Space
Famous Mars meteorite discovered with interesting, new organics
Scientists are looking at Mars in a whole new way. That’s because a new analysis of a famous piece of the red planet has revealed something exciting: traces of nitrogen.
Nitrogen, together with organic molecules — carbon-rich molecules that are considered the building blocks of life as we know it — have been spotted in the Alan Hills meteorite, a new study suggests.
The Alan Hills sample was discovered in Antarctica in 1984 and is one of the largest, most famous meteorites from Mars. That’s because it sparked quite the controversy when it was first found. Some of the first analysis of the rock suggested that the sample contained microbial fossils. This led to rumors that scientists might have spotted their firsts signs of Martian life.
Over billions of years, Mars has been stripped of its atmosphere, and as such, its surface is subjected to cosmic radiation as well as blasts from interstellar objects. Sometimes the blasts are so powerful that chunks of rock are ejected into space and eventually land on other planetary bodies such as the moon or Earth.
Scientists estimate that the Alan Hills sample arrived on our planet at least 13,000 years ago and that the sample itself is around 4 billion years old. This 4-lb. chunk of rock is the oldest known meteorite from Mars that we’ve found.
Mars, as we know it today, appears to be a pretty inhospitable place for life. But that wasn’t always the case. Mars was once a lush, wet world, and new evidence points to the fact that an ancient chunk of the red planet is harboring traces of organic molecules.
These types of carbon-rich molecules are the building blocks of life. Their presence does not necessarily qualify as a definitive sign that life was once present on Mars, but it bolsters the case. That’s because this particular sample doesn’t just contain a random set of organic molecules; it contains traces of nitrogen explicitly.
And nitrogen is something that life here on Earth depends on.
The Allan Hills 84001 meteorite is a famous hunk of Martian rock that was found in a region of Antarctica called Allan Hills in 1984. The new study, conducted by a group of researchers from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), indicates that not only does the sample contain nitrogen, but that the nitrogen was found within carbonate minerals in the rock. These types of minerals typically form in groundwater, so this could be further evidence to support the notion that Mars was once a wet world.
To make this discovery, the team from JAXA, led by Mizuho Koike, used a technique called X-ray spectroscopy to determine that the nitrogen was hiding in the carbonate minerals. Even though the Alan Hills sample has been in the news before, this was the first definitive evidence that there was nitrogen in the meteorite.
This discovery does not mean that the researchers have found signs of life on Mars. The presence of nitrogen and the carbonate minerals can be produced both biotically and abiotically. Scientists do not yet know how these molecules formed, but they have ruled out that they were somehow contaminated by Earth minerals.
But how were they formed? According to the researchers, there are two possibilities: either the organics originated on Mars, or they came from outside the planet. Mars was bombarded by comets and other rock and dust particles, and it’s possible that some of them may have been trapped inside the minerals as they formed.
Researchers will soon have other Martian rocks to compare these results to. This summer, NASA is launching the Perseverance Mars rover. The six-wheeled robot will land in on Mars in a region called Jezero Crater. The agency selected this spot as the landing site because it’s believed to be an ancient river delta and could contain minerals known to preserve microfossils here on Earth.
The rover’s task will be to search for signs of a past life as well as to bag up samples that will be sent to Earth on later missions. Once researchers have access to pristine Martian samples, they will be able to expand their knowledge of the red planet. And perhaps even be able to tell if Mars ever hosted life.
Elon Musk
How much of SpaceX will Elon Musk own after IPO will surprise you
SpaceX’s IPO filing confirms Musk will maintain his voting power to make key decisions for the company.
Elon Musk will retain dominant voting control of SpaceX after it goes public, according to the company’s IPO prospectus that was filed with the SEC. The filing reveals a dual-class equity structure giving Class B shareholders 10 votes each, concentrating power with Musk and a handful of other insiders, while Class A shares sold to public investors carry one vote.
Musk holds approximately 42% of SpaceX’s equity and controls roughly 79% of its votes through super-voting shares. He will simultaneously serve as CEO, CTO, and chairman of the nine-member board after the listing. Beyond that, the filing includes provisions that may limit shareholders’ influence over board elections and legal actions, forcing disputes into arbitration and restricting where they can be brought.
The case for Musk holding this level of control is grounded in SpaceX’s actual history. The company’s most important bets, from reusable rockets to a global satellite internet constellation, were decisions that ran against conventional aerospace thinking and would likely have faced resistance from a board accountable to investor gains. Fully reusable rockets were considered economically irrational by established industry players for years. Starlink, which now generates over $4 billion in annual operating profit, was widely dismissed as financially unviable when it was proposed. The argument for concentrated founder control seems straightforward, and the decisions that built SpaceX into what it is today required someone willing to ignore consensus and absorb years of losses.
SpaceX files confidentially for IPO that will rewrite the record books
For context, Musk’s position is significantly more dominant than Zuckerberg’s at Meta. The comparison with Tesla is also worth noting. When Tesla did its IPO in 2010, it did not issue dual-class shares. Musk has only recently pushed for enhanced voting protection, proposing at least 25% control at Tesla in 2024 after selling shares to fund his Twitter acquisition left him with around 13%.
SpaceX has clearly learned from that experience and structured the IPO differently by planning to allocate up to 30% of shares to retail investors, roughly three times the typical norm for a large offering. The roadshow is expected to begin the week of June 8, with a Nasdaq listing rumored to be a $1.75 trillion valuation and a $75 billion raise.
Elon Musk
ARK’s SpaceX IPO Guide makes a compelling case on why $1.75T may not be the ceiling
ARK Invest breaks down six reasons SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion IPO valuation may be justified.
ARK Invest, which holds SpaceX as its largest Venture Fund position at 17% of net assets, has published a detailed investor guide to why a SpaceX IPO may be grounded in a $1.75 trillion target valuation.
The financial case starts with Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet constellation, which has surpassed 10 million active subscribers globally as of early 2026, with 2026 revenue projected to exceed $20 billion. ARK’s research puts the total satellite connectivity market opportunity at roughly $160 billion annually at scale, and Starlink is adding customers faster than any telecom network in history. That growth alone would justify a substantial valuation.
Additionally, ARK notes that SpaceX has reduced the cost per kilogram to orbit from roughly $15,600 in 2008 to under $1,000 today through reusable Falcon 9 hardware. A fully operational Starship targeting sub-$100 per kilogram would represent a significant cost decline and open markets that do not currently exist. SpaceX executed a staggering 165 missions in 2025 and now accounts for approximately 85% of all global orbital launches. That infrastructure position took decades to build and would be nearly impossible to replicate at comparable cost.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
The February 2026 merger with xAI added a layer to the valuation that straightforward financial models struggle to capture. ARK argues that at sub-$100 launch costs, orbital data centers could deliver compute roughly 25% cheaper than ground-based alternatives, without power grid delays, permitting friction, or land constraints. Musk has stated a goal of deploying 100 gigawatts of AI computing capacity per year from orbit.
The $1.75 trillion figure itself is not a conventional earnings multiple. At roughly 95x trailing revenue, it prices in Starlink’s adoption curve, Starship’s cost trajectory, and the orbital compute thesis together. The public S-1 prospectus, due at least 15 days before the June roadshow, will give investors their first complete look at the financials to test those assumptions. ARK’s position is that the track record earns the benefit of the doubt. Fully reusable rockets were considered unrealistic for years. Starlink was considered financially unviable. Both happened on timelines that surprised skeptics.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla just unlocked sales to 50,000+ government agencies
How much of SpaceX will Elon Musk own after IPO will surprise you
