Orbit Alpha Issue 13 · 12 Jul 2026

The index funds bought. Everyone else sold.

MARKET OVERVIEW
🌎 The index funds bought. Everyone else sold.

Track every space stock live at Orbit Alpha

SpaceX officially joined the Nasdaq-100 before Monday's open, triggering an estimated $4.3 billion in passive fund purchases into a stock with approximately 5% free float. The stock rose 1% on inclusion day. Then it kept falling, printing a new all-time low of $145.07 by Thursday, below every prior floor and within 7% of its $135 IPO price. The mechanical buying was absorbed before the market opened, and there was nothing underneath it.

The rest of the basket followed. Monday was a broad selloff, RKLB fell 7% after CEO Peter Beck filed to sell $465 million in shares, ASTS dropped 5% on profit-taking and a Russell 2500 removal, LUNR slid 3%. No company-specific catalyst triggered the move; it was the group giving back the prior week's 20–30% surges after two insider filings and an index exit landed in the same session. By mid-week the tape began differentiating again: Rocket Lab's 92nd Electron mission flew successfully, Planet Labs got its next-generation imaging satellite into orbit, and Firefly landed another NASA contract. The names with execution to show stabilised. The ones without it kept drifting.

SPACEX (SPCX)

The Nasdaq-100 inclusion delivered exactly the passive inflows it was expected to, an estimated $4.3 billion from QQQ and other trackers, and the stock still fell. SPCX gained about 1% on inclusion day (7 July) to $158.77, then rolled over to close below its IPO debut-day price by Tuesday and print a new all-time low of $145.07 on Thursday 10 July. Of the 21 companies added to the Nasdaq-100 over the past two years, only six saw their stock rise in the first week of membership. Palantir peaked around its inclusion date in December 2024 and sold off 25% in the weeks after.

The operational machine, meanwhile, was relentless. SpaceX flew three Falcon 9 missions this week: Transporter-17 on 7 July from Vandenberg (81 payloads, the 79th Falcon 9 of 2026), Starlink 10-42 on 9 July from Cape Canaveral, on which booster B1067 completed its record-breaking 36th flight, the most by any orbital-class rocket in history, and Starlink 17-48 on 11 July from Vandenberg. The company has deployed over 12,400 Starlink satellites to date with approximately 10,700 currently active, and filed with the FCC this week to operate a next-generation megaconstellation of up to 100,000 satellites. None of it moved the stock. The next catalyst is the 6 August earnings report — SpaceX's first as a public company — which doubles as the trigger for the earliest lockup release, when approximately 20% of insider shares become saleable.

ROCKET LAB (RKLB)

Two headlines, two directions. On Sunday 6 July, CEO Peter Beck filed to sell 5 million Class A shares valued at approximately $465 million, shares tracing back to Rocket Lab's 2021 SPAC merger, with no sales reported in the prior three months. The filing landed days after the $8 billion Iridium announcement, and the stock fell 7% on Monday to $93.28. Morgan Stanley published a positive note on Tuesday calling the Iridium deal a "growth path widener," but the insider overhang dominated sentiment.

The launch cadence kept running. Rocket Lab successfully flew "The Grain Goddess Provides" during the week, its 92nd Electron mission overall and 13th of 2026, deploying a QPS-SAR-13 synthetic-aperture-radar satellite to a 575 km orbit for Japanese operator iQPS, after two earlier scrubs. The stock recovered through the back half of the week, ending around $95. The insider sale, while large in dollar terms, represents a modest fraction of Beck's total holdings and is standard post-SPAC liquidity rather than a signal about the company's direction.

AST SPACEMOBILE (ASTS)

After surging 21% on the Japan subsidy news, ASTS gave most of it back. The stock dropped 5% on Monday alongside the broader pullback, then continued sliding to around $74 by Thursday. The additional headwind was structural: ASTS was removed from the Russell 2500 index, triggering forced selling from small-cap tracking funds, the mirror image of SPCX's experience, where index inclusion created a one-day bid and index removal created a one-day offer. The fundamental picture is unchanged: the ~$926 million Japan subsidy is funded, BlueBirds 11, 12 and 13 remain on track for a first-half-August launch, 2026 revenue guidance of $150–$200 million was reaffirmed, and the company holds $3.03 billion in cash. The next catalyst is the August launch itself.

PLANET LABS (PL)

Planet had a milestone week. On 7 July, the company successfully launched Pelican-11, the tech demonstration satellite for the second generation of its high-resolution Pelican fleet, aboard SpaceX's Transporter-17 rideshare from Vandenberg. Initial contact was confirmed and commissioning is underway. Gen 2 Pelicans are designed to capture up to 30 cm class imagery, a step up from Gen 1's 50 cm resolution, and Pelican-11 serves as the engineering pathfinder before production units follow. The same day, Planet Labs Germany and Isar Aerospace announced a strategic launch agreement to fly a German-built satellite on a German-built rocket within 12 months, a European sovereign-capability play that diversifies Planet's launch relationships beyond SpaceX.

FIREFLY AEROSPACE (FLY)

On 7 July, Firefly received a $13 million subcontract from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to manufacture, test, and deliver an aeroshell for the SkyFall Mars mission, its second NASA award in eight days, after the $144.2 million CLPS lunar contract on 30 June. The Mars subcontract leverages Firefly's composite manufacturing expertise from its Blue Ghost lunar landers and Alpha rockets, and extends the company's NASA relationship beyond the Moon for the first time.

REDWIRE (RDW)

Redwire's selection for the Space Force's 10-year Andromeda programme, tracking and identifying objects in Earth orbit, was confirmed, with the task order ceiling expanded from $1.8 billion to $6 billion across 14 selected providers. The stock continued to stabilise around $10–$11 after its June unwind, with no further analyst downgrades. Andromeda is a long-dated pipeline item, but in a basket where funded backlog is the differentiator, a $6 billion ceiling on a defence programme is material.

Takeaway: This was the week the sector learned that mechanical demand is not organic demand. The Nasdaq-100 inclusion delivered $4.3 billion of forced buying and the stock still fell to new lows. Peter Beck's insider filing introduced uncertainty into the name carrying the group's momentum. And ASTS's Russell 2500 removal created forced selling where support was needed. Underneath the flow dynamics, the companies kept executing: SpaceX flew three missions and set a booster reuse record at 36 flights, Rocket Lab's 92nd mission flew clean, Planet Labs got next-generation hardware into orbit, Firefly landed a Mars subcontract, and Redwire deepened its defence pipeline. The tape is reminding this basket that between catalysts, gravity applies. The next event that matters is 6 August, SpaceX's first public earnings and the first lockup release. Until then, the sector is trading on positioning, not fundamentals.

BROKER PULSE
🚀 Consensus prices

Live prices for all names below at Orbit Alpha Markets

SPACEX (SPCX) · Avg target $242.22

ROCKET LAB (RKLB) · Avg target $116.50

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 $43.66

REDWIRE (RDW) · Avg target $15.67

VIASAT (VSAT) · Avg target $94.56

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

Jul 14 · SpaceX — Starlink (10-45) · Falcon 9 · SLC-40, Cape Canaveral SFS, Florida. Booster: B1080.

Jul 14 · Roscosmos — Soyuz MS-29 · Soyuz-2 · LC-31/6, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. ISS Expedition 75 crewed mission (Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, NASA astronaut Anil Menon).

Jul 16 · SpaceX — Tranche 1 Transport Layer E · Falcon 9 · SLC-4E, Vandenberg SFB, California. Space Development Agency Transport Layer satellites for the US military's mesh network in LEO.

Jul 16 · SpaceX — Starship Flight 13 · Starship · Starbase, Boca Chica, Texas. Test flight. Ship 40 and Booster 20; Booster 20 completed a 60-second static fire on 1 July.

Jul 17 · CASC — Unconfirmed vehicle (possibly Long March 7A) · LC-201, Wenchang Satellite Launch Center, China. Unconfirmed payload.

Jul 18 · SpaceX — Starlink (17-39) · Falcon 9 · SLC-4E, Vandenberg SFB, California.

Jul 23 · CASC — Unconfirmed vehicle (possibly Long March 3B/E) · LC-2, Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China. Unconfirmed payload.

Jul 23 · SpaceX — Starlink (17-51) · Falcon 9 · SLC-4E, Vandenberg SFB, California.

Jul (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.

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

SENTIMENT SIGNAL
🎯 THE SPCX LOCKUP CALENDAR: EVERY DATE, EVERY TRIGGER, EVERY SHARE THAT'S COMING

SpaceX went public on 12 June at $135 per share, raising $85.7 billion in the largest IPO in history. It peaked at $225.64 four days later. This week it printed a new all-time low of $145.07. Between those two prices lies a single structural fact that every investor in this stock, and every investor in the broader space basket it now dominates, needs to understand: less than 5% of SpaceX's approximately 13 billion outstanding shares are currently available for public trading. The rest are locked. And between now and December, they unlock in a staggered, multi-tiered schedule that will transform SPCX from one of the thinnest floats in public-market history into a normally traded mega-cap.

This deep dive maps every date, every trigger, every shareholder group, and what each unlock means for the stock, so that when the supply arrives, you are not surprised by it.

WHY THE LOCKUP MATTERS MORE THAN USUAL

In a typical IPO, the company sells 10–25% of its outstanding shares to the public, and the rest is locked for 180 days. SpaceX sold approximately 555.6 million shares, less than 5% of the total. That is not a typo. Roughly 12.5 billion shares are sitting behind contractual restrictions, and those restrictions are about to start lifting.

The reason this matters more than a normal lockup is simple arithmetic. When the float is 5% and the locked block is 95%, every tranche that unlocks is enormous relative to what currently trades. A 7% employee release, which sounds small, adds more shares to the tradeable supply than the entire IPO did. The market has already priced some of this in, the slide from $225 to $145 is partly the market anticipating the supply that is coming. But "partly" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and the calendar has barely begun.

THE THREE LOCKUP TRACKS

SpaceX's lockup is not a single 180-day cliff. It is three separate tracks governing three different shareholder groups, each with its own rules. Understanding which shares unlock when, and who holds them — is the difference between being positioned for the supply events and being surprised by them.

Track 1: Pre-IPO Institutional Backers and Early VCs — Earnings-Tied Releases

These are the venture funds, private-equity firms, and institutional investors who held SpaceX privately before the IPO. Their lockup is tied to earnings releases and a price performance trigger.

On the second full trading day after SpaceX publishes its Q2 2026 earnings, currently scheduled for 6 August, 20% of this group's locked shares become eligible for sale. This is the first significant supply event on the calendar.

There is a bonus: if SPCX closes at or above $175.50 (30% above the $135 IPO price) on at least 5 of the 10 consecutive trading days ending on the earnings release date, an additional 10% unlocks alongside the Q2 tranche, bringing the total to 30%. At the stock's current price of approximately $145–$150, this trigger is not close to being met. If the performance condition is not satisfied, the 10% does not disappear, it rolls into the later time-based tranches.

After SpaceX publishes its Q3 2026 earnings (expected between mid-October and early December), approximately 28% more of this group's shares unlock.

All remaining shares in this track are released when the 180-day lockup expires on 8 December 2026.

Track 2: Employees and Core Insiders - Rolling 7% Releases

This is the group that includes SpaceX's engineers, technicians, and executives, the people who hold vested Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). The IPO created over 4,400 employee millionaires on paper. Their shares unlock in five fixed-date tranches of 7% each, timed to calendar days after the 11 June prospectus date:

· Day 70 - approximately 20 August 2026 - 7% of employee locked shares
· Day 90 - approximately 9 September 2026 - 7%
· Day 105 - approximately 24 September 2026 - 7%
· Day 120 - approximately 9 October 2026 - 7%
· Day 135 - approximately 24 October 2026 - 7%

These five tranches total 35% of the employee block, released in roughly two-week intervals from late August through late October. Even during the lockup, employees can use "net settle" (shares withheld for taxes) and "sell to cover" (open-market sales strictly to cover exercise costs), which means some employee-related selling can appear in the tape before these dates.

Track 3: Elon Musk and Significant Investors - 366-Day Hard Lock

CEO Elon Musk, who controls approximately 85.1% of the company's voting power and holds roughly 6.4 billion shares, signed a strict 366-calendar-day lockup agreement. He is legally blocked from selling a single share until 13 June 2027, a full year after the IPO plus one day.

This is the single largest concentration of equity in the company, and it is completely off the table until mid-2027. It creates a hard ceiling on supply until then, but it also means the largest potential selling event in SpaceX's first two years as a public company is still ahead, not behind.

THE CALENDAR: EVERY DATE THAT MATTERS

Here is the complete timeline, assembled from the 424B4 prospectus filed with the SEC on 12 June 2026. All dates are approximate, calculated from the 11 June prospectus date. Earnings dates are estimates based on the company's stated schedule.

6 August 2026 - Q2 Earnings + First Institutional Unlock (20–30%)
SpaceX's first earnings report as a public company. On the second full trading day after publication, 20% of pre-IPO institutional shares become saleable. If the performance trigger is met ($175.50 for 5 of 10 days), an additional 10% unlocks. This is the single most important near-term date on the calendar. It is both a fundamental event (the first time the market sees quarterly financials with full disclosure) and a supply event (the first wave of institutional selling). 22V Research estimates that insiders could sell as many as 44% of total shares by early September if the Q2 earnings and early employee releases overlap, increasing the current float by approximately 900%.

~20 August 2026 - Day 70: First Employee Release (7%)
The first tranche of employee RSU holders can sell. This arrives roughly two weeks after the Q2 earnings unlock, meaning the market faces back-to-back supply events in a compressed window.

~9 September 2026 - Day 90: Second Employee Release (7%)
The second 7% employee tranche. By this point, cumulative unlocks from the Q2 earnings and the first two employee releases could have added significantly more shares to the float than the original IPO. 22V Research's estimate of a potential 900% float increase by early September is anchored to this date.

~24 September 2026 - Day 105: Third Employee Release (7%)

~9 October 2026 - Day 120: Fourth Employee Release (7%)

~24 October 2026 - Day 135: Fifth Employee Release (7%)
The last of the rolling 7% employee tranches. By this date, 35% of the employee block has been released across five windows.

October–December 2026 - Q3 Earnings + Second Institutional Unlock (~28%)
The exact date depends on when SpaceX reports Q3 results. This is the second-largest single unlock event on the calendar. It releases roughly 28% of the pre-IPO institutional block, a substantial wave of shares that arrives after the employee releases have already been expanding the float for two months.

8 December 2026 - Day 180: Full 180-Day Lockup Expiration
All remaining shares under the standard 180-day lockup become eligible for sale. This is the traditional "lockup cliff" that most IPO investors watch for, but in SpaceX's case it is the end of a process, not the beginning of one, by December, the majority of the 180-day block will have already been released through the earlier tranches.

13 June 2027 - Day 366: Musk and Significant Investors Unlock
The date Elon Musk's approximately 6.4 billion shares first become eligible for transfer. No other single event in the post-IPO lockup calendar has more potential supply impact. Whether Musk sells, and how much, will depend on his financial needs (he has historically used SpaceX equity as collateral for other ventures), the stock price at the time, and the company's financial trajectory. But the mere eligibility of the largest shareholder to sell for the first time will be a significant sentiment event regardless of his actual intentions.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE STOCK

The practical takeaway is that SPCX's float is about to expand dramatically, and the expansion happens in a compressed window from August through December 2026. The stock is currently trading on a float of approximately 555 million shares. By early September, that float could grow by an estimated 900%. By December, virtually all shares except Musk's ~6.4 billion block will be freely tradeable.

There are two ways to read this. The bearish read is straightforward: more supply into a stock that is already struggling to hold its IPO price, at a valuation of 112x trailing sales with a $4.28 billion quarterly loss, creates sustained downward pressure. Every two weeks from August through October, a new tranche of employee millionaires gains the ability to lock in life-changing wealth by selling into the open market. The incentive to sell at least a portion is strong, and the aggregate volume is large.

The bullish read is more nuanced. Lockup expirations are the most predictable, most telegraphed supply events in equity markets. Everyone knows they are coming. The stock's decline from $225 to $145 has already priced in a significant amount of the anticipated selling. If the actual selling turns out to be lighter than expected, because employees hold rather than sell, or because institutional demand absorbs the supply, the removal of the overhang itself becomes a catalyst. The historical data is instructive here: Motley Fool reports that over the past decade, 92 stocks added to the Nasdaq-100 returned an average of 18% in the 12 months post-inclusion. The lockup is the hurdle; what comes after it is a normally traded stock with a $2 trillion market cap and index-fund demand.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE REST OF THE BASKET

The lockup calendar is not just a SPCX story. It is a calendar for the entire space basket, because SPCX's price action has been the dominant driver of sentiment across the group since the IPO.

If the lockup expirations produce sustained selling pressure from August through December, the rest of the basket, RKLB, ASTS, LUNR, FLY, PL, and all the smaller names, will likely trade with elevated correlation to SPCX, as they have since June. The sector's highest-beta names will feel the pressure most acutely, regardless of their own fundamentals.

Conversely, if the market absorbs the unlocks cleanly, perhaps because institutional demand at lower prices meets the supply, and SPCX stabilises or recovers into 2027, the removal of the lockup overhang could release the entire basket from the gravity well it has been trapped in since mid-June. The sector has spent a month trading on SPCX flow dynamics rather than individual fundamentals. The lockup calendar is the timeline for when that changes.

The strategic implication for holders of any name in this basket: position sizing through August–December should account for the probability that SPCX lockup-driven volatility will spill over into every correlated space name, regardless of whether those companies have their own lockup events or not. The tide moves all boats in this group, and the lockup calendar is the tide chart.

Takeaway: SpaceX's lockup is not a single event, it is a five-month process that begins in earnest on 6 August and does not fully resolve until 8 December, with Musk's block extending to June 2027. The first supply test is the Q2 earnings release, which combines a fundamental catalyst (first public financials) with a structural one (20–30% institutional unlock). The employee releases then arrive in fortnightly waves from late August through late October, steadily expanding the float. By early September, the tradeable supply could be nearly ten times what it was at the IPO. Whether that produces a buying opportunity or sustained selling pressure depends on how much of it is already priced in at $145, a question that the next eight weeks will answer definitively. For now, the calendar is the single most important document in the sector. Clip it. Every date on it will move the stock.

Previous: Issue 12: The week the sector stopped selling and started buying. · Next: Issue 14: Below the IPO price. Below the floor. Below everything.