Rocket Lab: Ligado accuses Iridium of using the FCC to block rivals, capping RKLB's worst week ever
From the Space digest for 2026-10-19
What happened: Stocktwits (October 19, ~12:21 PM ET): Ligado, a partner in AST SpaceMobile's direct-to-device constellation effort, publicly challenged the Iridium deal and accused Iridium of using regulatory filings at the FCC to block competitors — a fight that reaches Ligado's SkyTerra Next service with AST SpaceMobile. The same coverage ties Rocket Lab's "worst week ever" for RKLB shares to those partner challenges, stacked on the Neutron first-flight slip. The weekly damage now has a number: Foreign Policy Journal (October 19) reports RKLB plunged more than 25% last week — the worst weekly performance in the company's history. Monday opened with a bounce: the stock gapped up from Friday's $50.84 close to $52.28 before pulling back from those highs (Traders Union, October 19), with Cantor Fitzgerald maintaining its Overweight rating and $122 target. The market beat closed out with commentary: a TipRanks piece (October 19, ~12:21 PM ET) relays an investor's view of the pullback as "The Right Call," and an MSN syndication argues the company's reusability advantage "is fast becoming its biggest problem."
What's genuinely new: a development of "space — Rocket Lab × Iridium: the ~$8B combination." That thread's September 17 milestone — the FCC accepting the license-transfer applications for filing, with a public-comment period open — put comment-period objections on the watch list; a named, AST-partner-side accusation is the first captured. The "worst week" frame quantifies a tape the record already follows: October 15's −13% close at $51.42 and October 16's near-8% close at $50.84 are now rolled up into the first on-file weekly figure, more than −25%, alongside the first gap-up datapoint since.
Watch: whether Ligado's objection lands formally in the FCC docket, any Iridium or Rocket Lab response, the GAO Mars-award protest and the close runway; the Neutron Q1 2027 tank-qualification gate stands behind it all.
Links: Stocktwits — Ligado vs. Iridium, RKLB's worst week · Foreign Policy Journal — more than 25% weekly drop · Traders Union — gap-up to $52.28 · TipRanks — "The Right Call" · MSN — Rocket Lab's reusability advantage