Orbit Alpha Issue 21 · 6 Sept 2026

Flat Sector, Wild Stocks - SpaceX Rallies Into Its Next Lockup Week While Viasat Surges and BlackSky Slides

MARKET OVERVIEW
🌎 Flat Sector, Wild Stocks - SpaceX Rallies Into Its Next Lockup Week While Viasat Surges and BlackSky Slides

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The sector's two broad trackers barely moved this week, the Procure Space ETF (UFO) finished up just 0.18% and the ARK Space Exploration ETF (ARKX) slipped 0.49%, but that calm surface hid a genuinely turbulent week underneath. A renewed U.S.-Iran flare-up in the Strait of Hormuz sent stocks broadly lower on Monday, September 1, and small-cap space names took it harder than most; several never fully recovered by Friday's close even as SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile, and Viasat rallied hard on company-specific news. The result was a week of wide dispersion rather than a clean up or down move for the basket as a whole.

SpaceX (SPCX)

SpaceX shares opened the week at $143.69 on Monday, August 31, and closed Friday, September 4 at $147.95, a net gain of 2.97%, but the path between those two points was the real story. Wednesday, September 3 saw the stock jump as much as 7% intraday, closing up 6.4% at $149.74 on volume of roughly 121 million shares — nearly two-and-a-half times normal turnover. The catalysts stacked up fast: Musk's own August 31 social-media "clarification" that it was SpaceX, not Tesla or xAI as originally reported back in July, that quietly acquired mobile power-generation firm APR Energy for a sum reporters have pegged at more than $1 billion (the company hasn't disclosed official terms); continued attention on the $100 billion "Starbase Louisiana" spaceport unveiled in Vermilion Parish in late August; and mounting anticipation of Starship's 14th test flight, now targeting September 15. Oppenheimer's Timothy Horan raised his price target on the stock to $280 from $250 that same day, citing an AI-compute infrastructure buildout he called faster than any rival's. Musk added fuel to that narrative on September 4, reiterating that SpaceX will build its AI computing infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, scaling from roughly 1.4 gigawatts of compute capacity today to a 10-gigawatt target by the end of 2027, with on the order of $15.8 billion earmarked per quarter for the buildout; a follow-up report the next day covered his claim that the company's new gas-turbine foundry venture can deploy power roughly 18 months faster than conventional approaches. The week also fell in a gap between lockup tranches — the roughly 319-million-share "day-70" unlock cleared August 20–21, and the next scheduled release isn't due until around September 9–10, just past this issue's window, which our Sentiment Signal deep-dive below explores in full.

Rocket Lab (RKLB)

A busier week than it first looked, with a genuine split in analyst opinion. BofA trimmed its price target to $110 from $115 on August 31–September 1, though it kept a Buy rating, while KeyBanc's Michael Leshock struck a far more bullish tone the same day, reiterating a Street-high $135 target (implying roughly 111% upside at the time) and framing Rocket Lab as "the clear No. 2 challenger to SpaceX in commercial launch" on Neutron-scaling conviction and structural launch-capacity undersupply. Then, on September 1, NASA awarded its $700 million Mars Telecommunications Network contract to Blue Origin rather than Rocket Lab, which had been considered a front-runner; shares fell roughly 2% on the news, and CEO Peter Beck linked some investor concern to the company's slipping Neutron rocket timeline, saying the window for an end-of-year debut launch is narrowing. Cathie Wood's ARK Invest bought the dip aggressively, picking up roughly 505,000 RKLB shares (~$31.6 million) across its ETFs on September 1 and continuing to add through September 3–4 for a two-day-plus total near $75 million. The company still notched its 94th Electron launch on September 2–3, its 15th mission of 2026, lofting a synthetic-aperture-radar satellite for Japanese customer Synspective from Mahia, New Zealand, and separately confirmed its Neutron rocket's "Hungry Hippo" fairing completed its full test campaign on September 2, with more than 400 Archimedes engine hot-fires logged as flight-engine production continues toward that targeted year-end debut. CFO Adam Spice also sold roughly $8.8 million in stock via a pre-set trading plan, a transaction dated September 2 and disclosed September 6. On the pending ~$8 billion Iridium acquisition, the SpaceX-FCC dispute over Iridium's merger-review conduct that broke in late August saw no substantive new developments this week, only a same-story recap circulating September 1, with the Iridium shareholder vote still set for September 24. Shares finished essentially flat for the week, up 0.53% from $63.92 to $64.26.

AST SpaceMobile (ASTS)

Shares jumped as much as 11–13% on Tuesday, September 2 after Berenberg initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a $92 price target, one of the more bullish fresh calls on the stock this year, while a director's open-market purchase of just over $619,000 in shares, filed the day before, added a vote of insider confidence. Some of that pop faded by week's end, but ASTS still closed up 5.43% for the week, from $59.10 to $62.31.

Intuitive Machines (LUNR)

The lunar-and-orbital-hardware company announced a new order for two of its IM 300 spacecraft platforms on September 1 for an undisclosed customer built at its Palo Alto facility, without disclosing a contract value; management separately reiterated its FY2026 revenue guidance of $900 million to $1 billion. Shares fell as much as 8–9% in the days immediately following the announcement as investors focused on the missing dollar figure rather than the win itself, before paring losses to close the week down 3.58%, from $15.36 to $14.81.

Spire Global (SPIR)

Spire's most recent contract wins (a roughly €4 million EUMETSAT renewal and a $27.9 million NOAA hyperspectral-sounder award) landed August 25–26, just before this window. Shares fell 9.72%, from $13.27 to $11.98, tracking Monday's broader small-cap selloff more than any company-specific development.

Redwire (RDW)

Redwire's leadership rang the NYSE opening bell on September 1 to mark the company's fifth anniversary as a public company, with an accompanying release touting a record Q2 backlog of $542.1 million, a symbolic milestone rather than a market-moving one. Shares dipped 1.59% for the week, from $10.70 to $10.53.

Viasat (VSAT)

The week's biggest gainer in the basket, and it had more going on than first appeared. Viasat announced on August 31 that its ViaSat-3 F3 satellite entered commercial service across the Asia-Pacific region, completing two of the three planned satellites in the ViaSat-3 constellation; CEO Mark Dankberg framed it as driving "improved blended average yield and incremental cash economics" for the business. The company also held its routine annual shareholder meeting on September 3 (director re-elections, auditor ratification, a say-on-pay vote, nothing stock-moving on its own), and shares jumped a further 6.1% on Friday, September 4 as part of a broader rally across communications-equipment names (Viavi Solutions and Applied Optoelectronics also rose) that reporting attributed mainly to sector-wide rotation rather than any single Viasat-specific catalyst. For the week, VSAT finished up 11.97%, from $67.27 to $75.32.

MDA Space (MDA.TO)

The Canadian satellite and space-infrastructure firm drew attention for a strategic tension rather than a single headline: on September 1–2 it confirmed it will supply its AURORA direct-to-device satellite platforms to other constellation operators even as it simultaneously pursues its own competing "SpaceRAN" direct-to-device network, a two-phase, 96-then-170-satellite constellation for which MDA has already filed spectrum applications with Canadian and international regulators. CEO Mike Greenley cautioned investors not to assume the in-house constellation "will represent a large investment for MDA," pointing to unnamed consortium partners instead. Shares in Toronto rose roughly 1.8% over the week (a five-trading-day span, Aug 28–Sep 4, due to a data gap on the Aug 31 close), from C$40.11 to C$40.84.

Planet Labs (PL)

Earth-observation operator Planet Labs posted its fiscal Q2 2027 results after the close on September 3: revenue of $116.1 million, up 58% year-over-year, alongside the company's first-ever positive adjusted EBITDA quarter ($13.9 million) and a raised full-year revenue outlook of $430–$441 million. Shares fell as much as 8% into the print, popped more than 4% in after-hours trading on the profitability milestone, then gave those after-hours gains back in Friday's regular session as investors focused on guidance for a sequential revenue dip next quarter and higher planned capital spending. The stock closed the week down 8.72%, from $19.85 to $18.12.

BlackSky Technology (BKSY)

CFO Henry Dubois sold 4,000 shares for roughly $95,120 under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, filed August 31 for an August 28 transaction, a routine, modest sale that doesn't fully explain the size of the move that followed. Shares fell 11.26% for the week, from $23.10 to $20.50, a decline likely compounded by Monday's broader selloff and the stock's thin float. BlackSky's annual shareholder meeting is set for September 10, just past this issue's window.

Takeaway

This was a week where the sector's aggregate calm concealed real stock-picking risk: SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile, and Viasat all rallied on company-specific catalysts while Spire, BlackSky, and Planet Labs gave up 9–11% apiece against a backdrop of geopolitically driven, broad-market weakness early in the week. Looking ahead, the next seven-to-ten days bring two real catalysts for SpaceX specifically, the day-90 lockup tranche expected around September 9–10, and the September 15 target for Starship Flight 14's first attempted tower catch, either of which could reset the sector's tone heading into mid-September.

BROKER PULSE
🚀 Consensus prices

Live prices for all names below at Orbit Alpha Markets

LAUNCH WATCH
🔭 Launches that could move your portfolio

Full launch calendar with live status at Orbit Alpha Launches

• Sep 6 — SpaceX · Falcon 9 · Starlink 15-24 (27 satellites) · Vandenberg SFB, CA
• Sep 9 (NET) — CASC · vehicle TBD · payload TBD · Jiuquan, China
• Sep 9 — Roscosmos · Soyuz-2.1b · Progress MS-35 (96th ISS cargo resupply) · Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
• Sep 10 — SpaceX · Falcon 9 · USSF-153 (classified national security payload) · Vandenberg SFB, CA
• Sep 11 (NET) — CASC · vehicle TBD · payload TBD · Wenchang, China
• Sep 13 — SpaceX · Falcon 9 · O3b mPOWER (final 3 satellites for SES) · Cape Canaveral SFS, FL
• Sep 14–15 — Arianespace/Avio · Vega C · Sentinel-3C + FLEX Earth Explorer · Guiana Space Centre, French Guiana
• Sep 15 (NET) — SpaceX · Starship–Super Heavy (Booster 21/Ship 41) · Flight 14 — first attempted tower catch of the ship, deploys Starlink V3 satellites · Starbase, TX
• September, exact date TBD — SpaceX · Falcon 9 · Crew-13 (ISS crew rotation) · Cape Canaveral SFS, FL
• September, exact date TBD — ULA · Vulcan Centaur · Amazon Leo (Kuiper) LV-01, 45 satellites · Cape Canaveral SFS, FL
• September, exact date TBD — Rocket Lab · Electron · LOXSAT-1 · Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand
• Late September (NET) — CASC · Long March 12A · Flight 2 · Jiuquan, China

DEEP DIVE
🎯 INSIDE SPACEX'S LOCKUP CALENDAR: WHY THE "QUIET WEEKS" MATTER AS MUCH AS THE UNLOCKS

The space sector's biggest consolidation move of the year hit its first real regulatory turbulence this week, and the company that caused it was SpaceX, which is not even a party to the deal.

SpaceX's June 2026 IPO created the largest, fastest-moving natural experiment in space-stock trading history, a $1.77 trillion company that went public with only a sliver of its shares actually tradable, and that sliver has been expanding in discrete, scheduled jumps ever since. This week (August 31–September 6) sits in one of the gaps between those jumps, and understanding why the "quiet" weeks matter is the key to understanding what's coming next.

The mechanics: three tiers, one staggered calendar. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share on June 11, 2026, raising $86 billion, and closed its first day of trading up about 19% at roughly $161. But only a small initial float — on the order of 640 million shares, under 5% of shares outstanding — was actually available to trade at listing. The rest sits behind a three-tiered lockup: a 366-day lockup for Musk and top insiders that doesn't expire until roughly June 2027; a 180-day institutional/VC-investor block that releases in tranches, including an initial 20% slice tied to the company's first earnings report and a "bonus" acceleration tranche that only fires if the stock trades 30%+ above the IPO price for 5 of 10 sessions before that report (it didn't, this time); and an employee pool that unlocks in rolling 7% increments at set day-marks, plus a larger tranche tied to the next earnings date.

What actually happened at the last unlock. The first big test came August 6, when roughly 911.5 million shares — about 20% of the institutional block, and, per a Motley Fool estimate published the day before, more than three times the size of the entire pre-unlock float — became eligible to trade alongside SpaceX's first-ever earnings report as a public company (revenue of $7.81 billion, up 92% year-over-year, with a narrowed net loss of $541 million). Rather than a selloff, what followed was a short squeeze. Short interest, which had exploded from roughly 23 million shares in mid-June to about 219 million shares by July 29 — pushing short-as-a-percentage-of-the-tiny-float as high as 34%, according to S3 Partners data reported by Bloomberg — began unwinding hard as the float suddenly tripled. CNBC reported on August 12 that the stock had rebounded 38–40% off its recent low, with short interest collapsing to roughly 11% of float, and share-borrow availability that had been essentially zero a week earlier climbing back into the millions.

Untangling this week's short-interest confusion. One of the trickier data problems in covering SPCX right now is that different trackers report wildly different "percent of float short" numbers off the same underlying share count. As of the most recent official settlement date (August 14, 2026), both Fintel and MarketBeat independently report 184,389,672 shares short — a real point of agreement — but Fintel calculates that as 16.74% of float while MarketBeat shows 1.41%. The discrepancy traces to denominators: MarketBeat's math appears to divide by total shares outstanding (roughly 13.1 billion) rather than actual tradable float, while Fintel's float estimate hasn't fully caught up to the post-August-6 unlock. Using the most current float figure available, approximately 1.53 billion shares, per StockAnalysis.com as of this week, the mathematically consistent answer lands closer to 12% of float short, down meaningfully from July's 34% peak, even though the raw number of shares short fell only modestly. In plain terms: shorts aren't disappearing so much as they're being diluted into a much bigger pool of tradable stock.

Why this week was quiet, and why that's temporary. The day-70 employee tranche — another roughly 319 million shares, ~7% of the block — cleared August 20–21, and nothing new unlocked during this week's August 31–September 6 window. That gap is exactly why SPCX's 6%-plus single-day rally on September 3 reads as pure sentiment (AI-infrastructure headlines, the Terafab chip-foundry buildout, the newly announced $100 billion Starbase Louisiana spaceport) rather than a lockup-driven mechanical move. But the calm doesn't last: the next tranche — another ~7% day-90 employee release plus a smaller Rule 144 slice for affiliates — is expected around September 9–10, just past this issue's window. And a Motley Fool analysis published September 1 frames September as a whole as one of the heavier unlock months on the calendar, estimating that more than 700 million shares (roughly 5.3% of total shares outstanding) become eligible to trade this month, with another roughly 650 million shares (4.9%) following in October.

What Wall Street is doing about it. Analyst sentiment has, if anything, gotten more bullish even as the float keeps expanding. Oppenheimer's September 3 note raising its target to $280 leaned explicitly on AI-compute infrastructure economics rather than lockup mechanics, and a broader Motley Fool tally from September 1 found roughly three-quarters of the 40 analysts covering the stock rating it a Buy, with a median target of $217, well above the current price in the mid-$140s. Yahoo Finance's own aggregate consensus, checked and independently corroborated this week, puts the 1-year target at $222.32 across 35 analysts. That's a meaningful gap between what the sell side thinks the stock is worth and where continued share unlocks could put technical pressure on the price, a tension worth watching rather than a contradiction to resolve.

The historical base rate, with appropriate caution. It's worth noting, with a clear caveat, that some analysts researching comparable high-volatility, low-initial-float IPOs have found that stocks appreciating more than 40% in their first trading week with sub-10%-of-shares initial floats have underperformed sector benchmarks in the 30 days following their first major lockup expiration in roughly six out of ten historical cases. That's a general pattern from other companies' lockup histories, not a SpaceX-specific data point, and SpaceX's post-unlock behavior so far, the August 6 squeeze, has actually run counter to that pattern. Whether the September and October unlocks, roughly double the size of any single tranche so far, break that streak is arguably the single biggest open question hanging over the stock right now.

Takeaway. The absence of a lockup event this week isn't a lull in the SpaceX story, it's the setup for the next one. With roughly 5% of shares outstanding scheduled to unlock in September and another 5% in October, against a backdrop of short interest that's already been cut by more than half since its July peak and a stock trading well below sell-side price targets, the coming month offers a genuine test of whether SpaceX's post-IPO trading pattern is a repeatable short-squeeze dynamic or a one-time function of an unusually small initial float. Investors watching the ticker should treat the September 9–10 tranche and the September 15 Starship Flight 14 catalyst as the two events most likely to answer that question.

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not investment, legal, or financial advice. We believe our sources are reliable but can't guarantee accuracy or completeness, and all figures should be independently verified before you rely on them.

Previous: Issue 20: A Fed Shock, an FCC Fight Over Iridium, and a SpaceX That Weathered Both · Next: Issue 22: SpaceX's $47 Billion Unlock Rattles the Sector, While Rocket Lab Fights NASA Over Mars