On 12 May 2026, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) welcomed a product previously absent from its listings: a Betashares ETF entirely focused on the space economy.
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Article created by the editorial staff of ETFWorld.co.uk
Alex Vynokur, CEO of Betashares
Trading under the ticker RCKT, the Betashares Space Industry ETF has commenced trading, offering Australian investors direct exposure to thirty listed companies operating within the space value chain. The product has been listed under the ASX’s AQUA regulatory framework under the trading name BETASPACE.
RCKT tracks the Solactive Space Industry Index, an index developed by the German firm Solactive AG, based in Frankfurt. The index selects thirty representative companies active in four key segments: satellite communications, connectivity and data services, launch capabilities, and space infrastructure and manufacturing. The selection of constituents is carried out using ARTIS®, Solactive’s proprietary natural language processing algorithm, which analyses large volumes of public documents – financial statements, financial news, company descriptions – to identify companies with the greatest thematic exposure to the space sector.
“The space industry is undergoing structural change, with commercial operators playing an increasingly important role in areas such as satellite communications and data infrastructure,” said Timo Pfeiffer, Chief Markets Officer at Solactive. “The Solactive Space Industry Index is designed to reflect this development, offering transparent, rules-based exposure to companies contributing to this evolving space ecosystem.”
The index adopts a market capitalisation-weighted system, with a 10% cap for each constituent. For stocks exceeding a certain size threshold, the weighting is calculated based on total capitalisation and the cap rises to 25%, a solution designed to accommodate large players without compromising diversification. The index also features a review mechanism for IPOs, allowing for the rapid inclusion of newly listed companies with significant relevance to the theme.
At launch, 74.3% of the RCKT portfolio was allocated to US stocks, with Japan in second place (7.2%), followed by Canada, France, South Korea, Sweden and Israel. The top five holdings as at 12 May included Rocket Lab USA (13.1%), AST SpaceMobile (10.2%), Planet Labs, Viasat and EchoStar.
“We are proud to launch the Betashares Space Industry ETF, RCKT, an ASX first offering exposure to the companies driving the rapidly evolving global space industry,” said Alex Vynokur, CEO of Betashares. “Once driven primarily by government agencies, the space industry is increasingly shaped by commercial companies launching rockets, building satellite networks and providing critical data from orbit. With falling launch costs expanding what is commercially possible, and anticipated IPOs such as SpaceX’s on the horizon, RCKT is designed to capture the range of opportunities emerging in the global space industry.”
The ETF has an annual management fee of 0.57%. Betashares, one of Australia’s leading ETF issuers, based in Sydney with offices in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Auckland, stated that RCKT is intended as a thematic allocation to complement a diversified portfolio, not as a core component.
The launch comes against a backdrop of strong expansion in the global space economy: according to data from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey, the sector has grown from $630 billion in 2023 to a projected $1.8 trillion by 2035, with an annual growth rate of 9%, almost double the growth of global GDP. Globally, space-themed ETFs manage approximately $4.45 billion and have raised around $2.1 billion since the start of the year.
With the arrival of RCKT, the ASX is filling a gap in its range of thematic ETFs, at a time when the space industry is completing its transition from government dominance to a commercial ecosystem.
Source: ETFWorld.co.uk
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