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Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET) Lands On Our Watchlist This Morning—Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Don’t Miss Our Next Update—Get Real-Time Alerts Sent Directly To Your Phone. Up To 10X Faster Than Email. Get (FJET) On The Radar While It’s Still Early… September 23, 2026 Dear Reader, We’re starting Wednesday morning with Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET) firmly on our radar as several aerospace developments continue to stack up around the company. With two recent MOUs, a unique Mach 2+ fleet, and continued progress around STARLAUNCH, (FJET) is giving us plenty to examine ahead of the opening bell. (FJET) just dropped two MOUs in a single week — and the picture forming around this supersonic aerospace name is moving faster than most people realize… One partnership locks in a DARPA-linked hybrid rocket engine developer for its airborne launch platform. The other brings a NASA-adjacent payload processing lab into the fold. And behind both of them sits something no other company on the planet has: the world's only commercial fleet of flight-ready Mach 2+ supersonic aircraft. That's not a marketing line. That's the operational reality sitting on the tarmac at NASA's Kennedy Space Center right now. More than 2,500 F-104 Starfighters were built for air forces around the world during the Cold War, but today only a handful remain airworthy — and most of them belong to Starfighters. These same jets that once set speed, altitude, and time-to-climb records for the U.S. Air Force and NASA are now flying commercial missions out of Florida and Texas — testing hypersonic hardware, exposing payloads to sustained supersonic conditions, and laying the groundwork for an airborne launch platform called STARLAUNCH™. That's why (FJET) is topping our watchlist this morning — Wednesday, September 23, 2026.
Here's everything you need to know before this day gets away from you… Two MOUs In One Week — And Both Point Toward Launch
The headline development landed on September 9, 2026. Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET) announced an MOU with Vaya Defense & Space to evaluate Vaya's patented Vortex-Hybrid rocket engine for the STARLAUNCH system — the company's airborne launch platform designed to send small payloads to suborbital and eventually orbital destinations from the underwing stations of its F-104 jets. That engine is throttleable, restartable, and non-explosive. CEO Tim Franta called it "close to ideal for a vehicle carried under the wing of an aircraft." Vaya isn't a startup pitching concepts on a slide deck. This is a propulsion company based in Cocoa, Florida, that has worked directly with the U.S. Army DEVCOM Aviation & Missile Center, the U.S. Air Force, and DARPA on tactical missile and hypersonic ramjet applications… Their Vortex-Hybrid engine pairs a 3D-printed, non-explosive thermoplastic fuel grain with a liquid oxidizer to deliver full-authority throttling and in-flight restart — capabilities that conventional solid rocket motors simply don't offer. And their lab sits a short drive from Starfighters' hangar at Kennedy Space Center. 
That proximity matters. Under the MOU, Starfighters will have access to Vaya's precision machining facility for prototyping, engine testing, and flight hardware development — which means the engineering loop between design and test stays tight and fast… The collaboration has two tracks. The first evaluates flying Vaya's hypersonic test articles aboard the Wind Tunnel in the Sky™ service, exposing hardware to sustained Mach 2+ conditions for technology validation. The second assesses whether Vaya's hybrid propulsion is suitable for STARLAUNCH itself, beginning with suborbital missions and covering propulsion performance, vehicle integration, and operating methodologies for the F-104's underwing stations. That's a serious technical scope — and both companies are positioned to move quickly on it. One week before the Vaya announcement, on September 2, the company signed a second MOU with The Bionetics Corporation to integrate and process pathfinder small payloads for upcoming missions. Bionetics manages processing capabilities for NASA research payloads and spaceflight hardware at the Space Life Sciences Lab — a 104,000-square-foot facility at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport with dozens of laboratories supporting NASA and commercial space activities. That facility is just nine miles from Starfighters' hangar. Under this MOU, Bionetics will work with Starfighters to prepare multiple classes of small payloads — including pre-flight and post-flight assembly, testing, integration, and data retrieval. Two partnerships. Seven days. Propulsion and payload processing — the two things an air-launch system needs most — now both actively moving forward… The Fleet Nobody Else Has
Here's the part of the (FJET) story that's hardest to replicate. Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET) operates these F-104 jets commercially out of two locations — NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Midland International Air & Space Port in Texas. That fleet powers two distinct service lines… The first is Wind Tunnel in the Sky™ — a reusable airborne testing platform that exposes hardware to sustained Mach 2+ flight conditions in real-world atmospheric environments. According to the company's July 2026 announcement, a typical 45-minute mission can include up to a 10-minute Mach 2+ test window — significantly longer than traditional wind tunnel runs, which typically last only seconds at comparable speeds. The platform uses a modular, reusable underwing system designed to host a variety of sensors, test articles, and payloads for long-duration exposure to both high-speed and low-gravity conditions. That means it can support aerodynamic test articles, avionics, communications systems, electronic equipment, advanced materials, and other hardware for hypersonic programs and microgravity research. As CEO Tim Franta noted, airborne testing can expose hardware to combinations of weather variation, vibration, acceleration, dynamic conditions, and temperature that cannot always be fully reproduced in a fixed facility… For defense contractors, aerospace engineers, and university research teams working on next-generation technologies, that kind of sustained real-atmosphere exposure is nearly impossible to access anywhere else. The second service is STARLAUNCH — the airborne launch system now being advanced through the Vaya and Bionetics MOUs. Air launch has distinct advantages that ground-based systems can't easily match. It eliminates the need for a dedicated launch pad. It enables launches from a runway — in Florida, in Texas, potentially from allied locations abroad. It gives weather and airspace flexibility that fixed-site operations don't have. And it could support a pace of operations that ground-based launchers struggle to replicate… The addressable market behind both of these services is expanding rapidly. The global hypersonic technology sector was valued at roughly $7.2B in 2025 and is projected to reach approximately $19.8B by 2034, growing at a compound annual rate of 11.9%, per Dataintelo. The U.S. Department of Defense alone has allocated nearly $3.8B for hypersonic systems development in its fiscal year 2025 budget — that's the scale of government demand building behind the kind of test infrastructure Starfighters already operates. Meanwhile, the small satellite market is projected to grow from $9.35B in 2025 to $32.13B by 2030, at a CAGR of 28.0%, per MarketsandMarkets. And the broader space launch services market is on track to expand from $25.3B in 2026 to $41.3B by 2030 at a CAGR of 15.6%, according to Grand View Research. (FJET) doesn't need a massive share of those numbers to generate traction. It just needs to be operational — and that's exactly what these MOUs are building toward. Regulatory And Financial Tailwinds Converging
The September partnerships didn't develop in a vacuum… A string of favorable developments throughout 2026 has been building underneath this name. In July, the FAA proposed a new regulatory framework for civil supersonic flight over land — replacing a decades-old blanket prohibition with performance-based standards tied to measurable sonic overpressure. That matters directly for Starfighters. The company currently conducts authorized supersonic operations under existing regulations, but a modernized framework could expand the map of where it flies commercially — opening the door to inland test corridors, including concepts for dedicated high-speed corridors over sparsely populated regions surrounding the Midland Air & Space Port in West Texas. If developed, that kind of corridor could unlock inland air-launch operations and high-speed testing for commercial space companies, government agencies, universities, and defense organizations… In August, the company backed the bipartisan Space Ready 2.0 Act, legislation introduced in both the House and Senate that would allow voluntary private contributions to infrastructure modernization at NASA centers. Kennedy Space Center has evolved from a government-only spaceport into a multi-user facility supporting NASA, commercial launch providers, and space companies side by side. As activity continues to grow, modern and reliable roads, utilities, pipelines, and shared facilities become essential to mission readiness — and this legislation could give companies like Starfighters a framework to help fund the upgrades their operations depend on. In May, Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET) secured a $17.5M strategic equity raise led by global institutional participants — capital directed toward operational expansion, infrastructure development, and STARLAUNCH advancement. That raise came through Cantor as exclusive placement agent, signaling institutional-grade interest in the platform… And in June, the company was added to the Russell 3000® Index — broadening visibility among allocators and funds benchmarked to the Russell family of indexes. According to Yahoo Finance, (FJET) currently carries a micro-cap market cap with $14.62M in cash on hand as of its most recent quarterly filing. The company has 31 full-time employees and recently showcased its fleet at the September AIRSHO event at Midland International Air & Space Port — piloted by Piercarlo Ciacchi, the company's Director of Flight Operations with over 7,000 hours of flight time and a former Italian Air Force F-104 aviator who once flew with Italy's National Aerobatic Team. That dual-coast operational presence — Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Midland in Texas — gives the company geographic reach that most early-stage aerospace names don't have. 7 Reasons Why We Have (FJET) On The Radar This Morning—Wednesday, September 23, 2026…
1. Only Mach 2+ Commercial Fleet on Earth: Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET) operates the world's only commercial fleet of flight-ready F-104 supersonic aircraft capable of sustained Mach 2+ operations — a capability no competitor can currently replicate. 2. Vaya Propulsion MOU for STARLAUNCH: A September 2026 MOU with Vaya Defense & Space puts a throttleable, restartable, non-explosive hybrid rocket engine under evaluation for the company's air-launch system — with both partners on Florida's Space Coast for rapid hardware collaboration. 3. Bionetics Pathfinder Payload Processing: A second MOU with The Bionetics Corporation brings pathfinder payload integration to the Space Life Sciences Lab at Cape Canaveral — a 104,000-square-foot facility nine miles from the hangar. 4. Wind Tunnel in the Sky™ Platform: The company's reusable airborne testing service delivers sustained Mach 2+ flight windows up to 10 minutes — far beyond the seconds-long runs of ground-based alternatives. 5. FAA Supersonic Regulatory Shift: The FAA's proposed performance-based framework could replace a decades-old prohibition and open inland supersonic corridors, expanding the geographic scope of FJET's commercial operations. 6. $17.5M Capital Raise: A May 2026 strategic equity raise from global institutional participants through Cantor provides capital for expansion, infrastructure, and continued STARLAUNCH development. 7. Russell 3000® Index Member: Added in June 2026, broadening visibility among institutional allocators and passive strategies benchmarked to the Russell indexes. Get (FJET) On The Radar While It’s Still Early… 
Two MOUs in seven days. A propulsion partner with DARPA and U.S. military credentials. A payload processing facility nine miles from the hangar. An FAA regulatory shift working in the company's favor. And the only supersonic commercial fleet on the planet — already flying missions, already generating data, already building toward launch… We have all eyes on Starfighters Space, Inc. (NYSE American: FJET) first thing this morning. Get (FJET) on your watchlist while it’s still early. Sincerely, Jeff Ackerman
Managing Editor,
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