Al Root

Rocket Lab stock is having a crazy week, for no good reason.

Shares of the space technology company, sometimes referred to as a mini SpaceX because of its reusable launch capacity and satellite expertise, were down 13% in midday trading on Wednesday. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.4% and up 0.5%, respectively.

The drop followed a nearly 10% gain on Tuesday, possibly in response to SpaceX announcing it had acquired xAI on Monday. The deal valuation implied a 25% bump for both companies, to $1 trillion for SpaceX and $250 billion for xAI.

Space "is kind of a beta industry," says Andrew Chanin, CEO of ProcureAM, which offers the Procure Space ETF. "It's not surprising to see days where numerous [space] companies move more than 5% in one day."

Beta measures the tendency of a group of securities to rise or fall together.

The idea is that if SpaceX is worth $1 trillion, up from $800 billion, then Rocket Lab, the mini-SpaceX, is worth more as well.

Some of Tuesday's gain was also a rebound from a miserable Monday. Shares fell about 8%, apparently because Congress killed a plan to bring samples back to Earth from the Mars Perseverance Rover, which has been on the red planet since 2021. The project would have cost some $4 billion.

In early 2025, Rocket Lab had proposed to bring the samples back by 2031 under a firm fixed-price contract. It was an ambitious idea that didn't survive the Congressional budgeting process in mid-January.

That revenue likely wouldn't have been realized until the 2030s, so it isn't clear how much Rocket Lab stock reflected benefits from the potential Mars contract..

As Chanin says, and as Wednesday's trading demonstrates, space stocks are volatile.

Rocket Lab stock was still up about 150% over the past 12 months, through midday trading. The stock was trading for about 41 times the sales expected over the next 12 months, up from about 22 times a year ago.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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February 04, 2026 12:54 ET (17:54 GMT)

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