Space
Watch NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover go for a test drive in preparation for landing on Martian soil
NASA engineers witnessed their newest Mars rover take its first steps in preparation for its next mission that will search for fossilized remains of ancient life on the red planet.
The test took place inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Engineers clad in white bunny suits—special cleanroom attire worn in order to keep the rover’s delicate instruments very, very clean—watched the yet-to-be-named rover inch forward as part of the crucial pre-flight test, which lasted just over 10-hours.
“Mars 2020 has earned its driver’s license,” Rich Rieber, the lead mobility systems engineer for Mars 2020, said in a news release. “The test unambiguously proved that the rover can operate under its own weight and demonstrated many of the autonomous-navigation functions for the first time. This is a major milestone for Mars 2020.”
During the test, NASA engineers noticed no problems, as the six-wheeled rover successfully performed all its required tasks: it rolled forward and backward and even pirouetted. According to NASA, the rover’s systems, all working in concert, enabled it to steer, turn and drive with ease.
The testing of the vehicle’s autonomous navigation system went well. Since these systems performed perfectly under Earth’s gravity, engineers expect them to perform just as well under Mars’ gravity, which is only 38% of what we experience on Earth.
The test went so well that NASA says the “next time the Mars 2020 rover drives, it will be rolling over Martian soil.” The Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to launch in July 2020, followed by a landing in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.
“A rover needs to rove, and Mars 2020 did that,” John McNamee, project manager for Mars 2020, said in a statement. “We can’t wait to put some red Martian dirt under its wheels.”
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During its initial test drive, the rover crept forward in small, 3-feet ( 1-meter) increments, enabling the engineers to properly assess its movement and steering abilities. The rover also drove over small ramps designed to simulate uneven Martian terrain.
Engineers were also able to collect data from the vehicle’s Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX)—an instrument that uses radar waves to scan the ground below the rover. Depending on the terrain, once on Mars, RIMFAX will penetrate the ground, probing the red planet’s subsurface to depths of more than 30-feet (or 10-meters).
Curiosity, the Mars 2020 rover’s predecessor currently roaming around on Mars, is predominantly commanded by people back on Earth. However, the rover does have the ability to autonomously choose where to fire its laser spectrometer. As part of its onboard science arsenal, the instrument—called ChemCam—is designed to analyze the chemical composition of nearby rocks and soil.
Mars 2020, on the other hand, will be more independent than any of its predecessors. Equipped with advanced auto-navigation software, the rover will drive with the help of a dedicated onboard computer operating on data collected from the vehicle’s high-resolution, wide-field color cameras.
NASA engineers estimate that the rover will travel an average of 650 feet (200 meters) per day. For comparison, Curiosity’s current distance record for a single day is 702 feet (214 meters), although that’s not typical. The Mars 2020 rover will also be sporting more durable wheels. Curiosity’s wheels are visibly worn after seven years on the Martian surface; engineers hope Mars 2020’s wheels will hold up better.
Once on Mars, the rover will land at Jezero Crater—a former lake bed, rich in mineral deposits known for preserving microfossils here on Earth. In this crater, the rover will search for any signs that life may have once existed on Mars.
While acting as a remote scientist, the rover will unlock clues about the planet’s climate and geology as well as collect samples that will be returned to Earth sometime in the future.
Following the loss of the Opportunity rover, Curiosity has been the sole robot roaming the Martian surface. That will change in 2021, but they won’t be the only ones.
They will be joined by another: The European Space Agency is teaming up with Russia to send their version of the Mars 2020 rover. The Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover will arrive on Mars at a soon-to-be-announced location, in 2021.
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Elon Musk has declared that SpaceX has effectively solved one of Starship’s most persistent engineering challenges: the reliability of its heat shield tiles.
During the company’s first-ever Earnings Call, the SpaceX CEO stated:
“I don’t want to jinx it or anything, but I think I would call the heat shield problem solved at this point. All indications from data and visual inspection is we have solved it. That doesn’t mean we won’t make improvements, but we do not see any technical obstacles to achieving rapid reusability at this point.”
Starship’s heat shield consists of roughly 18,000 hexagonal ceramic tiles covering the windward side of the upper stage. These tiles form the thermal protection system that shields the vehicle’s stainless-steel structure from the extreme heat of atmospheric reentry.
Elon says he believes the heat shield problem with Starship is currently solved.
He called it “arguably the single biggest problem” pic.twitter.com/eEE9vM5zlz
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 4, 2026
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During descent, atmospheric friction generates temperatures exceeding several thousand degrees Celsius and creates plasma flows capable of melting unprotected metal. The tiles absorb, radiate, and insulate against this energy, allowing the vehicle to survive and potentially fly again. Without a durable heat shield, full and rapid reusability, the cornerstone of Starship’s design for frequent launches, satellite deployments, and deep-space missions, would remain impossible.
The tiles have long been a source of difficulty. On earlier test flights, a significant number of tiles detached during ascent due to vibration, aerodynamic loads, and imperfect attachment methods using pins and adhesives. Gaps between tiles allowed hot plasma to infiltrate, causing secondary damage and hot spots on the underlying structure.
These issues echoed challenges faced by NASA’s Space Shuttle, whose ceramic tiles required extensive, labor-intensive inspections and replacements between missions, preventing rapid turnaround. SpaceX has iteratively improved materials, standardized tile shapes, refined attachment techniques, added secondary ablative layers, and tested sealing methods such as “crunch wrap” felt to close gaps.
Progress was visible across Flights 10–12, with steadily better tile retention, yet questions remained about whether the system could support the minimal-refurbishment goal of rapid reuse.
Flight 13 on July 24 provided the decisive evidence. Ship 40 flew a deliberately more demanding profile with higher dynamic pressure to stress the heat shield beyond typical operational loads. It successfully deployed 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites, the first such payload on a Starship mission, performed an in-space Raptor engine relight, and executed a controlled reentry.
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
Cameras on six of the satellites and onboard sensors captured extensive imagery and data of the shield throughout the flight. The ship then achieved its softest splashdown to date in the Indian Ocean, remaining intact and floating rather than breaking apart or exploding as on prior missions. This allowed drone inspections and continuous telemetry of the heat shield in near-real time.
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Post-flight analysis showed the majority of tiles remaining attached with only minor damage and limited plasma streaking at seams. Musk noted that the mission delivered “all the heat shield data we needed and then some.” Combined with visual inspections, these results underpinned his subsequent assessment that the core technical barriers to rapid reusability have been cleared. While refinements will continue, Flight 13 marked a pivotal step toward Starship’s operational future.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet
SpaceX revealed a new Nvidia satellite partnership, then Musk pledged an exclusive Nvidia hardware commitment.
SpaceX and Nvidia are now working together on the hardware that will power Musk’s orbital data center ambitions. SpaceX announced on X on Tuesday that it is partnering with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in orbit. Each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia’s Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, according to the post, which included renderings of the payload design.
The announcement landed hours before SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, where Musk went further, saying the company has committed to building its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. “We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it’s the best AI computer, and we greatly value our close cooperation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia,” Musk told investors on the call,. “So we’re exclusive to Nvidia.”
Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space. He set a target of 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year, scaling to roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. The idea is massive in scope and instead of moving data down to ground based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.
The Nvidia exclusivity marks a shift in tone from just two weeks ago, when Musk was busy knocking down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news at the time. The dollar figure in that rumor may have been wrong, but the underlying direction seems correct. SpaceX’s AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and Tuesday’s earnings report showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp up.
Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% in Tuesday trading on the news, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the day before giving back gains after hours as investors digested the earnings report’s capital spending figures.
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SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.
The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.
Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.
The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.
As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.
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