Behind the Ticker: NASA, SpaceX, and Tema ETFs

Behind The Ticker

Mon, May 18, 2026 at 1:06 PM EDT 4 min read

In this episode of Behind the Ticker, host Brad Roth, CIO of Thor Financial Technologies, sits down with Yuri Khodjamirian, CIO of Tema ETFs, to talk thematic investing and the Tema Space Innovators ETF (NASA). While the looming SpaceX IPO draws much of the media and investor attention, there’s revolutionary developments happening in the aerospace industry that make it a sector deserving of thoughtful investment. Don’t miss this discussion that digs into NASA, why and how the fund goes about its SpaceX exposure, the benefits of capturing the entirety of supply chains, and more.

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any of your preferred streaming platforms.

Investing in Space With NASA

Yuri Khodjamirian, CFA, is the CIO of Tema ETFs, but his path to that seat is one of the more unusual in the ETF space. He spent a decade at Magetti Asset Management before leaving for Cambridge to obtain a master's degree in bioscience. The move was a deliberate step into unfamiliar intellectual territory in a sector he found genuinely fascinating and that now informs Tema's biotech product suite. A period of entrepreneurial exploration followed before he connected with Tema founder Moritz Pot and joined the team. Tema now manages over $2 billion in AUM across 10 ETFs, having crossed that threshold just three years in.

The through line across Tema's product suite, including reshoring, heart health, oncology, international, and now space, is a deliberate rejection of the thematic ETF playbook that gave the category a bad reputation. Where many thematic funds chase marketing trends, Tema's filter is whether a theme has genuine long-term structural growth behind it, whether active management can add meaningful value within it, and whether the product gives investors something they can't already get elsewhere.

The Tema Space Innovators ETF (NASA) launched in March 2026 and is actively managed at 75 basis points. The timing coincided fortuitously with the Artemis II mission window, which reignited broad public interest in human spaceflight and contributed to meaningful early flows. The fund had already crossed $300 million in AUM within its first weeks on the market, with the bulk of early interest coming from retail investors who had been tracking the space sector and wanted SpaceX exposure in a clean, SEC-registered vehicle.

SpaceX is responsible for more than 50% of global launches and is the most consequential company in the space economy by a wide margin, according to Khodjamirian. Its vertically integrated model that includes manufacturing its own rockets, building its own satellites through Starlink, and operating its own launch services, means in many ways it defines the cost structure and pace of innovation for the entire industry. Tema uses an SPV provided by Forge, a Charles Schwab subsidiary, which gives the fund access to SpaceX shares through the secondary market, where the company's long history as a private firm at enormous scale has created a healthy and active trading environment.