SpaceX
SpaceX’s BFR Mars rocket and spaceship rendered in extraordinary fan artwork
Part of a newly-formed group known as Gravitation Innovation, artist and spaceflight fan David Romax published an extraordinary series of concept artwork focused solely on SpaceX’s massive next-generation Mars rocket, known as the Big F—— Rocket (BFR). Generously published with the intent of providing SpaceX fans with a number of digital wallpapers, Romax’s work acts as an amazing companion to SpaceX’s own small collection of BFR renderings, perhaps even surpassing the company’s concept art in some cases.
David was inspired to create a series of BFR-themed wallpapers by a friend who had urged him to put his skills as a 3D modeler and artist to work for SpaceX (or at least the large community of fans built around the rocket company) by producing unofficial renders of its rockets – produce he most certainly did, and the results of his efforts are easily some of the best examples of unofficial artwork ever created by SpaceX enthusiasts.
Effectively unreleased, an updated Mars colonization video shown in 2018 replaces 2016’s ITS with the newer BFR design. (SpaceX)
Due to an understandable lack of technical detail available in the concept imagery SpaceX has thus far published for BFR and the earlier Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), Romax had to rely on aesthetic and technical intuition almost constantly over the process of producing his own artist impressions of BFR. In a number of cases, a matte painting style was used to ensure extraordinary realism by integrating real aspects of SpaceX’s current launch facilities and signatures of its active Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles and its Crew and Cargo Dragon spacecraft, reaching a level of believable detail that effortlessly surpasses similar media created by SpaceX.
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- David Romax’s artwork has blown away a number of SpaceX (and general spaceflight) fans since he shared them earlier this week. (David Romax/Gravitation Innovation)
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- .While SpaceX’s own visualizations are gorgeous and thrilling in their own rights, Romax’s interpretation adds an unparalleled level of shock and awe. (SpaceX)
Of course, a comparative lack of extreme detail is really not any fault of SpaceX: given the preliminary nature of the designs of both BFR and ITS at the time they were publicly revealed (September 2016 and 2017), adding details that extended beyond the actual scope of current design work (thus treading into the realm of speculation) would be fundamentally counterproductive for a company more recently keen on showing off results over parading what can be described as ‘paper rockets’. In both the ITS and BFR reveals, CEO Elon Musk’s presentations were repeatedly (and pointedly) punctuated with truly surprising reveals of real, physical progress with mature rocket R&D programs and extensive prototype testing.
Regardless, the level of detail Romax so elegantly and seamlessly integrated into SpaceX’s preliminary Mars rocket booster and crew and cargo spaceship designs is shockingly convincing and adds a level of depth and drama that is unique in fan renderings of SpaceX’s vehicles. It certainly helps that today, nearly a year after BFR was first unveiled, SpaceX’s hardware development for BFR is far more mature. Currently, those tangible efforts range from thousands of seconds of hot-fire testing of the rocket’s Raptor propulsion system to tangible work beginning on the flight version of that advanced engine, as well as a huge temporary tent housing preliminary BFR production tooling while construction is just beginning at a different Port of Los Angeles-located plot of land intended to support the first dedicated BFR factory within 12-18 months. One step further, SpaceX’s highly reusable upgrade to Falcon 9 and Heavy, known as Block 5, has already debuted and will soon put SpaceX’s experience with rocket reuse to the test.
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- SpaceX’s BFR. (Gravitation Innovation/David Romax)
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- The cargo version of the BFS (Big F- Spaceship) rendered by David Romax, including a number of educated guesses at what it might look like and how it might function. At the request of a friend, artist David Romax put together a truly jaw-dropping collection of concept art featuring SpaceX’s BFR rocket and its Cargo and Crew spaceships. (Gravitation Innovation/David Romax)
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- BFR prepares for launch as the sun sets over the upgraded LC-39A, built off a concept of the future modifications included in SpaceX’s 2016 and 2017 video updates. At the request of a friend, artist David Romax put together a truly jaw-dropping collection of concept art featuring SpaceX’s BFR rocket and its Cargo and Crew spaceships. (Gravitation Innovation/David Romax)
All thanks to David Romax and Gravitation Innovation for the amazing artwork and the unflinching dedication to the future of spaceflight. Download the wallpapers in full-resolution here.
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced today that the company will likely attempt to catch the Starship upper stage with its launch tower arms “in a few months.”
In a post on X, Musk wrote, “Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.” He added that the first reflight of a Starship vehicle is expected by the end of 2026 or early 2027, describing it as “a fork in the road of history for consciousness reaching the stars.”
Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.
First reflight of the ship will be either end of this year or early next. That will be a fork in the… https://t.co/O5g9pqrzyo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2026
Musk’s prediction comes amid ongoing progress toward full reusability of the Starship system, a two-stage rocket designed for rapid turnaround and dramatically lower launch costs. Catching the upper stage, known simply as “ship,” with the Mechazilla tower’s mechanical arms would mark a major milestone. It would allow both stages to return directly to the launch site for quick refurbishment and reuse, eliminating the need for ocean recovery.
Musk has previously signaled plans for a ship catch. In July, shortly after SpaceX’s wildly successful Starship 13 mission, he stated that the company would attempt to catch the ship with the tower on the next flight unless problems emerged in the mission data review. Earlier comments also outline conditions such as successful soft ocean landings before attempting a land recovery to minimize risk.
SpaceX has solved Starship’s biggest challenge, Elon Musk says
The latest update from Musk adjusts this timeline to a few months, reflecting the iterative nature of the test campaign.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower catch technique successfully with the Super Heavy booster on a couple of occasions. The first successful booster catch occurred during Flight 5 in October 2024, when the massive first stage returned to the Starbase pad in Texas and was plucked from the air by the tower arms.
Additional catches followed on later flights, including Flight 7, proving the concept for the booster and building confidence in the system as a whole.
Achieving a similar catch for the upper stage would represent a significant step forward. The ship returns from much higher speeds and greater heat loads after orbital or near-orbital flight. Success would advance SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability, potentially reducing the cost of access to orbit by a factor of 100 or more and supporting ambitions for frequent satellite deployments, lunar missions, and eventual Mars flights.
Musk has long emphasized that true reusability, refueling rather than discarding hardware, is essential for making humanity a multi-planetary species.
As SpaceX continues refining Starship through successive test flights, the coming months will test whether the ambitious catch timeline can be met. The combination of prior booster successes and improving ship landing precision suggests the company is steadily closing in on this historic capability.
SpaceX has achieved an incredible milestone by launching its 11,000th Starlink satellite into orbit.
This accomplishment occurred during the Starlink Group 17-50 mission, which lifted off on August 19 at 04:01 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Falcon 9 launches 24 @Starlink satellites from California pic.twitter.com/UscpmAxDls
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 19, 2026
A Falcon 9 rocket carried 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites on this flight, successfully deploying them into low Earth orbit approximately one hour after liftoff. The first stage booster, identified as B1097 on its twelfth flight, landed successfully on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
According to tracking data compiled around that date, this deployment brought the total number of Starlink satellites in orbit to just over 11,000.
The Starlink program began with test satellites known as Tintin A and B, launched on February 22, 2018. The first operational batch of 60 Starlink satellites followed on May 24, 2019, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Those initial satellites marked the start of a rapid expansion that has continued for more than seven years.
SpaceX has conducted hundreds of dedicated Starlink missions since then, routinely launching batches of 20 to 30 satellites at a time using reusable Falcon 9 rockets. By mid-2026, the company had already surpassed 12,000 total satellites launched across all versions, with continuous replacements for units that deorbit as designed to manage space debris.
Looking ahead, SpaceX continues to expand the Starlink constellation to enhance global broadband coverage, capacity, and speed. The network already serves millions of users across more than 160 countries and supports applications ranging from residential internet to maritime, aviation, and emergency services.
Future plans center on next-generation hardware, including larger V3 satellites capable of delivering substantially higher throughput, which require the increased payload capacity of the Starship vehicle currently under development and testing.
In July, SpaceX submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission seeking authority for a Gen3 constellation of up to 100,000 satellites. These spacecraft would operate in very low Earth orbit shells at altitudes near 325 kilometers and 475 kilometers. The filing requests use of existing Ku, Ka, V, and E band spectrum along with new greenfield W and D band frequencies between 92 and 275 GHz.
SpaceX states that the expanded system aims to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical broadband to consumers, enterprises, governments, and billions of AI-powered devices worldwide while handling a majority of global internet traffic. Approval and subsequent deployment would depend on regulatory review and the operational readiness of Starship for high-volume launches.
This ambitious scale reflects SpaceX’s ongoing commitment to providing ubiquitous high-speed connectivity from space.
News
SpaceX just launched a secret payload from California
SpaceX launched a classified Space Force mission from Vandenberg, revealing almost nothing about its payload.
SpaceX launched a classified Falcon 9 mission for the U.S. Space Force from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Saturday night, and the government released almost nothing about what was on board. The mission, designated USSF-366, lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E with a window that opened at 9:52 p.m. ET and ran into the early hours of Sunday, according to SpaceX’s own mission page, which described the payload only as classified. SpaceX confirmed the launch on its X account and pointed viewers to a livestream that began roughly ten minutes before liftoff.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-366 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/FFEzeYOds1
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 16, 2026
The lack of detail did not stop analysts from filling in the blanks. Independent tracking of the rocket’s stage drop zones matched the pattern SpaceX has used on previous Starlink Group 15 missions, according to reporting from Outer Space Today, which pointed to Starshield as the likely payload rather than a one off government satellite. Starshield is SpaceX’s national security product, a version of the Starlink satellite bus built to Pentagon specifications for earth observation, communications and hosted payloads. Unlike consumer Starlink, government agencies do not have to disclose what Starshield satellites are actually doing once they reach orbit.
USSF-366 is the latest entry in a steady flow of classified and semi classified work between SpaceX and the Space Force. The company picked up a $178.5 million task order in April to launch missile tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency, as Teslarati reported at the time, and followed that in July with a $1.6 billion award covering 18 more Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027, also detailed by Teslarati. Add those contracts up and SpaceX’s Pentagon business for 2026 alone tops $8 billion.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
The Falcon 9 that flew Saturday landed back near the launch site, producing the sonic booms that have become routine for residents near Vandenberg. What is less routine is how little the public will likely ever learn about what the rocket carried. SpaceX and the Space Force have not confirmed the Starshield connection, and government satellite programs built on commercial buses rarely get identified beyond a mission number and a general orbit. For a company that live streams almost everything else it does, from Starship test flights to Optimus robot demos, USSF-366 is a reminder that some of SpaceX’s busiest work now happens entirely out of public view.
Elon Musk gives a timeline for SpaceX’s first Starship catch attempt
SpaceX achieves incredible milestone with Starlink program
