Space
New Sun mission to launch in attempt to snap 1st-ever photos of star’s poles
A new spacecraft is set to launch on a journey to the Sun. It’s goal: to snap the first pictures of the Sun’s north and south poles.
Dubbed Solar Orbiter, the spacecraft is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. The 3,970-lb. (1,320 kg) spacecraft will launch atop United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket on Feb. 7, 2020, during a two-hour launch window that opens at 11:15 p.m. EST (0415 GMT Feb. 8).
It’s launching at night because the spacecraft is on a path to Venus where it will use the planet’s gravity to slingshot itself out of the ecliptic plane — the area of space where all planets orbit.
From that vantage point, Solar Orbiter’s on-board cameras will capture the first-ever view of the Sun’s poles.
“Up until Solar Orbiter, all solar imaging instruments have been within the ecliptic plane or very close to it,” Russell Howard, space scientist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. and principal investigator for one of Solar Orbiter’s ten instruments said in a mission update. “Now, we’ll be able to look down on the Sun from above.”
“It will be terra incognita,” added Daniel Müller, ESA project scientist for the mission at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. “This is really exploratory science.”
The spacecraft is taking a suite of specialized instruments with it on its journey to the sun. It will also work in tandem with another solar-observing spacecraft—NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.
Launched in 2018, Parker has now completed its first few close passes of the sun. The spacecraft is already making discoveries, showing that despite appearance, the sun is anything but quiet.
It plays a central role in shaping space around us. As a magnetically active star, the sun unleashes powerful bursts of light and a slew of charged particles (racing at near light-speed) across the solar system. This violent activity has been happening throughout the sun’s 5.5 billion-year lifespan and affects our planet daily.
The sun has a massive magnetic field, which stretches far beyond Pluto, and creates the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space. It also creates a path for charged particles to whiz across the solar system.
The barrage of energetic particles, known as the solar wind, can damage spacecraft, satellites, and is harmful to our astronauts. It can disrupt navigation signals, and during extreme flares, can even trigger power outages.
But we can prepare for these things by monitoring the sun’s activity and magnetic field. However, our view from Earth is limited and leaves us with incomplete data. Scientists are hoping that by observing the sun’s polar regions, Solar Orbiter will be able to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.
“The poles are particularly important for us to be able to model more accurately,” Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “For forecasting space weather events, we need a pretty accurate model of the global magnetic field of the Sun.”
Solar Orbiter will take seven years to reach a viewpoint 24 degrees above the Sun’s equator, increasing to 33 degrees if the mission is extended an additional three years. That will provide the best views ever of the poles.
Additionally, the poles may be able to shed some light on the driving force behind sun spots — dark spots on the sun’s surface that mark strong magnetic fields. In 1843, German astronomer, Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, discovered that the spots increase and decrease during the solar cycle in a repeating pattern.
There are an abundance of sunspots during solar maximum (when the sun is active and turbulent) and fewer during solar minimum (when the sun is calmer). But scientists don’t understand why the cycle lasts 11 years, or why some solar maximums are stronger than others.
They hope to find the answer by observing the changing magnetic fields at the poles.
There’s only been one other spacecraft to fly over the sun’s polar regions: another joint ESA/NASA venture called Ulysses. It made three passes around the sun before being decommissioned in 2009. However, unlike Solar Orbiter, Ulysses did not have an imager on board to take pictures of the poles.
That spacecraft also did not get nearly as close as Solar Orbiter will. That’s because it lacked the technology required to keep it cool. Scientists have been waiting more than 60 years for missions like Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter to come online.
It’s takes a lot of technology development to be able to design and build a spacecraft that will survive a close encounter with the sun.
Solar Orbiter is outfitted with a custom-designed titanium heat shield, topped with a calcium phosphate coating that withstands temperatures over 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 degrees Celsius). That’s thirteen times the amount of heat that spacecraft in Earth-orbit are subjected to.
SpaceX confirmed today that it has officially signed its third massive compute deal, providing compute at its Colossus data center in Southaven, Tennessee.
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.
It is safe to say SpaceX won’t be going for electric rockets anytime soon.
In a characteristically blunt reply on X, SpaceX frontman Elon Musk stated, “Unfortunately, electric rockets are impossible,” following reports that MSCI had assigned SpaceX its lowest possible ESG rating of CCC.
The assessment, issued just this past week, coinciding closely with SpaceX’s public market debut, placed the company on par with nations like Russia in sustainability scoring and cited significant risks in environmental, social, and governance areas.
MSCI flagged SpaceX’s exposure to rocket emissions and other operational impacts, alongside governance concerns such as concentrated control by Musk and limited shareholder protections. Musk’s terse comment directly addressed the environmental pillar, underscoring a core physical constraint that ESG frameworks often overlook when evaluating high-thrust industries.
Unfortunately, electric rockets are impossible
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2026
Electric propulsion systems do exist and are widely used in space. Ion thrusters and Hall-effect thrusters accelerate ionized propellant, typically xenon or krypton, using electric fields, achieving very high specific impulse, often exceeding 3,000 seconds compared to roughly 300–450 seconds for chemical rockets.
This efficiency makes them ideal for satellite station-keeping, orbit raising, and deep-space missions where low thrust over long durations is sufficient. SpaceX’s own Starlink satellites employ electric propulsion for these purposes.
However, launching from Earth’s surface demands something entirely different: enormous thrust delivered rapidly to overcome gravity and atmospheric drag. A typical orbital-class booster must generate thrust far exceeding its weight, often in the millions of Newtons within seconds.
Chemical rockets achieve this through exothermic combustion of dense propellants, producing high-mass-flow, high-velocity exhaust. Electric systems, by contrast, expel very small amounts of mass at extremely high speeds. Generating equivalent thrust would require impractical onboard power levels, massive energy storage or generation systems, and prohibitive added mass, rendering the approach infeasible with current or near-term technology.
Musk has previously expressed a similar sentiment, noting a desire for electric orbital rockets while acknowledging the inescapable requirements of Newton’s third law and energy delivery. The distinction is clear: electric propulsion excels once a vehicle is already in space; it cannot replace the high-thrust chemical phase required to reach orbit from the ground.
The episode illustrates broader critiques of ESG ratings. Proponents argue they incentivize better risk management and long-term sustainability. Detractors, including Musk—who has previously called ESG a “scam”—contend that such metrics can penalize essential activities when no practical alternative exists, potentially discouraging innovation in sectors like space access.
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SpaceX has sought to mitigate launch-related impacts through reusability: Falcon 9 boosters have flown more than 30 times in some cases, dramatically lowering the manufacturing and emissions burden per kilogram delivered to orbit. Starship’s design further emphasizes rapid reusability and methane propellant, which can theoretically be produced via sustainable pathways.
Ultimately, Musk’s remark serves as a reminder that certain engineering realities persist regardless of scoring systems. As humanity expands its presence in space for communications, science, and exploration, balancing genuine environmental progress with technological necessity remains a central challenge.
ESG frameworks may evolve, but the fundamental limits of electric launch propulsion are unlikely to change soon.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX is launching a secret spacecraft that could change how things are made in space
SpaceX’s secret disk-shaped Starfall capsule is targeting a market no reentry vehicle has cracked.
SpaceX is targeting Tuesday, June 23 for the first flight of Starfall, a reentry capsule the company has developed almost entirely in private. The Falcon 9 launch window opens at 6:43 a.m. ET from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with a backup window available the same time on June 24. SpaceX has made no public announcement about the vehicle, only providing launch details. Everything known about it has come through FAA and FCC regulatory filings.
What makes Starfall different starts with its shape. Rather than the traditional cone used by Dragon and every other cargo return capsule in operation, Starfall is a flat disk that measures roughly 10.2 feet (3.1 meters) wide and just 2.5 feet (0.75 meters) tall, and weighing 4,630 pounds (2,100 kg) and capable of returning up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload from orbit. The disk geometry maximizes structural efficiency and payload volume relative to mass, and the heat shield mechanically jettisons just before splashdown, allowing recovery teams to retrieve both the capsule and the shield separately from the Pacific Ocean.
The difference with Starfall from existing competitors, such as Varda Space Industries, which has largely built the orbital manufacturing market and returns heavy payloads per flight is that Starfall’s specification is roughly 30 times more per mission, and is designed to be mass-produced and launched on either Falcon 9 or Starship. That combination of volume and launch access is something no standalone startup can replicate, and it puts SpaceX in direct competition with the companies that currently pay it to reach orbit.
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The intended market is orbital manufacturing: pharmaceuticals, protein crystals, semiconductors, and advanced optical fiber that physically cannot be produced in the presence of gravity. FAA documents describe Starfall’s long-term purpose as building a “self-sustaining commercial in-space manufacturing market” and as a potential successor to the industrial capabilities of the International Space Station, which is set to retire in the late 2020s. Military rapid global cargo delivery is a parallel application under active discussion with the Pentagon.
The reason some industries seek manufacturing in space comes down to gravity. On Earth, gravity causes materials to settle, separate, and deform during production. In microgravity, those constraints disappear.
SpaceX’s already controls launch access, which means it currently functions as the landlord for every competitor in the orbital manufacturing return space. Starfall converts that landlord position into vertical ownership, and it would no longer just carry other companies’ capsules to orbit, but rather operate the capsule, own the return logistics, and capture the service revenue directly. Viewed alongside Starlink, Colossus, and the xAI merger, Starfall fits a consistent pattern: SpaceX identifying infrastructure layers that others depend on and moving to own them outright. Orbital manufacturing return is the next layer on that list.
If Tuesday’s reentry, parachute sequence, and recovery demonstration goes as planned, the second FAA-approved test flight follows. A successful pair of demos would position SpaceX to begin offering Starfall as a commercial service, likely first to pharmaceutical and materials science customers before scaling toward the military and broader manufacturing segments.
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