Rocket Lab has lifted off. Shares of the commercial space startup surged as much as 50% on Wednesday after reporting better than expected third quarter results and raising revenue guidance. The stock has now more than tripled in three months and is up more than 380% in six.

CEO and founder Peter Beck says Rocket Lab is seeing momentum across all of its businesses.

We continue to execute well in their space systems business and Electron is the small launch vehicle product that we have is, you know, we continue to do well with that.

You know, the ASP continues to rise and bookings are incredibly strong.

And then of course, Neutron is making great progress.

So there's a lot of technical milestones met and also some commercial ones as well with the first signing and some contracts.

So, yeah, no, it was a great quarter.

Rocket Lab has launched at Small Electron Rocket a record 12 times this year, with more missions still planned.

The backlog stands at just over a billion dollars.

The company also signed up its first customer for its new rocket, the medium lift Neutron, which is on pace for its first flight next year.

Neutron opens a lot up for us, especially in providing and ultimately providing services

from space.

But I think about some of the other programs, we've talked about the national security, but

one that we've got our eye on is the Mars sample return.

It's one of NASA's most important missions, and we think we're really well placed to go after that.

If you look at all the key elements, whether it's launching off a little planet with little rockets,

I mean, I'm not sure who does that better than us, and through to bringing samples back to Earth.

So, yeah, there's a lot to be excited about. And, you know,

we're certainly putting our ore in the water in a lot of those really large, large, you know,

nationalistic programs. On this episode, Rocket Labs Beck breaks down earnings. What a second

Trump term could mean for space, especially with Elon Musk in the mix, and what he's most excited about.

I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space.

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