????All said, SpaceX is having a really good year. Over the past several months the company has been to orbit four times (a fifth visit was scheduled for this week, but it was postponed). During those visits, it has successfully placed various commercial satellites in orbit and resupplied the International Space Station at NASA’s behest. The company inked new deals with British satellite giant Inmarsat, unveiled its new crew-capable Dragon V2 space vehicle, successfully tested 3-D printed rocket parts during a live launch—which has the potential to reduce costs—made inroads into the lucrative national defense satellite launch market, and began testing, with some degree of success, a reusable first rocket stage that could drive down the company’s launch costs by an order of magnitude and further solidify its role as the least expensive launch provider in the market.

????On Tuesday, Fortune published an article intended to cut through the hype surrounding SpaceX—in particular rumors of an astronomical $10 billion valuation—by looking at its commercial space launch competitors and the crisis posture some have assumed as they attempt to deal with SpaceX. Next to those competitors, which include France’s Arianespace (partially owned by Airbus), International Launch Services (a Russian-American joint venture using Russian launch technology), and United Launch Alliance (a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture), SpaceX and its nimble, startup-like culture seem to have the upper hand.

????This all makes for a good story, but what about that multimillion-dollar valuation? Can SpaceX turn the hype into cold, hard profit? The commercial spaceflight industry is a highly competitive, immensely capital-intensive environment saturated by the world’s largest and most respected legacy aerospace firms. For that reason, SpaceX’s biggest challenges lay ahead. Here’s a look at what the firm faces.

????Opportunity. Before September is over, NASA will make a decision on which one, possibly two, of three different spacecraft it will select to be the federal agency’s new crew vehicle for ferrying astronauts to destinations in orbit such as the International Space Station. The winner of that contract is looking at $800 million for spacecraft development up front and an accumulated award of billions of dollars by the time the spacecraft enter service sometime in 2017. SpaceX is in the hunt alongside Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp. A win for SpaceX would guarantee SpaceX a revenue stream from NASA and certainly wouldn’t hurt its R&D efforts. It would also be another big endorsement from the world’s premier space agency.

????Reliability. SpaceX has thus far managed to retain a strong record of reliability, even correcting near-mishaps mid-mission in some cases. However, over the weekend it lost a test rocket (which, in SpaceX’s defense, is what test rockets are for) at its test facility in Texas and delayed a rocket launch scheduled for Tuesday in the interest of extra caution. It’s far from the first time SpaceX has delayed a launch. “I think one thing that could tilt the market away from SpaceX is if it can’t launch when it says it’s going to launch,” says Kate Maliga, an industry analyst at aerospace and defense consultancy Tauri Group. “Most of the money in satellites is in the services they provide, so you need your satellite up there to make money. That’s the biggest risk.” Managing that risk and maintaining a regular launch schedule is imperative.