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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon returns to port as NASA praises successful launch debut

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft was successfully returned to port after a shockingly flawless orbital debut. (Tom Cross)

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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully returned to Port Canaveral aboard recovery vessel GO Searcher, wrapping up an orbital launch debut that tracked through its milestones so flawlessly that Commercial Crew Program Deputy Manager Steve Stich went so far as to say that the spacecraft “did better than [NASA] expected.”

The culmination of the better part of a decade of constant work and NASA support, the flawless success of SpaceX’s DM-1 Crew Dragon mission is a testament – above all else – to the many hundreds of thousands or millions of hours SpaceX employees have put into the spacecraft’s design, production, operation, and recovery. While just one half of a critical pair of demonstrations, DM-1’s success should translate into extremely good odds for Crew Dragon’s Demo Mission 2 (DM-2), in which SpaceX will launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on the company’s first crewed launch ever.

https://twitter.com/TomCross/status/1104588361405263874

“I can’t believe how well the whole mission has gone. I think on every point, everything’s been nailed, all the way along—particularly this last piece. We were all very excited to see re-entry and parachute and drogue deploy and main deploy, splashdown—everything happened just perfectly, right on time the way that we expected it to. It was beautiful.” – Benji Reed, Director of Crew Mission Management, SpaceX

SpaceX Director of Crew Mission Management Benji Reed’s unqualified appraisal of Crew Dragon’s debut serves as a perfect example of the attitude almost universal throughout the company in the twilight of the mission’s completion. While sources suggest that there were more than a few hiccups during the mission, they were extremely mild and came as no surprise for what effectively amounted to the first shakeout mission of a brand new vehicle. According to CEO Elon Musk, Crew Dragon shares almost no hardware – aside from its Draco thrusters – with Cargo Dragon, the uncrewed orbital spacecraft SpaceX has now launched into orbit 17 times in the last eight years.

For such a complex spacecraft, not to mention an almost clean-sheet redesign, it’s nothing short of extraordinary that its debut launch was so utterly free of significant anomalies or unexpected behavior. Separated into the distinct phases of launch, free-flight, ISS docking/undocking, and recovery, Crew Dragon reportedly performed almost perfectly in all cases, “right on time” according to Mr. Reed. NASA’s CCP Deputy Manager Steve Stich was equally enthusiastic and elated about the spacecraft’s performance.


“On-orbit we got a lot of great data on the vehicle in terms of the thermal performance and power performance; the vehicle really did better than we expected. Then the rendezvous was phenomenal as we came in and checked out those sensors. Today; the undocking, watching how those systems performed, that went flawlessly. It’s a very tight sequence between undocking and de-orbit burn, how the nose cone performed, how the de-orbit burn was executed, then the entry was phenomenal.”

“I don’t think we saw really anything in the mission so far—and we’ve got to do to the data reviews—that would preclude us from having the crewed mission [DM-2] later this year.”

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– Steve Stich, CCP Deputy Manager, NASA


Following Crew Dragon’s March 9/10 return to Port Canaveral, the spacecraft is expected to immediately enter into a post-flight analysis and data-gathering phase that will quickly transfer into refurbishment to prepare for the capsule’s second (albeit suborbital) launch, a critical in-flight abort (IFA) test that could happen as early as April according to Elon Musk. While official planning schedules point towards the IFA occurring closer to June or even July, it’s reasonable to assume that those official schedules are highly conservative. If Crew Dragon’s significantly waterproofing and reusability upgrades make a major difference, it’s far from inconceivable that the vehicle’s second abort test could actually occur ahead of schedule, although it’s unlikely.

The in-flight abort test will effectively be a repeat of SpaceX’s successful 2015 pad abort demonstration, albeit with the stationary launch pad replaced with a full Falcon 9 rocket – first and second stage – traveling at supersonic speeds. If Crew Dragon can safely abort in such challenging conditions, it’s almost guaranteed that it will be able to safely abort at any time during a Falcon 9 launch, all the way from the moment fueling begins on the ground into orbital operations. In fact, CEO Elon Musk recently suggested that the same SuperDraco abort thrusters that enable those safe escapes could potentially be used to add yet another level of redundancy during landing, standing in for parachute damage or failures to slow the capsule down and minimize or prevent injuries during splashdown.

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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.

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Investor's Corner

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

The move, Ives argues, is no longer a distant possibility but a logical next step, fueled by deepening operational ties, shared AI ambitions, and Elon Musk’s vision for dominating the next era of technology.

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Credit: Grok

Tesla and SpaceX are two of Elon Musk’s most popular and notable companies, but a new note from one Wall Street analyst claims the two companies will become one sometime next year, as 2027 could see the dawn of a new horizon.

In a bold new research note, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has reaffirmed his long-standing prediction: Tesla and SpaceX will merge in 2027.

The move, Ives argues, is no longer a distant possibility but a logical next step, fueled by deepening operational ties, shared AI ambitions, and Elon Musk’s vision for dominating the next era of technology.

He writes:

“Still Expect Tesla and SpaceX to Merge in 2027. We continue to believe that SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one company in 2027 with the groundwork already in place for both operations to become one organization. Tesla already owns a stake in SpaceX after the company’s $2 billion investment in xAI got converted to SpaceX shares following SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI earlier this year initially tying both of Musk’s ventures closer together but still represents <1% of SpaceX’s expected valuation. The recent announcement of a joint Terafab facility between SpaceX and Tesla further ties both operations together making it more feasible to merge operations given the now existing overlap being built out across the two with this the first step.”

The groundwork is already being laid. Earlier this year, SpaceX acquired xAI, converting Tesla’s $2 billion investment in the AI startup into a small equity stake, less than 1 percent, in SpaceX.

Regulatory filings cleared the transaction in March 2026, formally linking the two Musk-led companies financially for the first time. Then came the announcement of a joint TERAFAB facility in Austin, Texas: two advanced chip factories, one dedicated to Tesla’s AI needs for vehicles and Optimus robots, the other targeting space-based data centers.

Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry

Ives calls Terafab the “first step” toward full operational integration.

SpaceX’s impending IPO, expected as soon as mid-June 2026, will turbocharge these plans. The company aims to raise approximately $75 billion at a roughly $1.75 trillion valuation, far exceeding earlier estimates.

Proceeds will fund Starship rocket flights, a NASA-contracted lunar base, expanded Starlink services across maritime, aviation, and direct-to-mobile applications, and crucially, orbital AI infrastructure

A major driver is the exploding demand for AI compute. U.S. data centers are projected to consume 470 TWh of electricity by 2030, constrained by power grids and land.

SpaceX’s strategy, launching millions of solar-powered satellites to host data centers in orbit, bypasses Earth’s energy bottlenecks. Solar energy captured in space avoids atmospheric losses and day-night cycles, offering a scalable solution for AI training and inference.

The xAI acquisition ties directly into this vision, positioning the combined entity as a leader in extraterrestrial computing.

The merger would create a formidable conglomerate spanning electric vehicles, robotics, satellite communications, human spaceflight, and defense.

Ives highlights SpaceX’s role in the Trump administration’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, which would leverage Starlink satellites for tracking.

For Tesla, access to SpaceX’s launch cadence and orbital assets could accelerate autonomous driving, Robotaxi fleets, and Optimus deployment.

Musk, who has signaled his desire to own roughly 25 percent of Tesla to steer its AI future, views the combination as essential to overcoming fragmented regulatory scrutiny from the FTC and DOJ.

Challenges remain. Antitrust hurdles could delay or reshape the deal, and shareholder approvals on both sides would be required. Yet Ives remains bullish, maintaining an Outperform rating on Tesla with a $600 price target, implying substantial upside from current levels. The analyst sees the merger as the “holy grail” for consolidating Musk’s disruptive tech empire.

If realized, a 2027 Tesla-SpaceX union would not only reshape corporate boundaries but redefine humanity’s trajectory in AI and space exploration. It would mark the moment two pioneering companies become one unstoppable force, pushing the limits of what’s possible on Earth and beyond.

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Elon Musk

TIME honors SpaceX’s Gwynne Shotwell: From employee No. 7 to world’s most valuable company

Time Magazine honors Gwynne Shotwell as SpaceX reaches a $1.25 trillion valuation and eyes its IPO.

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TIME Magazine has put SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell on its cover, and the timing could not be more fitting. Published today, the profile of Shotwell arrives at a moment when the company she has quietly run for more than two decades stands at the center of the most consequential developments in aerospace, artificial intelligence, and the future of human civilization.

Shotwell joined SpaceX in 2002 as its seventh employee and has never stopped expanding her role. She oversees day-to-day operations across multiple executive teams spanning Falcon, Starlink, Starship, and now xAI following SpaceX’s February 2026 merger with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, a deal that made SpaceX the world’s most valuable private company at a reported valuation of $1.25 trillion. A highly anticipated IPO is expected in the second quarter of 2026.

Will Tesla join the fold? Predicting a triple merger with SpaceX and xAI

Her track record is historic. She oversaw the first landing of an orbital rocket’s first stage, the first reuse and re-landing of an orbital booster, and the first private crewed launch to Earth orbit in May 2020. She built the Falcon launch manifest from nothing to more than 170 contracted missions representing over $20 billion in business. Under her operational leadership, SpaceX completed 96 successful missions in 2023 alone and has now flown more than 20 crewed Falcon 9 missions. Starlink, which she championed as a financial pillar of the company long before it was a mainstream topic, now connects tens of millions of users worldwide and provided a critical communications lifeline to Ukraine following the 2022 invasion.

Elon Musk has never been shy about what Shotwell means to him and to SpaceX. When she shared her vision for worldwide internet connectivity through Starlink, Musk responded on X with a simple statement, “Gwynne is awesome.” It is a sentiment that has been echoed across the industry. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson once said of Musk: “One of the most important decisions he made, as a matter of fact, is he picked a president named Gwynne Shotwell. She runs SpaceX. She is excellent.”


Now, with Starship targeting its first crewed lunar landing under the Artemis program by 2028, an xAI integration underway, and a pending IPO that could reshape capital markets, Shotwell’s mandate has never been larger. She told Time that 18 Starships are already in various stages of construction at Starbase. “By 2028,” she said, gesturing across the factory floor, “these should be long gone. They better have flown by then.” If Shotwell’s history at SpaceX is any guide, they will.

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Elon Musk

SpaceX’s IPO might arrive sooner than you think

Musk has hinted for years that an eventual public offering was inevitable, though he has stressed the need to maintain operational focus. Insiders have told outlets that the CEO is pushing for a significant retail investor allocation, reportedly more than 20 percent of shares, and tighter lock-up periods to limit early selling pressure.

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Credit: SpaceX | X

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is on the verge of one of the most anticipated Initial Public Offerings (IPO) in history.

However, a new report from The Information indicates the rocket and satellite giant is aiming to file its IPO prospectus with U.S. regulators as soon as this week, or early next week at the latest.

People familiar with the plans told The Information that advisers involved in the process expect the IPO could raise more than 75 billion dollars, potentially making it the largest stock market debut ever and eclipsing Saudi Aramco’s 29.4 billion dollar offering in 2019.

The filing would mark the formal start of what has long been rumored: SpaceX’s transition from a closely held private powerhouse to a publicly traded company.

The timing aligns with earlier signals.

In late February, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was targeting a confidential IPO filing in March and a possible public listing in June, with a valuation north of 1.75 trillion dollars. At the time, the company’s private valuation hovered around 1.25 trillion dollars.

SpaceX considering confidential IPO filing this March: report

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet constellation, has been the primary driver of that surge, now serving millions of customers worldwide and generating steady revenue. Recent Starship test flights and a record pace of Falcon launches have further bolstered investor confidence.

Musk has hinted for years that an eventual public offering was inevitable, though he has stressed the need to maintain operational focus. Insiders have told outlets that the CEO is pushing for a significant retail investor allocation, reportedly more than 20 percent of shares, and tighter lock-up periods to limit early selling pressure.

A June listing would give SpaceX immediate access to public capital markets at a moment when demand for space-related stocks remains high. It would also allow early employees and long-time investors to cash out portions of their stakes while giving everyday shareholders a chance to own a piece of the company behind reusable rockets, global broadband, and NASA contracts.

Of course, nothing is certain until the SEC filing appears. Market conditions, regulatory reviews, and Musk’s own schedule could still shift timelines.

Yet the latest word from The Information suggests the window has opened. If the filing lands this week, SpaceX’s roadshow could begin in earnest within weeks, setting the stage for what many analysts already call the IPO of the decade.

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