LUNR Aerospace, a Toronto startup that wants to launch small satellites to orbit by 2029, has come out of stealth in an unusual way. Instead of announcing an engine test or a funding round, it went public and listed its shares on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) on Oct. 27, under the symbol FLY.
LUNR filed its prospectus, a detailed disclosure document a company needs before its shares can trade publicly, but didn’t sell any new shares, so the listing didn’t raise any new funds. The prospectus says LUNR chose a direct listing over a reverse takeover, a merger with a company that is already listed. It also says LUNR’s private funding rounds were raised without a broker because there was “little to no registered dealer interest” in companies at its stage. LUNR hired the brokerage Hampton Securities in August to review the prospectus and sign it as agent.
Before its listing, LUNR used no marketing or promotional material to raise money. In the company’s listing release, chief executive Jeanue Chung said going public “provides LUNR with greater visibility” and “broadens our reach among investors.”
A student idea leads to a launch company
Chung, 22, began working on the idea in early 2024 while studying astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto. He incorporated the company federally as LUNR Innovations Inc. on April 1, 2025, according to the Corporations Canada registry, and renamed it LUNR Aerospace in June 2025.
LUNR is pitching sovereign launch like all the other Canadian launch startups. In the CSE’s announcement, Chung called the listing “a significant milestone in LUNR’s journey to advance sovereign Canadian access to space.”
LUNR’s advisers include Tony Clement, the former federal industry minister, and Dean Misterek, who spent 18 years at Blue Origin as a launch vehicle architect and chief engineer. They receive no salary but can be granted stock options.
Chung sits on the board with three Vancouver-based directors: Nima Bahrami, Thomas O’Shaughnessy and Calvin Chan.
What LUNR plans to build
In an October investor presentation, LUNR describes LUNR-01 as a two-stage rocket about 20 metres tall that burns methane and liquid oxygen. Its first stage would carry five engines fed by electric pumps rather than the gas-driven turbines most rockets use, and is designed to be recovered and flown again. Rocket Lab uses the same approach on its Electron rocket, whose Rutherford engines it calls the world’s first electric-pump-fed rocket engines.
LUNR-01 would carry 250 to 350 kilograms to low Earth orbit, about what Electron carries, and the presentation sets a 2029 target for it. Electron has flown 99 times since 2017. LUNR’s prospectus lists Rocket Lab among established launch companies it calls “aspirational comparators” rather than competitors. A larger LUNR-02, meant to lift more than 2,000 kilograms, would follow in 2032.
LUNR-01 (planned) Rocket Lab Electron Height About 20 m 18 m Stages Two Two, plus a kick stage Propellant Liquid methane and liquid oxygen Kerosene and liquid oxygen First-stage engines Five, electric-pump-fed Nine Rutherford, electric-pump-fed First-stage thrust About 300 kN 190 kN at liftoff Upper-stage engine One pressure-fed vacuum engine One vacuum Rutherford Payload to low Earth orbit 250–350 kg Up to 300 kg Reuse First stage designed for recovery and reuse Described by Rocket Lab as reusable-capable Status First engine test planned; orbital launch targeted for 2029 99 launches to date
First hot fire planned by February
LUNR’s next milestone is a hot-fire test sometime between this month and February according to the prospectus. The company licenses farmland in the Township of Amaranth, Ont., north of Orangeville.
As of the prospectus date, the test stand had been fabricated and the combustion chamber designed and put into fabrication, while the injector was still being designed and built. At the site, grading and foundations for the propellant tanks were under way before the stand’s plumbing and electrical systems are connected and leak-tested. Of the $420,000 budgeted for the milestone, about $290,000 has already been spent.
The township has approved the testing, which the company says is the only approval it needs for this stage.
LUNR has no employees and relies on contractors, led by propulsion lead Eligh Corchis-Scott, who gives the company about 75 per cent of his time.
Funded privately through its own network
LUNR has raised about $4.8 million since it was formed, all of it privately. According to the prospectus, every investor in those rounds was a contact of a director, officer, adviser or existing shareholder. About $1.5 million of it, or 31 per cent, came through the purchase of Vertical Partners, a company with no business and no assets other than cash.
Vertical Partners was set up in August 2025 as a subsidiary of Vertical Energy Canada, as a vehicle for that company’s shareholders to put their returns from it into LUNR “on a tax efficient basis,” the prospectus says. In October 2025, LUNR bought Vertical Partners and its $1.5 million in cash from 26 individual shareholders, paying about 6 million LUNR shares at 25 cents each. None of them had ties to LUNR’s directors or officers, and their shares come out of escrow in monthly stages from late March to late October next year.
Outside investors first paid 4 cents a unit in June 2025, each with a warrant to buy another share at 5 cents until June 2030. Prices rose with each round after that, to 27 cents in the June round this year.
Date Round Price per share Shares Raised April 2025 Founders’ shares, held in trust $0.02 5,000,000 $100,000 June 2025 Units, each with a warrant at 5 cents $0.04 15,000,000 $600,000 September 2025 Private placement $0.15 1,157,000 $173,550 October 2025 Vertical Partners purchase, paid in shares $0.25 6,002,945 $1,500,736 November 2025 Private placement $0.27 940,742 $254,000 June 2026 Subscription receipts $0.27 7,925,925 $2,140,000 Total 36,026,612 $4,768,286 Oct. 27, 2026 First-day close on the CSE $0.75 — — Nov. 6, 2026 Close on the CSE $2.40 — —
On the CSE, the stock closed at 75 cents on its first day and at $2.40 on Nov. 6, well above what private investors paid. At that price the company is valued at about $87 million, nearly six times the “target IPO market cap” of about $15 million in its October investor presentation. Trading has been thin, though, with about 90,000 shares changing hands in the first two weeks, so a handful of trades can move the price a long way.
About 11 million shares, or 30 per cent of those outstanding, are in escrow, an arrangement that keeps them from being sold until set dates. They belong to directors, officers, advisers and the former owners of Vertical Partners, and come free in stages between late February and early 2030. The 4-cent shares and those from the June round are not escrowed. Chung owns about 2 per cent of LUNR, and no shareholder holds more than 10 per cent.
$2.6 million to last the next 12 months
LUNR had about $271,000 in cash at Sept. 30 and no revenue. The $2.14 million raised in June was held in escrow until the listing, and once released it brings the company’s budget for the next 12 months to about $2.6 million.
About $857,000 of that, or 33 per cent, is set aside for the engine milestones, test equipment and engineering contractors. Another $600,000, or 23 per cent, is for investor relations. The company says the space launch sector is technical and capital-intensive, so it will need to explain its business clearly to investors, and that it must raise more money within a year.
LUNR acknowledges its main competition is from the three other established Canadian startups, NordSpace, Reaction Dynamics and Canada Rocket Company, and says any of them could reach orbit first. Canada Rocket Company broke ground in October on a $30-million engine test site in London, Ont., and Reaction Dynamics plans to raise $350 million for a six-tonne rocket. NordSpace could test-launch a suborbital demonstration this month.
Next funding depends on the engine
LUNR says a successful hot fire will give it the data it needs to attract investors for the next costlier steps that follow.
Beyond private investors, Budget 2026, tabled Nov. 5, would extend the Department of National Defence’s Launch the North program from small rockets to medium-lift ones and offer companies “competitive, milestone-based support” to mature propulsion and launch technology. Test results could count for a lot in any bid for that money.
SpaceQ sent LUNR questions on Nov. 2 but the company had not responded by publication.