Space
Mars sample-return mission gets boost from Trump’s 2021 budget request
On Monday, Feb. 10, the White House released its 2021 federal budget request, and in it, the administration identified NASA’s Mars sample return plans as a top priority. It also earmarked funding for a future mission to map out where ice is located on Mars.
The request asks for $25.2 billion for NASA, which is roughly a 12% boost over what the agency’s current budget is.
Of that $25.2 billion, Trump has designated $233 million for “Mars Future Missions” — one of which hopes to transport pristine pieces of the Red Planet to Earth, sometime around the 2031 time frame.
“Mars Future supports the development of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission that is planning to enter formulation (Phase A) as early as the summer of FY 2020,” NASA officials wrote in a description of the agency’s proposed 2021 allocation.
“In FY 2021, MSR formulation activities include concept and technology development, and early design and studies in support of the Sample Return Lander and the Capture/Containment and Return System,” they added. “Mars Future also supports a study of the facility required for handling of returned samples.”
The samples NASA is referring to will be collected by NASA’s next Mars rover, which is scheduled to launch in July. Dubbed the Mars 2020 rover, the six-wheeled robot will land on Mars in Feb. 2021, touching down inside Jezero Crater. It’s goal: to look for signs of life, and to collect samples of Mars for future return to Earth.
The rover, which will receive an official name sometime in March, will bag and tag samples of rocks and dirt, sealing them in canisters for eventual return to Earth. Once they arrive here, scientists all around the world will be able to study the samples and better understand our celestial neighbor.
The sample return part of the mission is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). It will be a multi-step process, which includes the launch of NASA’s Sample Return Lander (SRL) followed by ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO).
The logistics are still being finalized as NASA is looking for a director to lead the program. But a rough outline of the planned return can be broken down as follows:
NASA’s sample return vehicle will carry a small rocket called the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) along with an ESA-built rover, called the Sample Fetch Rover (SRF). The SRF will seek out the samples collected by the 2020 rover, and haul them to the MAV.
From there, the MAV will then launch the samples into orbit around Mars; there they’ll be picked up by the ERO, and the craft will head back toward Earth. Once in close proximity to Earth, the ERO will jettison the container, and it will land in the Utah desert. NASA expects this to all happen around 2031, although none of the dates are official at this point.
Also outlined in the budget is a need for a Sampling Receiving Facility, where the precious bits of Mars will be handled with the utmost care. In the facility, scientists will catalog the samples, and make sure that there’s no cross-contamination with Earth particles. (And to ensure that if there is life on Mars, no little Martian microbes will get out into the environment.)
But that’s not all, the “Mars Future Missions” budgetary line also allows for a collaboration with Canada to create the Mars Ice Mapper. Detailed information on this project is scarce at the moment as it’s in its very early stages.
“The Mars Ice Mapper is a remote sensing mission under study intended to map and profile the near-surface (3-15 meters) water ice, particularly that which lies in the mid-latitude regions, in support of future science and exploration missions,” NASA officials wrote in the budget document.
The Mars Ice Mapper could be a preliminary step in the effort to put humans on Mars, a goal NASA aims to accomplish sometimes in the 2030’s.
The 2021 budget request allocates more money to future Mars missions than previous budgets have, lining up with NASA’s overall goal of sending astronauts to both the moon and Mars.
If this budget request is any indication, the “Mars Future Missions” programs could set their budgets steadily increased as the years progress. But it’s not set in stone. The request is just that, a request. Congress has the ultimate approval and could choose to fund everything as it, or shuffle things around. Let’s hope it’s the latter so valuable programs, like STEM engagement, Earth science missions, and an incredible telescope are not cancelled.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s IPO might arrive sooner than you think
Musk has hinted for years that an eventual public offering was inevitable, though he has stressed the need to maintain operational focus. Insiders have told outlets that the CEO is pushing for a significant retail investor allocation, reportedly more than 20 percent of shares, and tighter lock-up periods to limit early selling pressure.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is on the verge of one of the most anticipated Initial Public Offerings (IPO) in history.
However, a new report from The Information indicates the rocket and satellite giant is aiming to file its IPO prospectus with U.S. regulators as soon as this week, or early next week at the latest.
People familiar with the plans told The Information that advisers involved in the process expect the IPO could raise more than 75 billion dollars, potentially making it the largest stock market debut ever and eclipsing Saudi Aramco’s 29.4 billion dollar offering in 2019.
The filing would mark the formal start of what has long been rumored: SpaceX’s transition from a closely held private powerhouse to a publicly traded company.
The timing aligns with earlier signals.
In late February, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was targeting a confidential IPO filing in March and a possible public listing in June, with a valuation north of 1.75 trillion dollars. At the time, the company’s private valuation hovered around 1.25 trillion dollars.
SpaceX considering confidential IPO filing this March: report
Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet constellation, has been the primary driver of that surge, now serving millions of customers worldwide and generating steady revenue. Recent Starship test flights and a record pace of Falcon launches have further bolstered investor confidence.
Musk has hinted for years that an eventual public offering was inevitable, though he has stressed the need to maintain operational focus. Insiders have told outlets that the CEO is pushing for a significant retail investor allocation, reportedly more than 20 percent of shares, and tighter lock-up periods to limit early selling pressure.
A June listing would give SpaceX immediate access to public capital markets at a moment when demand for space-related stocks remains high. It would also allow early employees and long-time investors to cash out portions of their stakes while giving everyday shareholders a chance to own a piece of the company behind reusable rockets, global broadband, and NASA contracts.
Of course, nothing is certain until the SEC filing appears. Market conditions, regulatory reviews, and Musk’s own schedule could still shift timelines.
Yet the latest word from The Information suggests the window has opened. If the filing lands this week, SpaceX’s roadshow could begin in earnest within weeks, setting the stage for what many analysts already call the IPO of the decade.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI unveiled TERAFAB, a $25B chip factory targeting one terawatt of AI compute annually.
Elon Musk took the stage over the weekend at the defunct Seaholm Power Plant in Austin, Texas, to officially unveil TERAFAB, a $20-25 billion joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI that he described as “the most epic chip building exercise in history by far.” The announcement marks the most ambitious infrastructure bet Musk has made since Gigafactory 1 in Sparks, Nevada, and it fuses three of his companies into a single, vertically integrated AI hardware machine for the first time.
TERAFAB is designed to consolidate every stage of semiconductor production under one roof, including chip design, lithography, fabrication, memory production, advanced packaging, and testing. At full capacity, the facility would scale to roughly 70% of the global output from the current world’s largest semiconductor foundry from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
Elon Musk’s stated goal is one terawatt of computing power annually, split between Tesla’s AI5 inference chips for vehicles and Optimus robots, and D3 chips built specifically for SpaceXAI’s orbital satellite constellation.
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The logic behind the merger of these three entities is rooted in a supply chain crisis Musk has been signaling for over a year. At Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, he warned investors that external chip capacity from TSMC, Samsung, and Micron would hit a ceiling within three to four years. “We’re very grateful to our existing supply chain, to Samsung, TSMC, Micron and others,” Musk acknowledged at the Terafab event, “but there’s a maximum rate at which they’re comfortable expanding.” Building in-house was, in his framing, not a strategic option, but a necessity.
The space angle is where the announcement becomes genuinely unprecedented. Musk said 80% of Terafab’s compute output would be directed toward space-based orbital AI satellites, arguing that solar irradiance in space is roughly 5x greater than at Earth’s surface, and that heat rejection in vacuum makes thermal scaling viable. This directly feeds the SpaceXAI vision, which is betting that within two to three years, running AI workloads in orbit will be cheaper than doing so on the ground. The satellites, powered by constant solar energy, would effectively turn low Earth orbit into the world’s largest data center.
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Historically, this announcement threads together every major Musk initiative of the past two years: the xAI-SpaceX merger, Tesla’s $2.9 billion solar equipment talks with Chinese suppliers, the 100 GW domestic solar manufacturing push, the Optimus humanoid robot program, and Starship’s development. TERAFAB is the capstone that ties them into a single coherent architecture — chips made on Earth, launched by SpaceX, powered by Tesla solar, run by xAI, and ultimately extended to the Moon.
“I want us to live long enough to see the mass driver on the moon, because that’s going to be incredibly epic,”Musk said during the presentation.
Announcing TERAFAB: the next step towards becoming a galactic civilization https://t.co/IDKey07mJa
— Tesla (@Tesla) March 22, 2026
Elon Musk
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Space Force drops ULA for SpaceX on GPS launch after Vulcan rocket anomaly investigation halts flights.
The U.S. Space Force announced today it is switching an upcoming GPS III satellite launch from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket to a SpaceX Falcon 9, a move that is as much a reflection of Vulcan’s mounting problems as it is a validation of SpaceX’s growing dominance in national security space launch. The GPS III Space Vehicle 09, originally contracted to fly on Vulcan this month, will now target a late April liftoff on Falcon 9, marking the fourth consecutive GPS III satellite the Space Force has moved to SpaceX after contracts were originally awarded to ULA.
The immediate trigger is a solid rocket motor anomaly that occurred on February 12 during Vulcan’s USSF-87 mission. Although the payloads reached orbit and ULA declared the mission successful, the company characterized the malfunction as a “significant performance anomaly” and has since paused all military launches on Vulcan pending a root cause investigation.
“With this change, we are answering the call for rapid delivery of advanced GPS capability while the Vulcan anomaly investigation continues,” said Systems Delta 81 Commander Col. Ryan Hiserote. “We are once again demonstrating our team’s flexibility and are fully committed to leverage all options available for responsive and reliable launch for the Nation.”
The broader reality is that SpaceX’s reliability record and launch cadence have made it the path of least resistance for the Pentagon, and bodes well with Elon Musk’s plans to IPO SpaceX sometime this year. Its Falcon 9 is the most flight-proven rocket in history, and the Space Force’s Rapid Response Trailblazer program was specifically designed to enable exactly this kind of provider swap for GPS missions, and effectively building SpaceX’s flexibility into the national security launch architecture by design.
For ULA, the stakes are existential. The company entered 2026 with aspirations of finally turning a corner after years of Vulcan delays, with interim CEO John Elbon pointing to a backlog of over 80 missions as reason for optimism. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s contracts with the Space Force have given it a formal pathway to take on even more national security launches going forward.
The significance of today’s announcement extends beyond one satellite swap. It reinforces that America’s most critical space infrastructure, including GPS, missile warning, and beyond, is increasingly dependent on a single commercial provider.
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