Who Owns Aerojet Rocketdyne?

Aerojet Rocketdyne is a merged brand with two distinct bloodlines, both foundational to American rocketry.

The Aerojet line began in March 1942 in Pasadena, California, when a Caltech group led by Theodore von Karman, including Frank Malina, Jack Parsons, Edward Forman, and Martin Summerfield, incorporated Aerojet Engineering Corporation to commercialize the jet-assisted takeoff rocket motors they had developed under an Army Air Corps contract. The company's early JATO bottles let heavily loaded bombers lift off from short runways, and Aerojet grew through the Cold War into a principal supplier of solid and liquid rocket motors for the Titan, Delta, and later Space Shuttle programs.

The Rocketdyne line began in 1955 as a division of North American Aviation at Canoga Park in California's San Fernando Valley. Rocketdyne's engines powered much of the American space program: the Jupiter and Redstone boosters, the Atlas sustainer, the F-1 first-stage engine of the Saturn V that sent Apollo crews to the Moon, the J-2 upper stage engine, the RL10 upper stage engine family that has flown more than 500 missions, and the Space Shuttle Main Engine, the reusable hydrogen engine now flying in evolved form as the RS-25 on the Space Launch System.

The two lines converged late. GenCorp, Aerojet's parent since the 1980s, acquired Rocketdyne from United Technologies in 2013 for approximately $550 million, renaming itself Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings in 2015. The combined company became the last major independent U.S. merchant supplier of rocket propulsion, which made it an acquisition target for every large prime.

Lockheed Martin struck first, agreeing in December 2020 to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.4 billion. The FTC sued to block the deal in January 2022 on antitrust grounds, and the companies abandoned it the following month. L3Harris agreed to acquire the company in December 2022 for $4.7 billion and completed the purchase in July 2023.

Under L3Harris, the business rode the largest sustained missile demand cycle in decades. FY2025 revenue rose 10 percent to $2.85 billion on increased production across key missile, munitions, and space programs. The same year revealed the portfolio's seams: L3Harris took an approximately $85 million non-cash goodwill impairment on the Space Technology disposal group, then announced in early 2026 that it would sell 60 percent of civil space propulsion and power systems to AE Industrial Partners for about $845 million and spin Missile Solutions into a separate public company through an IPO planned for 2026, with the Department of War investing $1 billion in preferred securities convertible at a 20 percent discount plus warrants.