket, the only certified national security backup to Falcon 9 now that New Glenn is on the bench. Kathy Warden’s team also builds the HALO module, the literal habitation element of NASA’s lunar Gateway. Two distinct shots on goal in the Artemis stack, and both got more valuable on the pad explosion.

Q1 26 revenue was $9.88B, up 4.4% year over year, beating the $9.76B estimate, with Space Systems revenue at $2.48B and backlog of $95.61B. Q4 awards included $2.5B in GEM 63 rocket motors and $0.8B for SDA Tranche 3 Tracking Layer. Aeronautics flipped from a loss to $305M in operating income on the B-21 ramp.

The stock is the laggard of the five, down 4% year to date, which is exactly why it interests me. The market has not repriced the Artemis supply-chain implications yet. That sets up the payoff.

5. Intuitive Machines (the payoff)

Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ:LUNR) is the pure-play NASA lunar prime. Every Commercial Lunar Payload Services task order Steve Altemus’s team has won rides a Falcon 9 to the Moon. With Blue Origin’s New Glenn out for at least a year, LUNR’s lunar manifest gets accelerated. That is the inversion most investors are missing.

Q1 26 revenue hit $186.73M, up 198.7% year over year, adjusted EBITDA flipped positive to $2.67M, and backlog set a record at $1.06B. Management guides FY26 revenue to $900M to $1B with positive adjusted EBITDA. The contract stack is staggering: a $180.4M fifth CLPS task order from NASA, US Space Force Andromeda IDIQ ceiling of $6.2B, and MDA SHIELD IDIQ ceiling of $151B.

Reddit caught the inversion before Wall Street did. Sentiment cratered to 32 (bearish) on May 27 at 3am ET after the headline “$LUNR Intuitive Machines falls after NASA names Blue Origin to deliver the first Lunar Terrain Vehicle” hit, then recovered to very_bullish 85 within hours. Days later, Blue Origin’s pad blew up. The stock now sits at $33.63, up 107% year to date and 204% over the past year, with analyst targets at $40.78 and 7 Buy ratings against 1 Strong Sell.

The close

Blue Origin needed a competitor to keep SpaceX honest, and that competitor just stopped existing for at least 12 months. NASA’s lunar architecture, the SDA tracking layer, every commercial constellation with a 2026 manifest: all of it now flows through one launch provider and the five contractors above. The window to position before the rest of the Street rewrites its space models is narrow. The pad is rubble. The orders are not waiting.