Space
A Tale of Two Rovers: How does Mars 2020 compare to Curiosity?
NASA’s next Mars rover is almost ready to launch. Engineers recently took it for a test spin, before shipping it off to its Cape Canaveral launch site. The six-wheeled rover will blast off this July; once it arrives on Mars, it will scour the red planet for signs of ancient life.
The Mars 2020 rover, which should receive a name very soon, is nearly identical in appearance to its predecessor, the Curiosity rover. After landing on Mars in 2012, Curiosity has spent its time exploring Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide crater.
It was once the site of an ancient lake and stream system; scientists believe that it may have been able to support life. However, like the rest of the planet’s surface, the area is dry today.
The twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 with one major goal: to follow the water. Right out of the gate, the duo proved that water once flowed on the surface of Mars. But what happened to it?
To answer that question, NASA launched the supersized Curiosity rover to learn more. Since landing in 2012, Curiosity discovered that Gale Crater was once home to an ancient lake billions of years ago and that it could have supported microbial life. The rover is still scouring the crater, hunting for clues as it climbs Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) peak within the crater — that scientists believe was partially formed by water.
3,760 miles (6,050 kilometers) away, Mars 2020 will explore Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient delta. Here the rover will take the next scientific step: It will look for actual signs of past life, called biosignatures, by analyzing samples of rocks and soil. It will also bag up samples that could be retrieved by future missions and eventually returned to Earth for more in-depth analysis.
Mars 2020 is essentially a souped-up version of the Curiosity rover, but charged with searching for signs of life and collecting samples for eventual return to Earth. The new rover is estimated to cost $1.9 billion dollars and will carry a suite of 7 specialized instruments that will science the hell out of Mars.
But first the rover has to land on Mars. To do so, it must survive a harrowing process known as entry, descent, and landing (aka seven minutes of terror).
To the untrained eye, Mars 2020 looks like an identical copy of Curiosity, but if you look closely, you can tell that the two apart. Building a rover from scratch is extremely difficult and expensive. The folks at NASA built on the success of Curiosity and added new capabilities. A process that enabled more science at a reduced cost.
The beefier Mars 2020 rover is about 280 lbs. (127 kilograms) heavier than its counterpart. That’s because it carries different tools, like a larger drill. This enables the new rover to drill into rocks, extracting rock cores rather than just smashing them.
We all love the epic robot selfies and stunning views of Martian landscapes so of course the new rover will be packing multiple cameras. Curiosity is equipped with 17 cameras; by comparison, Mars 2020 will have 23 that will shoot mostly in color. Additionally, Mars 2020’s Mastcam-Z will film in high definition and be able to zoom.
Mars 2020 will also carry not one but two microphones on its journey so all of us back here on Earth can hear what Mars sounds like. The microphones will record the rover’s landing on Mars, as well as the Martian wind and will listen as the rover zaps scientific targets with its on board laser.
Another design improvement will be the wheels. Curiosity was equipped with aluminum wheels, which have been badly beaten up by the rugged Martian terrain. Sharp rocks have proved to be troublesome, with NASA modifying the rover’s driving plan to ensure Curiosity makes it through its mission. To avoid these kinds of issues, engineers made Mars 2020’s wheels more robust.
“Extensive testing in JPL’s Mars Yard has shown these treads better withstand the pressure from sharp rocks but work just as well on sand,” NASA officials said in a news release.
NASA plans to return to the moon and eventually send humans to Mars. To that end, the Mars 2020 rover will help pave the way for future missions. The rover will carry spacesuit samples to determine how they degrade over time, as well as a subsurface radar instrument that could potentially be used to find buried water ice.
Additionally, an oxygen generator will test technology that future astronauts could use to make their own rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere.
News
UPDATE: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy that launched a Tesla into space is back on a mission
SpaceX Falcon Heavy returns after 18 months away to deliver a satellite that only it could carry.
UPDATE: 10:29 a.m. et: SpaceX is standing down from today’s Falcon Heavy launch of the ViaSat-3 F3 mission due to unfavorable weather. A new target date will be shared once confirmed.
After an 18-month absence, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is returning to mission on Monday morning when it’s scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 10:21 a.m. EDT.
The mission is called ViaSat-3 F3, and the heavy satellite payload needs to reach geostationary orbit, sitting 22,236 miles above Earth where its speed matches the planet’s rotation. Getting a satellite that heavy to that altitude demands more thrust than a single-core Falcon 9 can deliver.
This marks the Falcon Heavy’s 12th flight overall since its debut in February 2018, and its first since NASA’s Europa Clipper mission in October 2024.
Arguably, the most exciting element for spectators will be watching the booster recoveries in action when the two side boosters, B1072 and B1075, will attempt simultaneous landings at Landing Zone 2 and the newer Landing Zone 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, while the center core will be expended over the ocean.
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
Following satellite deployment, expected roughly five hours after launch, ViaSat-3 F3 will spend several months traveling to its final orbital slot before undergoing in-orbit testing, with service entry expected by late summer 2026
As Teslarati reported, NASA awarded SpaceX a $175.7 million contract on April 16, 2026, to launch the ESA Rosalind Franklin Mars rover aboard a Falcon Heavy no earlier than late 2028, which would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars. That contract came on top of an already deep pipeline that includes the Roman Space Telescope, the Dragonfly Saturn mission, and multiple national security payloads.
SpaceX executed 165 missions in 2025 and now accounts for approximately 85% of all global orbital launches. With Starlink surpassing 10 million subscribers and an IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation still ahead, Monday’s launch is one more data point in a company that has quietly become the backbone of both commercial and government space access worldwide.
Elon Musk
The FCC just said ‘No’ to SpaceX for now
SpaceX is fighting the FCC for spectrum that could put satellites inside every smartphone.
SpaceX was dealt a new setback on April 23, 2006 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after the U.S. government agency dismissed the company’s petition to access a Mobile Satellite Service spectrum that would allow direct-to-device (D2D) capabilities.
The FCC regulates communications by radio, television, wire, and cable, which also includes regulating D2D technology that lets your existing smartphone connect directly to a satellite orbiting Earth, the same way it would connect to a cell tower.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been building toward this through its Starlink Mobile service, formerly called Direct-to-Cell, in partnership with T-Mobile. The service officially launched on July 23, 2025, starting with messaging and expanding to broadband data in October of that year.
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It’s worth noting that SpaceX is not alone in this race. AT&T and Verizon have their own satellite texting deals with AST SpaceMobile, while Verizon separately offers free satellite texting through Skylo on newer phones.
The regulatory foundation for all of this dates to March 14, 2024, when the FCC adopted the world’s first framework for what it called Supplemental Coverage from Space, allowing satellite operators to lease spectrum from terrestrial carriers and fill gaps in their coverage. On November 26, 2024, the FCC granted SpaceX the first-ever authorization under that framework, approving its partnership with T-Mobile to provide service in specific frequency bands. SpaceX then went further, completing a roughly $17 billion acquisition of wireless spectrum from EchoStar, which gave it the ability to negotiate with global carriers more independently.
Starlink’s EchoStar spectrum deal could bring 5G coverage anywhere
This recent ruling by the FCC blocked SpaceX from going further, protecting incumbent spectrum holders like Globalstar and Iridium. But the market momentum is already in motion. As Teslarati reported, SpaceX is targeting peak speeds of 150 Mbps per user for its next generation Direct-to-Cell service, compared to roughly 4 Mbps today, which would bring satellite connectivity close to standard carrier performance.
With a reported IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation on the horizon, each spectrum fight, carrier deal, and regulatory win or loss now carries weight beyond just connectivity. SpaceX is quietly becoming the infrastructure layer underneath the phones of millions of people, and the FCC’s next move will help determine how much further that reach extends.
FCC Satellite Rule Makings can be found here.
Elon Musk
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
SpaceX has secured an option to acquire Cursor AI for $60 billion ahead of its historic IPO.
SpaceX announced today it has struck a deal with AI coding startup Cursor, securing the option to acquire the company outright for $60 billion later this year, while committing $10 billion for joint development work in the interim. The announcement described the partnership as building “the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI,” and comes just days after Cursor was separately reported to be raising $2 billion at a valuation above $50 billion.
The move makes strategic sense given where each company currently stands. Cursor currently pays retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI to the same companies competing directly against it with Claude Code and Codex. That means every dollar of revenue Cursor earns partially funds its own competition. With SpaceX bringing computational infrastructure to the Cursor platform, that could reduce Cursor’s dependence on OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude AI as its providers. Access to SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer, with compute equivalent to one million Nvidia H100 chips, gives Cursor the infrastructure to run and train its own models at a scale it could never afford independently. That one change restructures the entire unit economics of the business.
Elon Musk teases crazy outlook for xAI against its competitors
Cursor’s $2 billion in annualized revenue and enterprise reach across more than half of Fortune 500 companies gives SpaceX something its xAI subsidiary currently lacks, which is a proven, fast-growing software business with real enterprise distribution.
For Cursor, SpaceX’s $10 billion in joint development funding is transformational. Cursor raised $3.3 billion across all of 2025 to reach that $2 billion in revenue. A single $10 billion commitment from SpaceX, even as a development payment rather than an acquisition, dwarfs everything Cursor has raised in its entire existence. That capital accelerates product development, enterprise sales infrastructure, and proprietary model training simultaneously.
The timing is deliberate. SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC on April 1, 2026, targeting a June listing at a $1.75 trillion valuation, in what would be the largest public offering in history. The company is expected to begin its roadshow the week of June 8, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley serving as underwriters. Adding Cursor to the portfolio before that roadshow gives IPO investors a concrete enterprise software revenue story to price in, alongside rockets and satellite internet.
The deal also addresses a weakness that became visible after February’s xAI merger. Several xAI co-founders departed following that acquisition, and SpaceX had already hired two Cursor engineers, signaling where its AI talent strategy was heading. Cursor, for its part, faces a pricing disadvantage competing against Anthropic’s Claude Code.
Whether SpaceX exercises the full acquisition option before its IPO or after remains the open question. Either way, this deal reshapes what investors will be buying into when SpaceX goes public.
Tesla wins big as NHTSA drops three-year, 120k unit probe against Model Y
Tesla Model Y L gets biggest hint yet that it’s coming to the U.S.
