Covering Space Sector Market Trends & Indices for May 2026, including:
Stocks soar in May. Our Core and Frontier indexes wildly outperformed the market for the second consecutive month, with our Core index up 29% and Frontier names up 39% vs. an S&P 500 gain of 5%.
Space Hardware was the best-performing sector up 55% in May and 113% since the end of March. Three stocks more than doubled in May (Astroscale, Virgin Galactic, and Redwire), with the latter name up +167%. GomSpace was the laggard – up only 11%.
Earth Observation shares gained 25% in May and are up 127% YTD. Six of nine stocks were up double digit led by Japanese SAR operators iQPS (+59%) and Synspective (+41%), while Korea’s Satrec and Contec declined 21% and 24%, respectively.
Satcom also had a strong month (+24%), with every stock (ex-GSAT) up double digits. AST led the pack (+53%) in May, while Iridium is the YTD leader (+198%), and Viasat is the best performer y/y (+823%).
A&D Primes were flat in May (up 16% y/y) while Gov’t Services eked out a 3% gain in May to finish -3% y/y.
