Connect with us

SpaceX

SpaceX bags 60th successful Falcon 9 launch eight years after rocket’s debut

Published

on

Following the successful separation of the ~7 metric ton satellite Telstar 18V after a nominal orbit insertion, SpaceX’s venerable Falcon 9 rocket can now lay claim to a full 60 successful orbital missions completed over the course of its relatively brief eight-year career as a commercial launch vehicle.

Telstar 18V – the second heaviest commercial satellite ever launched into orbit – is now free to make its way into a final geostationary orbit ~35,800 km (~22,250 mi) above Earth’s surface, where it will serve the Eastern Hemisphere with a variety of communications services, ranging from TV to internet.

https://twitter.com/_TomCross_/status/1039020007987077121

After Falcon 9’s upper stage separated from the first stage and pushed onwards to a low Earth parking orbit, Falcon 9 Block 5 booster B1049 flipped around using an array of powerful cold-gas nitrogen thrusters and arced towards a now-routine drone ship landing roughly 700 kilometers off the Florida coast, breaking the satellite communications link as per usual before appearing aboard Of Course I Still Love You.

Advertisement

With Hurricane Florence nipping at the drone ship and its entourage’s heels, SpaceX will likely try to quickly usher the Falcon 9 booster back to Port Canaveral, where it will be offloaded, brought horizontal, and transported to a local facility for refurbishment ahead of its next flight, hopefully the first of many to come. Falcon 9 Block 5 has been designed – nominally – for rapid and extensive reusability, perhaps up to 100 flights per booster with routine maintenance (10 flights with minimal refurbishment) and turnaround as rapid as 24 hours for the same core. While it appears that there may be a significant amount of work left before those aspirational figures can be made real, Block 5 is clearly a major step forward for the Falcon 9 family and includes – aside from reusability – upgrades that will enable the rocket to launch NASA astronauts aboard Crew Dragon with extreme reliability.

 

Compared alongside almost all other modern rockets, Falcon 9 is exceptional for the sheer speed with which it has burst onto the commercial launch scene, with Boeing’s nearly-retired Delta II family of rockets the only vehicle to hold a candle to Falcon 9 in terms of competitive advantage. Delta II, which debuted in 1989, managed a thoroughly impressive seven launches in its first year of operations and a full 55 launches (53 successes, 1 partial failure, 1 total failure).

With one partial in-flight failure (a secondary payload loss during CRS-1), one total in-flight failure (CRS-7), and one on-pad failure (Amos-6), Falcon 9 is truly comparable with Delta II, although Boeing’s expendable launch vehicle has, of course, remained permanently expendable, and relied almost unilaterally upon the US government for all but a small handful of its first several dozen launches. SpaceX’s Telstar 18V success is just one of many examples of this difference of interest in commercial competition, and a full 12 of the 16 missions SpaceX has now launched in 2018 flew commercial satellites and were awarded to the launch company on a competitive basis.

Advertisement

https://twitter.com/_TomCross_/status/1039031282339127297

Up next for SpaceX is Argentinian Earth observation satellite SAOCOM-1A, scheduled to launch from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base atop a flight-proven Falcon 9 Block 5 booster no earlier than October 7th.


For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!

Advertisement

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

SpaceX files confidentially for IPO that will rewrite the record books

SpaceX files confidentially for a record-breaking IPO targeting a $1.75T valuation and $80B raise, driven by Starlink growth and its xAI merger.

Published

on

By

Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company submitted its draft registration to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today for an initial public offering, targeting June at a $1.75 trillion valuation. This would be the largest in history.

SpaceX has filed confidentially with the SEC, first reported by Bloomberg. SpaceX would be valued above every S&P 500 company except Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon.

The filing uses a confidential process that allows companies to work through SEC disclosures privately before initiating a public roadshow. With a June target, official details through a formal prospectus is expected to go public in April or early May, after which SpaceX must wait at least 15 days before beginning investor marketing.

SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms

Advertisement

While SpaceX is best known for its Falcon 9 and Starship rockets, the $1.75 trillion valuation is anchored by Starlink, its satellite internet service. Starlink ended 2025 with 9.2 million subscribers and over $10 billion in revenue, which is a figure analysts project could reach a staggering $24 billion by the end of 2026. A February all-stock merger with xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence venture, further boosted the valuation.

SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise

Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are lined up as senior underwriters. SpaceX is also considering a dual-class share structure to preserve insider voting control, and plans to allocate up to 30% of shares to retail investors, which is roughly three times the typical norm.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Countdown: America is going back to the Moon and SpaceX holds the key to what comes after

NASA’s Artemis II launches Wednesday, sending humans near the Moon for the first time since 1972.

Published

on

By

For the first time since Apollo 17 touched down on the lunar surface in December 1972, the United States is sending humans back toward the Moon. NASA’s Artemis II mission is set to launch as early as this week from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back to Earth. It will not land anyone on the surface this time, but it is the first crewed flight in over half a century to travel beyond low Earth orbit, and it sets the stage for Elon Musk’s SpaceX missions to follow.

The mission uses NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft, which will fly around the Moon before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean around April 10. For context, an uncrewed Artemis I flew the same path in 2022, proving the hardware worked. Artemis II now tests it with people aboard.

According to NASA’s official countdown blog, launch preparations are on track with an 80 percent chance of favorable weather. “Hey, let’s go to the moon!” Commander Wiseman told reporters upon arriving at Kennedy Space Center.

Source: NASA

Beyond Artemis II lies the lander question, and that is where SpaceX enters directly. In 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.89 billion contract to develop the Starship Human Landing System, a modified version of Starship designed to ferry astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface. The original plan called for SpaceX to deliver that lander for Artemis III, which was to be the first crewed lunar landing. Timing for Starship development, however, caused NASA to restructure the mission sequence entirely.

Before SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) can put anyone on the Moon, it has to solve a problem no rocket has demonstrated at scale, which is refueling in orbit. Because the Starship HLS requires approximately ten tanker launches worth of propellant loaded into a depot in low Earth orbit before it has enough fuel to reach the lunar surface, SpaceX plans to conduct this refueling process using its upgraded V3 Starship. And until that demonstration flies and succeeds, the Starship moon lander remains a question mark.

Advertisement

SpaceX’s Starship V3 is almost ready and it will change space travel forever

In February 2026, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed that Artemis III, now planned for mid-2027, and will instead test lunar landers in low Earth orbit, with the actual landing pushed to Artemis IV that’s targeted for 2028.

Musk responded to earlier criticism of SpaceX’s schedule by posting on X that his company is “moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry,” and added that “Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission.” The contract competition was also reopened in October 2025 by then NASA chief Sean Duffy, who cited Starship’s delays and said the agency needed speed given China’s own stated goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2030.


Artemis came from the first Trump administration’s 2017 Space Policy Directive 1, which directed NASA to return humans to the Moon. The program picked up pace through the 2020s, with the Orion spacecraft and SLS taking years to develop at enormous costs. SpaceX entered the picture in 2021 as the chosen lander contractor, tying the commercial space sector into what had historically been an all government undertaking.

Whether SpaceX’s Starship ultimately carries astronauts to the lunar surface or shares that role with Blue Origin’s competing lander, this week’s Artemis II launch is the necessary first step. Getting four humans to the Moon’s vicinity and back safely is the proof of concept everything else depends on.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk debunks latest rumors about SpaceX IPO

Musk has swiftly put to rest circulating reports suggesting that SpaceX would exclude popular retail brokerages Robinhood and SoFi from its highly anticipated initial public offering. In a direct response posted on X on March 31, Musk stated simply, “These reports are false,” addressing widespread speculation fueled by a Reuters article.

Published

on

(Credit: SpaceX)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk debunked the latest rumors about the space exploration company’s initial public offering (IPO), which has been the subject of a wide array of speculation over the last few weeks.

With SpaceX likely heading to Wall Street to become a publicly-traded stock in the coming months, there is a lot of speculation surrounding how it will happen, whether the company will potentially combine with Tesla, and more.

Tesla and SpaceX to merge in 2027, Wall Street analyst predicts

But the latest rumors have to do with where SpaceX will list the stock.

Advertisement

Musk has swiftly put to rest circulating reports suggesting that SpaceX would exclude popular retail brokerages Robinhood and SoFi from its highly anticipated initial public offering.

In a direct response posted on X on March 31, Musk stated simply, “These reports are false,” addressing widespread speculation fueled by a Reuters article.

Advertisement

The Reuters report, published March 30, claimed that Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade was in talks to lead the sale of SpaceX shares to small U.S. investors.

Sources indicated that Robinhood and SoFi, despite pitching for roles, faced potential exclusion from the retail allocation, with Fidelity also competing for a piece of the action. The story quickly spread across financial media, raising concerns among retail investors eager to participate in what could be one of the largest IPOs in history.

SpaceX has a reported valuation nearing $1.75 trillion, and Musk’s plan to allocate up to 30 percent of shares to individual investors — far above the typical 5-10% — had generated massive excitement.

Musk’s concise denial immediately calmed the narrative. The original X post quoting the rumor garnered significant engagement, with users expressing relief that everyday investors would not be sidelined.

Advertisement

This episode reflects Musk’s hands-on approach to SpaceX’s public debut.

Earlier reporting revealed plans for an unusually large retail slice to leverage Musk’s dedicated fan base and stabilize post-IPO trading. SpaceX aims to file potentially as early as this period, building on momentum from its Starship program and Starlink growth.

The IPO could mark a transformative moment, potentially elevating Musk’s status further while democratizing access to a company long reserved for accredited investors and institutions.

The rumor’s quick debunking also revives debates about retail access in high-profile listings. Robinhood gained popularity during the 2021 meme-stock surge but faced criticism for past trading restrictions.

Advertisement

SoFi has positioned itself as a modern financial platform for younger investors. Excluding them could have limited participation from tech-savvy retail traders who form a core part of Musk’s supporter base across Tesla and SpaceX.

While details remain fluid, Musk’s intervention reinforces commitment to broad accessibility. As preparations advance, investors await official filings. For now, the message is clear: rumors of restricted retail access were overstated, keeping the door open for widespread participation in SpaceX’s public chapter.

This development comes amid broader market enthusiasm for space and technology stocks. Musk’s transparency through X continues to shape public perception, distinguishing SpaceX’s path from traditional Wall Street norms. With retail allocation potentially reaching 30 percent, the IPO promises to be both commercially massive and culturally significant.

Advertisement
Continue Reading