Space
NASA gears up Mars rover for perfect 20/20 ‘SuperCam’ vision ahead of mission to red planet
NASA engineers are busy preparing the agency’s next Mars rover for its upcoming journey to the red planet. The six-wheeled robot will scour the Martian surface to look for signs of life. Deemed essential by NASA’s administrator, the mission is progressing as planned in order to meet a July launch.
The Perseverance Mars rover will land on Mars in February 2021, touching down in an ancient river bed called Jezero Crater. The 28-mile-wide crater is the site of an ancient river delta, and as such, scientists believe it could harbor fossilized life. That’s because the region is home to mineral deposits like hydrated silica, which is a preservative material here on Earth.
To help it search out key mineral deposits, the rover is packing a suite of scientific instruments, including some specialized cameras. The rover was built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California but was shipped to its Florida launch site earlier this year.
Since its arrival, engineers have begun reassembling the rover and preparing it for flight. It will not be flying solo to the red planet, but instead, will be accompanied by the first interplanetary helicopter. Approximately the size of a softball, the Mars helicopter has passed pre-launch testing and was recently installed on the belly of the rover.
The rover, however, still has a few more milestones to complete before its ready to be tucked into its aeroshell and loaded into the launch vehicle. To that end, the rover recently had its vision tested.
Perseverance is packing multiple cameras that have a range of imaging capabilities from wide-angle cameras capable of capturing sweeping vistas to a narrow-angle, high-resolution camera capable of zooming in on details on the Martian surface.
The rover will use the SuperCam (along with its laser and spectrometers) to examine Martian rocks and soil, looking for organic compounds that could indicate past life on Mars.
So how does one test a rover’s vision? With a giant grid of dots.
The rover’s vision was first tested back in July 2019 at the Jet Propulsion Lab and then rechecked once the cameras were installed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rover’s main camera, called the SuperCam, is installed on the rover’s head. It appears as a large circular opening, and this is the lens. Underneath it are two grey boxes that are two Mastcam-Z-imagers, and on the outside of those boxes are two more cameras used for navigation.
“We completed the machine-vision calibration of the forward-facing cameras on the rover,” Justin Maki, chief engineer for imaging and the imaging scientist for Mars 2020 at JPL, said during the test. “This measurement is critical for accurate stereo vision, which is an important capability of the vehicle.”
To calibrate the imagers, target boards that feature grids of dots were imaged and placed at distances ranging from 1 to 44 yards (1 to 40 meters) away. Those boards were used to confirm that the cameras meet the project’s requirements for resolution and geometric accuracy.
“We tested every camera on the front of the rover chassis and also those mounted on the mast,” Maki said. “Characterizing the geometric alignment of all these images is important for driving the vehicle on Mars, operating the robotic arm, and accurately targeting the rover’s laser.”
But the work isn’t done yet, the imagers on Perseverance’s body and arm will happen in the coming weeks.
For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.
Would you buy a Tesla phone ? pic.twitter.com/aaTwvvIJit
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 6, 2023
Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.
It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.
Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.
The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.
Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.
The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.
SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.
There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.
The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.
Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites
It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.
SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history
Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.
Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.
SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.
The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.
SpaceX confirmed today that it has officially signed its third massive compute deal, providing compute at its Colossus data center in Southaven, Mississippi.
Reflection AI will gain immediate access to NVIDIA GB300 chips at SpaceX’s Colossus 2 data center. In return, Reflection will pay SpaceX $150 million per month starting on July 1, with total payments reaching approximately $6.3 billion if the contract runs through its duration, which is until 2029. Either party can terminate the agreement with 90 days’ notice after the initial three-month period.
CNBC first reported the deal.
🚨 SpaceXAI has agreed to a new compute deal with Reflection AI.
Reflection gets access to NIVIDIA GB300s, and will pay $150M per month to SpaceXAI for the compute. pic.twitter.com/bNPare8U5u
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 22, 2026
This latest partnership highlights SpaceX’s strategy of commercializing its massive Colossus supercomputing infrastructure, originally developed to power Elon Musk’s Grok AI models. The company has rapidly expanded its customer base in the AI sector following its February 2026 merger with xAI, a transaction that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion.
SpaceX has previously signed significant compute deals with other major players.
It granted Anthropic exclusive access to the full capacity of its Colossus 1 data center, which exceeds 300 megawatts and includes over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs. Details from SpaceX’s IPO filings indicate Anthropic will pay $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, potentially generating around $45 billion over the term of the deal.
Additionally, Google agreed to pay SpaceX $920 million per month for compute capacity from October 2026 through June 2029. This 32-month period will provide Google access to roughly 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs, along with supporting processors and memory. Capacity ramps up through September at a reduced fee, with termination options after the first year.
SpaceXA also established arrangements for computing power with Cursor, an AI coding startup. SpaceX acquired them in a $60 billion all-stock deal.
These arrangements position SpaceX’s collective position as an AI infrastructure powerhouse with high-margin revenue potential. The Google deal alone could generate nearly $29.5 billion over its term, while the Reflection contract adds another $6.3 billion.
Combined with the Anthropic arrangement, SpaceX stands to realize tens of billions in revenue from compute leasing in the coming years, which diversifies beyond SpaceX’s traditional rocket launches and Starlink operation.
The deals underscore growing demand for advanced AI training and inference capacity amid chip shortages and surging model development needs. Reflection, valued at $25 billion and focused on “American open intelligence” with government and national security ties, cited recent restrictions on closed models as validation for open-source approaches.
For SpaceX, the partnerships transform capital-intensive data centers into flexible revenue sources while supporting its broader AI ambitions after the company has gone public.
Tesla expands massive safety feature worldwide in latest update
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
