Most people know about the rockets. The bigger half of the business is the satellites.
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✦ The bottom line
Revenue grew 63% in a year. The launches got the headlines. The satellites got the bigger share.
↓ the brief below
✦ Teach me
Money coming in
Every dollar customers paid Rocket Lab — for rocket launches and for satellites they built. The simplest measure of how big the business got.
Wall Street calls this
Revenue
+63% YoY for a small-cap company is real momentum. The next question is *which* part is growing.
Total revenue · latest quarter
$200
M
Money in for the most recent three months — up 63% from $123M a year earlier.
Source · 10-Q · Income Statement · Q1 FY26 · Filed May 7, 2026
$200 million up from $123 million is real growth — 63% in a year for a company this size. But when a company has two growing businesses inside it, the headline number can hide which one is doing the heavy lifting. People who follow Rocket Lab tend to think "rockets." The filings tell a different story. So which engine is actually bigger?
Where the revenue comes from
68
%
Space Systems (building satellites + components) is now 68% of revenue. Launch Services (the rockets) is 32%. The satellite business is bigger.
Source · 10-Q · Segment Information · Q1 FY26 · Filed May 7, 2026
So Rocket Lab is more satellite-builder than launch company — a useful thing to know if you're trying to figure out what they actually do. But the next question for any growing company is: are they growing because they're great, or because their whole industry is hot right now? Space had a brutal decade of bankruptcies. The few survivors are riding a different wave. So how is the rest of the small public-space group doing?
How are the other US-listed space companies doing?
Money in vs. one year ago — most recent reported quarter
Rocket Lab
+63%
Planet Labs
+33%
Iridium
+2%
Rocket Lab leads the pure-play space peers by 2x. Planet Labs (Earth-imaging) is also growing fast. Iridium (mature satellite comm) is flat — the cycle leaders versus the legacy player.