The space economy just filed a full quarter: Rocket Lab's record backlog, the satellite AST wrote off, and an $8B bet on Iridium

Every figure below traces to SEC filings: Rocket Lab's Q2 earnings release (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, accession 0001819994-26-000061, filed August 10, 2026) and Form 425 call excerpts (accession 0001753926-26-001394, filed August 11); AST SpaceMobile's Q2 release (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, accession 0001193125-26-342540) and Form 10-Q (accession 0001193125-26-342550), both filed August 10; and the Rocket Lab–Iridium merger announcement (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, accession 0001753926-26-001085, filed June 29, 2026). Research, not investment advice.

For years the space economy reported to the public in launch webcasts and press embargoes. Last week it reported in accession numbers. SpaceX ($SPCX) filed its first public print on August 4. Six days later, on Monday evening, Rocket Lab ($RKLB) and AST SpaceMobile ($ASTS) both filed their Q2 results — an 8-K each, with the 10-Qs landing the same night. Three space pure-plays, one filed week, and a sector you can finally read instead of watch.

The screenshots going around X lead with the records. The filings carry the records and the costs — including a nine-figure charge for a satellite that no longer exists. Both halves are one click deep on sec.gov. Here is what the documents actually say.

Rocket Lab: records on every line the tribe is quoting

The headline numbers in Rocket Lab's release (Exhibit 99.1, accession 0001819994-26-000061) are as strong as the chatter suggests. Record quarterly revenue of $234 million, up 62% year over year and $34 million above last quarter's record. Backlog reached $2.36 billion — another record, up 137% year over year. And the release says momentum continued after the quarter closed: combined with post-quarter signings, more than $1 billion in new launch and space-systems contracts have already been entered into in Q3, a figure the company footnotes as including options across various contracts.

The composition matters more than the totals. During Q2 and the weeks after, Rocket Lab secured more than $437 million in new launch contracts across Electron, HASTE and Neutron, taking the launch backlog past 90 launches — its highest ever. A $397 million award (including options) covers multiple Flatellite spacecraft launching on Neutron for the U.S. Space Force's Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator program, where Rocket Lab is one of only two vendors delivering launch-plus-spacecraft. Two further contracts worth more than $160 million cover three geostationary satellites, including the company's first GEO build-and-operate work for the U.S. Government.

The loss line is still a loss line: Q2 net loss was $49.3 million, narrowed from $66.4 million a year earlier, and Q3 guidance projects an Adjusted EBITDA loss between $17 million and $23 million on revenue guided to another record — $250 million to $265 million. The balance sheet carries $2.13 billion in cash and equivalents plus $172.7 million in current marketable securities. Neutron, the reusable medium-lift vehicle the launch backlog increasingly depends on, is stated to be tracking toward delivery to the launch pad in Q4 2026.

The $8 billion third vertical

The most consequential line in Rocket Lab's quarter isn't a Q2 number at all. On June 29 the company agreed to acquire Iridium Communications ($IRDM) for $54 per share in cash and stock — an enterprise value of approximately $8.0 billion (Exhibit 99.1, accession 0001753926-26-001085), with closing expected mid-2027 after regulatory and shareholder approvals.

Founder and CEO Sir Peter Beck's prepared remarks from Monday's earnings call — filed as a Form 425 the next morning (accession 0001753926-26-001394) because deal communications must be filed — lay out the logic in three verticals: access to space (launch), hardware in space (satellites and components), and space applications, "the entire reason for going to space in the first place." Iridium is the third vertical bought rather than built: a constellation of 66 satellites, more than 2.5 million subscribers, and over $870 million in annual revenue last year, riding globally harmonized L-band spectrum. Beck's sharpest line is about the club Rocket Lab is joining: the companies that "have the keys to space — i.e. can build and launch their own satellites. Rocket Lab is one of only two companies capable of this now." The filing doesn't name the other one. It doesn't need to.

AST SpaceMobile: the number the screenshots skip

AST SpaceMobile's release (Exhibit 99.1, accession 0001193125-26-342540) also leads with scale: 13 satellites in orbit — each described as the largest phased array ever deployed in low Earth orbit — signed partnerships with more than 60 mobile network operators collectively covering over 3 billion subscribers, aggregate revenue backlog of approximately $1.30 billion, and a preliminary selection (with Rakuten) by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for the J-LEO initiative, with total expected value up to approximately $1 billion in non-dilutive government capital.

Q2 revenue was $31.5 million, driven by gateway deliveries and U.S. Government milestones. Total operating expenses were $329.1 million. And inside that opex walk sits the quarter's most instructive disclosure: a $125.9 million loss on involuntary conversion. The press release doesn't say what was involuntarily converted. The 10-Q does (accession 0001193125-26-342550): the write-off of the BB7 satellite, net of related insurance recoveries. The cash flow statement shows $21.6 million of insurance proceeds received from the BB7 launch. In plain terms: a BlueBird satellite was lost, the insurance recovered a fraction of its book value, and the difference — roughly four times the quarter's entire revenue — went through the income statement.

That is not a scandal; it is the physics of the buildout, disclosed the way filings disclose things. The same 10-Q shows the scale of what's still being spent: $859.2 million of property-and-equipment purchases in the first half, $100 million of capital advances to Ligado for spectrum, $42.1 million of spectrum intangibles — against approximately $2.7 billion in cash, equivalents and restricted cash at quarter end. BlueBirds 14 through 16 are preparing to ship, production runs through BlueBird 46, and Block 2 satellites are expected to approach 200 Mbps peak data rates. The bet is enormous and now fully legible; so is its cost per stumble.

One sector, three filed business models

Read together, the week's filings sketch the space economy's three ways of making money. SpaceX filed scale: $7.8 billion of quarterly revenue and 12 million Starlink subscribers, vertical integration already complete. Rocket Lab filed momentum plus an acquisition: records across revenue and backlog, and $8 billion to buy the recurring-revenue vertical it lacks — becoming, if the deal closes, the second member of Beck's two-company club with all three verticals. AST filed a construction site: $1.30 billion of contracted future revenue, $2.7 billion of funding, and a quarter where losing one satellite cost four times revenue.

There's also a scoreboard for who owns these bets. Alphabet's Q2 13F — the filing behind the viral portfolio screenshots — disclosed a $94.18 billion SpaceX stake alongside positions in Planet Labs and AST SpaceMobile (accession 0001652044-26-000073): a space book worth $96.1 billion of its $99.1 billion in disclosed holdings. And the institutional picture is about to get much sharper: Friday, August 14 is the 13F deadline for Q2 — the first quarter in which every fund that bought SpaceX's IPO has to say so in a filing. We'll be reading those the day they land.

Headlines move prices; filings size the exposure. The viral posts about Monday's space earnings are quoting real numbers — the records are in the documents. So is the satellite that isn't in orbit anymore, the EBITDA that is still negative, and the $8 billion of consideration that hasn't closed yet. If you hold any of these names, the ten minutes that matter this week are the opex walk in AST's release and the backlog footnote in Rocket Lab's. Both are one click from the accession numbers above.

Research, not investment advice.