Orbit Alpha Issue 10 · 21 Jun 2026

Upgraded and dumped in the same 48 hours

MARKET OVERVIEW
🌎 Upgraded and dumped in the same 48 hours

Track every space stock live at Orbit Alpha

Last week the entire sector traded on one event. This week it traded on something it hadn't had to think about in a while: the Federal Reserve. On Wednesday 17 June, in Kevin Warsh's first meeting as chair, the FOMC held the federal funds rate at 3.50%–3.75% on a 12-0 vote, but the projections turned hawkish. The 2026 median dot rose to 3.8% from 3.4% in March, nine of eighteen participants now pencil in at least one hike before year-end, the PCE inflation forecast was lifted to 3.6% from 2.7%, and the statement dropped its earlier easing-bias language. The market read it as higher-for-longer, and the highest-multiple corners of the market, space among them, felt it first.

The first half of the week looked like a continuation of the prior one. The post-IPO rally extended into Tuesday, carrying SPCX to an all-time high of $225.64 on 16 June and dragging the listed proxies along in its wake. Then Wednesday's decision landed and the tape turned. The names carrying the richest multiples, the lunar, direct-to-device and small-launch stories valued on a narrative rather than a number, led the move down, and Thursday compounded it, with the selling concentrated in exactly the cohort most sensitive to a higher discount rate. The SpaceX-driven rotation that defined the prior week didn't reverse so much as get folded into a broader, macro-led risk-off.

What that did was sharpen the separation between names trading on sector beta and names trading on their own catalysts. Underneath a generally negative tape, four names moved on developments specific to them, SPCX's first investment-grade credit ratings, RKLB's imminent Nasdaq-100 entry, ASTS's successful BlueBird launch, and MDA's debt-funded acquisition, and each is worth tracking on its own terms. The rest of the basket simply tracked the macro. Taken together, the two halves of the week argue that the sector is no longer one block: it is starting to price each name against its own calendar.

SPACEX (SPCX)

Week two delivered the volatility the staggered float always implied. SPCX extended its post-IPO run into Tuesday, printing an all-time high of $225.64 on 16 June, then reversed hard across the back half of the week. Wednesday's hawkish Fed hold took the air out of the highest-multiple names, and Thursday 18 June was worse: SPCX fell sharply to close near $175 even as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished higher on the day, marking the move as SpaceX-specific rather than a broad-market one. The same Thursday brought the milestone that matters more than the tape, first-time investment-grade credit ratings from all three agencies (Moody's Baa1, Fitch BBB+, S&P BBB), each with a stable outlook, anchored explicitly on Starlink's cash generation rather than the launch or AI segments. With roughly $29 billion of long-term debt outstanding, including a $20 billion bridge loan maturing in September 2027, the upgrade materially lowers SpaceX's refinancing cost and widens its access to institutional debt capital. Note also that the stock spent most of the week above the $175.50 early-release lock-up trigger before Thursday's pullback brought it back to that line, the "five of ten consecutive days" clock is running but is not yet satisfied. The split decision is the story: the balance sheet got upgraded and the equity got marked down inside the same 48 hours.

ROCKET LAB (RKLB)

Rocket Lab's addition to the Nasdaq-100 becomes effective before market open on Monday 22 June, alongside Astera Labs, CoreWeave, Nebius and Teradyne. This is the cleanest SPCX-independent catalyst in the basket: the index is tracked by more than 200 investment products and over $800 billion in assets, and that passive base mechanically acquires the stock on the rebalance regardless of where sector sentiment sits. RKLB traded down with the group through the week's risk-off, but the index flow is calendar-locked and arrives Monday on its own schedule, the single best live test of whether the sector is starting to trade on dispersion rather than as one block.

AST SPACEMOBILE (ASTS)

AST SpaceMobile launched BlueBird 8, 9 and 10 on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday 17 June, and the stock rose roughly 6% on the session. The company called the trio the largest commercial communications arrays ever deployed to low Earth orbit, at approximately 2,400 square feet each. The strategic significance is less about the hardware than about what the clean mission rebuts: AST had been downgraded into the launch, Deutsche Bank to Hold, Barclays trimming its target and holding Underweight, with the bear case built squarely on launch-execution and deployment-timeline risk after the loss of BlueBird 7 and the Blue Origin New Glenn pad setback. A successful deployment directly answers that argument, for now, which is why the move ran counter to the week's broadly negative sector tape.

MDA SPACE (MDA)

On Friday 19 June, MDA Space signed a definitive agreement to acquire Blue Canyon Technologies from RTX's Raytheon business for US$620 million (roughly C$874 million) in an all-cash deal. Two features make this stand out against the sector's recent pattern. First, it's debt-financed — fully committed at signing through senior secured debt, rather than equity-funded, so MDA is adding scale without diluting holders, the opposite of the ATM-and-raise behaviour seen elsewhere in the group. Second, it's a deliberate push into the US defence-space market: Blue Canyon is a profitable, cash-generating spacecraft and component manufacturer (founded 2008, 85+ spacecraft launched, 3,500+ products on orbit) that MDA says adds roughly US$3.5 billion to its opportunity pipeline and should be accretive to adjusted EBITDA and EPS in 2027. The deal is expected to close by year-end, with pro forma 2026 net-debt/EBITDA guided to 1.5x–2.5x. After a sector defined lately by issuance, this is the week's clearest example of a name using its balance sheet to consolidate rather than to fund losses.

Takeaway: The defining feature of the week wasn't a space story at all, it was the Fed reminding a richly-valued sector that discount rates still matter. But the more useful read is the dispersion that emerged underneath. When the macro turns risk-off, the high-multiple, narrative-driven names take the brunt, while names with mechanical or strategic catalysts, RKLB's index inclusion, ASTS's launch milestone, MDA's debt-funded consolidation, SPCX's credit upgrade, trade on their own terms. Last week's lesson was that the sector had stopped being one trade. This week's is that the dividing line is now visible: it runs between the names that have a catalyst on the calendar and the names that only have a thesis.

BROKER PULSE
🚀 Consensus prices

Live prices for all names below at Orbit Alpha Markets

SPACEX (SPCX) · Avg target $187.80

ROCKET LAB (RKLB) · Avg target $106.92

AST SPACEMOBILE (ASTS) · Avg target $81.47

PLANET LABS (PL) · Avg target $39.80

INTUITIVE MACHINES (LUNR) · Avg target $40.78

GLOBALSTAR (GSAT) · Avg target $90.00

FIREFLY AEROSPACE (FLY) · Avg target $48.22

MDA SPACE (MDA) · Avg target $43.53

REDWIRE (RDW) · Avg target $15.67

VIASAT (VSAT) · Avg target $88.88

BLACKSKY TECHNOLOGY (BKSY) · Avg target $40.50

VIRGIN GALACTIC (SPCE) · Avg target $3.55

SPIRE GLOBAL (SPIR) · Avg target $20.88

LAUNCH WATCH
🔭 Launches that could move your portfolio

Full launch calendar with live status at Orbit Alpha Launches

Jun 23 · CASC — Unconfirmed vehicle · LC-201, Wenchang Satellite Launch Center, China. Unconfirmed payload.

Jun 23 · SpaceX — Starfall Demo · Falcon 9 · SLC-40, Cape Canaveral SFS, Florida. Booster: B1078. Demonstration of SpaceX's new Starfall re-entry vehicle, a cylindrical reusable capsule designed to return payloads from orbit.

Jun 25 · SpaceX — Starlink (17-45) · Falcon 9 · SLC-4E, Vandenberg SFB, California. Booster: B1081.

Jun 27 · Northrop Grumman — Swift Boost Mission · Pegasus · Stargazer L-1011, Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, Marshall Islands. Air-launched mission.

Jun 28 · SpaceX — Starlink (17-40) · Falcon 9 · SLC-4E, Vandenberg SFB, California.

Jun (date TBD) · SpaceX — Globalstar 2-R Mission 1 · Falcon 9 · SLC-40, Cape Canaveral SFS, Florida. Booster: B1090. First of two Falcon 9 launches replenishing Globalstar's HIBLEO-4 low-Earth-orbit constellation.

Jun (date TBD) · Rocket Lab — "Ten Owl of Ten" · Electron · Rocket Lab Launch Complex, New Zealand. Radar satellite for Japanese Earth-imaging company Synspective (StriX series).

Jun (date TBD) · Rocket Lab — "The Grain Goddess Provides" · Electron · Rocket Lab Launch Complex, New Zealand. Eighth Electron mission for Japanese SAR operator iQPS, deploying one synthetic-aperture-radar satellite to a 575 km orbit.

Jun (date TBD) · ISRO — EOS-05 (GISAT-2) · GSLV-II · Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India. Geo-imaging Earth observation satellite for rapid disaster-response imagery.

Jun (date TBD) · Roscosmos — Rassvet-3 batch 2 (16x) · Soyuz-2 · LC-43/4, Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia. Unconfirmed payload.

Jun (date TBD) · South Korean ADD — Demo Flight · GYUB · Offshore pad, Jeju Island, South Korea.

Jun (date TBD) · CASC — Unconfirmed vehicle · Sea Launch, Yellow Sea, China. Unconfirmed payload.

Jun (date TBD) · Isar Aerospace — "Onward and Upward" · Spectrum · Andøya Space, Norway. Second test flight of the Spectrum vehicle (return to flight), carrying Spectrum Flight Two, CyBEEsat, TriSat-S, Platform 6, FramSat-1, SpaceTeamSat1 and Let It Go, including payloads for ESA's "Boost!" programme.

Later in Q2 · SpaceX — SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A · Falcon 9 · SLC-4E, Vandenberg SFB, California. Space Development Agency Transport Layer satellites.

Later in Q2 · SpaceX — Starship Flight 13 · Starship · Starbase, Boca Chica, Texas. Test flight.

SENTIMENT SIGNAL
🎯 AST SPACEMOBILE (ASTS): THE BOTTLENECK JUST MOVED

Wednesday's launch was read as a relief rally, and on the tape it was. The more useful question for anyone holding the name is narrower: what did putting BlueBirds 8, 9 and 10 into orbit actually de-risk, and what did it leave untouched? The answer is that it settled the question the bears had been pressing, can AST build and deploy its giant Block 2 satellites, and in doing so quietly relocated the binding constraint to a part of the business AST doesn't fully control. This is a look underneath the launch.

The number that matters is 45, and AST is at nine

Strip away the headlines and the business reduces to a deployment schedule. AST now has nine operational satellites in orbit, BlueBirds 1 through 6, plus 8, 9 and 10, after BlueBird 7 was lost on launch in April. Management's framework is explicit: roughly 25 satellites enable non-continuous service in select markets, 45 to 60 are required for continuous coverage in the United States and other key markets, and approximately 90 deliver uninterrupted global coverage. The stated 2026 target is about 45 satellites in orbit, with commercial service in the initial markets targeted for the first half of 2027.

So the company is roughly a fifth of the way to its own continuous-coverage threshold, with about 36 satellites to add inside eighteen months. Wednesday proved the two things that had been in doubt: the Block 2 design works in orbit (these are the largest commercial communications arrays ever flown, near 2,400 square feet, roughly 3.5x the first-generation BlueBirds), and the production line is real. AST has units through BlueBird 33 in advanced assembly, phased arrays completed through BlueBird 28, more than 500,000 square feet of manufacturing, and a stated cadence target of a launch every one-to-two months. Manufacturing, in other words, is not the bottleneck.

The constraint is launch, and one of AST's three rockets just went down

AST does not own a rocket. It deploys on a multi-provider strategy: SpaceX's Falcon 9, Blue Origin's New Glenn, and India's LVM3. That diversification was the strength of the plan. It has also become its vulnerability.

The New Glenn leg has failed twice in two months. On 19 April, New Glenn's third flight recovered its booster but suffered a second-stage engine underperformance that left BlueBird 7 in too low an orbit to operate; the satellite was deorbited (the loss is insured). Then on 28 May, a New Glenn stage exploded during a static-fire test, destroying the vehicle and causing significant damage to Launch Complex 36, Blue Origin's only operational New Glenn pad, in what was described as the most powerful rocket explosion since the Soviet N1. New Glenn is now grounded; Blue Origin has said it has a path back to flight before year-end, while outside analysts caution the repair-and-investigation timeline could run longer. AST had modelled roughly four New Glenn launches into its 2026 plan. Those are now in question.

That is why Wednesday matters mechanically as well as symbolically: it was a Falcon 9 mission. With New Glenn out for an uncertain stretch, the realistic path to 45 satellites this year leans on Falcon 9 cadence and ISRO. The uncomfortable corollary for investors is that AST's deployment timeline now runs increasingly through SpaceX, the operator of Starlink, and its single most formidable competitor.

Funding: a real cushion, but a real clock

AST closed the first quarter with approximately $3.5 billion in cash, equivalents and restricted cash, against roughly $3.0 billion of long-term debt, and management states it is fully funded for the planned ~90-satellite constellation. That cushion is the bull case's foundation, and it is genuine. But it is not unlimited: analysts model cash burn of roughly $1.6 billion in 2026 and about $800 million in 2027, with free cash flow not turning positive until around 2028.

The revenue base underneath that burn is still tiny and lumpy. Q1 revenue was $14.7 million, well short of the roughly $39 million consensus, though up from $0.7 million a year earlier, drawn mostly from gateway deliveries and U.S. government milestones. The reported net loss of $191.0 million ($0.66 per share) looked alarming against a ~$0.23 expected loss, but close to half of the miss was a non-cash induced-conversion charge of roughly $88.7 million on convertible notes, not operating deterioration; a JP Morgan analyst would flag that the headline overstated the quarter. Management reaffirmed full-year 2026 revenue guidance of $150–200 million, about half of it from contracted backlog, with remaining performance obligations near $1.2 billion. The forward case rests on the ramp: AST's president has framed a 2027 revenue opportunity approaching $1 billion, and Street models put revenue near $1.6 billion by 2028.

The funding question, then, is not imminent solvency. It is sequencing: whether the revenue ramp arrives before the cushion thins, a risk that worsens every time a launch slips right while capital expenditure keeps running.

The competitive clock: quality of service versus speed of coverage

The strategic bet is clean. Starlink Direct to Cell, via T-Mobile, has been live commercially since July 2025, added data on top of texting by late 2025, and now spans 650-plus direct-to-cell satellites across more than 20 countries, built and launched in-house at a cadence no one can match. AST's wager is that quality beats coverage: its large phased arrays are designed to deliver genuine broadband to unmodified handsets (98.9 Mbps peak demonstrated on a first-generation BlueBird, with Block 2 designed to roughly double that), versus the texting-and-basic-data profile of the incumbents. Crucially, AST's carrier partners are AT&T and Verizon, the two U.S. networks Starlink/T-Mobile does not have, alongside nearly 60 operators globally covering more than 3 billion subscribers. Amazon, the other deep-pocketed entrant, is not expected to field its own direct-to-device service until around 2028, leaving AST a roughly two-year window.

Two structural assets reinforce the thesis. First, regulatory: in April the FCC cleared AST's full 248-satellite constellation and granted Supplemental Coverage from Space authority in the U.S. (700/800 MHz coordinated with Verizon, AT&T and FirstNet), subject to a milestone of 124 satellites in orbit by August 2030. Second, spectrum: AST's comprehensive settlement with Ligado gives it access to roughly 45 MHz of lower mid-band spectrum, a sovereign spectrum position that reduces its dependence on partner carriers' frequencies and is central to the long-term bull case. The countervailing risk, voiced even by constructive analysts, is simple: if Starlink reaches dense global coverage before AST closes its constellation, the incumbent's head start could prove difficult to overcome regardless of AST's bandwidth advantage.

Valuation and the setup

The Street has not made up its mind, and the dispersion is the signal. Consensus sits at Hold, with twelve-month targets running from roughly $41 to about $115, a spread of nearly 3x that tells you this is a binary execution story, not a valuation debate. The recent moves capture the split: Deutsche Bank cut to Hold and Barclays to $60 (Underweight), both citing the launch-execution and deployment-timeline risk crystallised by the New Glenn failures, while bulls such as Roth have stood by triple-digit targets on the spectrum and broadband thesis. On any near-term revenue figure the stock trades at a steep multiple; the valuation is underwritten almost entirely by the 2028-and-beyond ramp.

Takeaway: Wednesday's launch was real, and it removed the design-and-manufacturing question that had been weighing on the name — but that was, in a sense, the more answerable half. AST has now proven it can build the largest arrays in orbit and run a production line capable of feeding them. What it has not yet proven is that it can get the next ~36 satellites to orbit on a reliable schedule with one of its three launch providers grounded indefinitely and its most viable remaining option being its fiercest competitor. The bull and bear cases have effectively collapsed onto a single variable — launch cadence, and the run to the ~45-satellite continuous-coverage threshold over the next eighteen months will settle it. The balance sheet buys time, not unlimited time; the competitive window is open, but closing. For this name, the document to watch is the launch manifest, not the press release.

Previous: Issue 9: The week "space" stopped being one trade. · Next: Issue 11: Wall Street bought the bonds and dumped the stock.