Space ETF Without SpaceX Ranked by SpaceX Weight and Fee

No US space ETF that holds mostly space companies is free of SpaceX. The one space fund with no SpaceX at all, the SPDR S&P Kensho Final Frontiers ETF (ROKT, 0.45%), held only about 22% in companies whose main business is space on September 29, 2026; the rest is aerospace suppliers, defense contractors and deep sea equipment. Procure's UFO (0.75%) held 3.8% in SpaceX on its July 31 filing, ARK's ARKX (0.75%) 10.8% on October 1, and the four space funds launched in 2026 hold 20% to 24%. To own the pure play space stocks without SpaceX, you have to build the basket yourself.

The question comes up for a plain reason. SpaceX listed on Nasdaq on June 12, 2026 at $135 a share and was worth roughly $2 trillion at its September 30 price of $150.86. Almost every space fund bought it, and in the newest ones it is now the largest holding by a wide margin. If you already own SpaceX through the Nasdaq-100, bought shares at the listing, or simply do not want a fifth of a theme fund riding on one company, a space ETF stops looking diversified.

Every weight, fee and holding below comes from the issuer's holdings file, fund page or SEC filings, read on October 1, 2026. We make index construction and backtesting software; we do not sell funds or give investment advice.

Space ETFs ranked by how much SpaceX they hold

Holdings dates are September 29 for ROKT, WARP and RONB, September 30 for ORBX, NASA and MARS, and October 1 for ARKX. UFO is the exception: Procure's site could not be read, so its figures come from the fund's SEC filing for July 31, the latest it has filed, and press reports since then say its SpaceX weight has risen. The share in space companies is our own sum of the published weights in companies whose main business is space, from SpaceX and Rocket Lab to Iridium, Planet Labs and Redwire. We left out defense contractors, GPS makers, component suppliers and Sirius XM.

The table shows the trade you face. The funds with little or no SpaceX are also the funds with the least space in them. The funds that are nearly all space are a fifth to a quarter SpaceX. There is no fund in the corner where most people asking this question want to be: almost all space, almost no SpaceX.

Is there a space ETF without SpaceX?

Yes, but only one, and it is not much of a space fund. ROKT held no SpaceX on September 29, 2026. Its index, S&P Kensho Final Frontiers, covers space and deep sea exploration, so its largest holdings were Forum Energy Technologies (4.4%), Oceaneering (3.9%), Ducommun (3.9%), RTX (3.7%) and Iridium (3.7%). About 22% of it sits in space companies. If what you want is aerospace and ocean engineering at 0.45%, it is a fair product. If you want rockets and satellites, most of your money goes elsewhere.

UFO is the closest thing to a space fund with a small SpaceX weight, and it comes with its own caveat. Its index picks companies by where their revenue comes from, which brings in Garmin (7.0%), Trimble (6.3%) and Sirius XM (5.8%) because they depend on satellites. At the July 31 filing, SpaceX was 3.8% and the space companies 55.4% in total. Check the current holdings on the fund page before buying, because the weight was moving up.

Which space ETF owns the most SpaceX?

The Baron First Principles ETF (RONB) owns the most, 40.3% on September 29, 2026, but it is a growth fund whose other large holdings are Tesla, FIGS and MSCI. Among the dedicated space funds, Roundhill's MARS held 24.4%, Tema's NASA 24.2%, Global X's ORBX 22.7% and VanEck's WARP 20.2%. NASA holds part of its SpaceX, 16.7% of the fund, through a private vehicle it bought before the listing, and 7.5% in listed shares.

The clustering around 20% is mostly arithmetic. At about $2 trillion, SpaceX is worth far more than all the other listed space companies combined, so an index weighted by market value would be almost entirely SpaceX. WARP's index caps any single stock at 20%, and the others land in the same range by rule or by choice. If you want to see the SpaceX weight and the rest of each fund side by side, our space stocks index builder page charts all eight from the holdings files.

Which space ETF has the lowest expense ratio?

ROKT has the lowest expense ratio of the US space funds at 0.45%. WARP and ORBX follow at 0.50%, then UFO, ARKX, NASA and MARS at 0.75%, and RONB at 1.00%. On $25,000 that is $113 a year in ROKT, $125 in WARP or ORBX and $188 in the 0.75% funds.

The fee looks different once you ask what you pay for each dollar that ends up in a space company other than SpaceX, which is the money you actually want if you are avoiding it. Divide the fee by that share and the ranking turns over.

By that measure, the cheapest way to hold the non-SpaceX space companies through a fund is WARP or ORBX, even though both are a fifth SpaceX. ROKT is cheapest on the label and among the most expensive per dollar of actual space exposure. ARKX is a defense and technology fund with a space sleeve.

Does VOO hold SpaceX?

No. Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF (VOO) held no SpaceX on August 31, 2026. S&P Dow Jones Indices decided on June 4, 2026 to keep the S&P 500's rules on seasoning and profitability for new listings, so SpaceX cannot join before it has traded for twelve months. The broader funds are different. Vanguard's total market ETF (VTI) held 0.11% and its extended market ETF (VXF) 1.01%, because their indexes added a fast entry route for very large IPOs in June 2026. SpaceX also joined the Nasdaq-100 on July 7, 2026, so funds tracking that index hold it.

This matters if your goal is to avoid adding more SpaceX rather than to avoid it entirely. Someone who holds VTI and QQQ already owns some. Someone who holds only VOO owns none for now. Either way, the space position you add on top should be sized with that in mind.

Space ETF without SpaceX vs building your own space basket

Because no fund holds mostly space and little SpaceX, the way to get there is a basket of the listed space companies you choose. Twenty-three companies listed on Nasdaq or the NYSE earn most of their money from space, from Rocket Lab and Firefly in launch to AST SpaceMobile, Iridium and Viasat in connectivity, Planet Labs and BlackSky in imaging, and Redwire and Intuitive Machines in hardware. Ten to twenty of them, equally weighted or capped, gives you the theme with whatever SpaceX share you pick, including zero. If you want to dig into each company's revenue and balance sheet before you pick, you can research each space company's fundamentals one ticker at a time.

Cost is where this is decided. Fidelity Basket Portfolios charges a flat $4.99 a month, $59.88 a year, to hold up to 50 stocks as one basket. That is cheaper than a 0.75% fund above about $8,000 and cheaper than a 0.50% fund above about $12,000. Below those amounts the fund costs less. A basket also lets you sell an individual loser for a tax loss while the rest stays put, which a fund cannot do; check the 30 day window with the wash sale calculator before you buy the same stock back.

The honest drawback is upkeep. You place the trades, and in a theme this volatile the weights drift fast, so a quarterly rebalance is part of the deal. And the history is short: several of these companies listed through mergers between 2021 and 2026, so a backtest reaches back only as far as the youngest stock in the basket.

How to choose

If you want space with SpaceX as a large holding and the lowest fee, WARP or ORBX at 0.50% do that cleanly. If you want space with less SpaceX and accept a wider definition of space, UFO is the candidate, after you check its current weight. If you want the pure play companies with no SpaceX, or a weight no fund offers such as 5% or 10%, build it.

That last case is what Indexes is for. In the space stocks index builder you add the companies, set the SpaceX weight, cap or equal weight the rest, and backtest the basket against the S&P 500 and against a one-line index of any space ETF over the same dates. Then you buy it wherever you already invest. If you are building more than one theme this way, the thematic index builder keeps them side by side, and the quantum version of the same problem is in our quantum computing stocks index.