SpaceX
SpaceX begins static Starhopper tests as Raptor engine arrives on schedule
SpaceX has officially begun static ground testing of Starhopper, a full-scale pathfinder Starship prototype meant to support an early series of Raptor-powered hop tests at SpaceX’s South Texas launch site. Simultaneously, the second completed Raptor engine arrived at the site on Monday, March 11th, confirming CEO Elon Musk’s March 8th tweets about the delivery.
While reasonably routine for any rocket test program, the first tanking test of Starhopper effectively marks the first time that SpaceX has begun tests with a more or less fully integrated Starship (previously BFS). Likely performed with liquid nitrogen instead of liquid oxygen/methane, the first few tanking tests will be used to determine the quality of the prototype’s stainless steel tanks – built en
In November 2016, SpaceX began propellant-loading tests of its first finished full-scale Starship (then Big Falcon Spaceship) hardware, a massive carbon composite liquid oxygen tank stretching 12 m (~40 ft) in diameter. Over the course of 2017, SpaceX transitioned from liquid nitrogen to liquid oxygen and ultimately conducted one final burst-test in which the composite tank was pressurized until it exploded, ending full-scale BFR composite testing with a bang. Within 6-12 months, Musk had come to the conclusion that a stainless steel BFR would ultimately be a superior path forward for the rocket and spaceship and attempted (apparently successfully) to get his team of R&D engineers on board with such a radical change so late in the development phase.
Despite the fact that that radical design departure may have occurred as few as 6-8 months ago, SpaceX engineers and technicians have accomplished an extremely rapid development program that will – in part – culminate in the hopefully successful hop testing of Starhopper, the first Starship prototype. While more of a rough testbed than an actual representation of the hardware and structures that will be required for a reusable orbital-class Starship, Starhopper has at least acted as a crash course (either technically or organizationally) on fabricating and assembling stainless steel aerospace structures, a material largely foreign to SpaceX flight hardware prior to late 2018.
Although the early vehicle was less than encouraging, as was the demise of its nosecone as a consequence of improper planning and/or bad workmanship, Starhopper as it now stands might actually be flightworthy in the context of suborbital, subsonic hop tests. Powered by the same or similar Raptors that would power orbital prototypes, Starhopper’s hop tests would optimally provide a wealth of experience and engineering data for both building 9 meter/30 foot-diameter stainless steel rocket sections and operating full-scale Raptor engine(s) in actual flight configurations. Extensive testing with Raptor will help to ensure that the fit and finish of the new engine’s flight-grade avionics and hardware are up to the challenge of safe, reliable, and gentle operations for a nominally crew-rated launch vehicle and spacecraft.
Around two days after Starhopper was briskly transported from its build site to SpaceX’s brand new launch facility, local Twitter account @SPadre (short for South Padre Island) posted a video of tanking test that occurred on March 11th, capturing the sound of venting as the liquid involved turned to gas inside its propellant tank(s). The fact alone that the person behind the camera was allowed to be where they were during the test all but guarantees that this first test was performed with an inert liquid, most likely liquid nitrogen given a massive delivery that occurred the day before (March 10th). In no conceivable world would SpaceX or local law enforcement willingly allow for Starhopper to be loaded – for the first time ever – with even a partial load of liquid methane or liquid oxygen with bystanders barely a few hundred feet distant.
When SpaceX gets to the point that they are confident enough in the structural integrity of Starhopper to begin wet dress rehearsals and tests with actual propellant, it’s a safe bet that the company will cooperate with local law enforcement to block off the lone access road to a distance of at least 1-2 miles, if not more. It’s unclear if local homeowners and residents will be forced to vacate the adjacent Boca Chica Village during testing, but chances are good that nobody will be within several thousand feet of Starhopper when those propellant loading tests begin, let alone actual static fire activity once Raptor(s) are installed.
According to an official SpaceX statement on the progress, propellant load tests and static fires could begin “in the days ahead”, although the spokesperson was under the impression that those tests – as well as initial hop tests – “[would] not be visible from offsite”. Unless SpaceX plans to draw a keep-out zone with a radius of multiple miles, interested observers will almost certainly be able to get close enough to at least catch a glimpse of Starhopper, but the statement still offers an idea of just how focused the company will be on safety during these early tests.
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SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.
The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.
Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.
The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.
As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo
SpaceX released new footage of Starship in space captured by the Starlink satellites it deployed.
SpaceX released a new video Friday evening showing Starship from an angle showcased by its own Starlink satellites, watching the rocket drift away in orbit.
The 65 second clip, posted on X, stitches together footage from four cameras mounted on a single Starlink V3 satellite. It opens with a close view of Starship’s 171 foot upper stage, still catching sunlight, then pulls back as the two spacecraft separate.
The footage comes from Starship’s 13th flight test, which launched July 24 from Starbase after a scrubbed attempt and an abort caused by an engine issue the week before. When Flight 13 finally flew, it carried the first batch of functional Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever deployed, twenty of them, with six equipped with cameras meant to scan the ship’s heat shield during reentry.
View of Starship in space from a Starlink V3 satellite on Flight 13.
This composite is made of imagery from four separate cameras on a single satellite. Six of the satellites were equipped with cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to… pic.twitter.com/sNTHHz5vLr
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 31, 2026
Flight 13 checked most of its boxes. Starship deployed all 20 satellites, relit a Raptor engine in space, and splashed down softly in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia. Musk’s longer term plan calls for a Starlink V3 constellation of 100,000 satellites, according to a recent FCC filing, with Starship as the only vehicle capable of launching them at the volume that requires. Each Starship flight is designed to carry up to 60 V3 satellites once the vehicle reaches routine service, well beyond what Falcon 9 can carry in a single mission.
Starship is next expected to fly with an attempt at catching the ship itself with the launch tower’s mechanical arms, a maneuver SpaceX has so far reserved for the Super Heavy booster.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
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SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch
