SpaceX
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon one step closer to human spaceflight after flawless launch
SpaceX has completed the first half of its critical Crew Dragon test flight, launching the brand new spacecraft into low Earth orbit (LEO) on the back of one of its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets. The rocket performed nominally, successfully sending the human-rated vehicle on its way towards the International Space Station (ISS).
Scheduled to dock with the ISS as early as 6 am EST (13:00 UTC) March 3rd, Crew Dragon will now face the real challenge of this demonstration mission, successfully operating in orbit and autonomously docking with the ISS. Along the way, SpaceX will be flight-testing a number of technologies and systems new to the company, while also providing reams of data that will help both SpaceX and NASA determine whether Crew Dragon performed as intended and is truly ready to carry astronauts into orbit.
https://twitter.com/_TomCross_/status/1101764440800878593
While this successful launch is a critical milestone for DM-1, Crew Dragon, SpaceX, and NASA, it’s hard to say there is anything particularly shocking about its successful completion. Including this launch, SpaceX has now successfully launched Falcon 9 42 times in a row since January 2017, including seven orbital launches and ISS missions with Cargo Dragon, a heavily proven spacecraft with 16 successful missions since its 2012 debut. Put simply, SpaceX has an incredibly dense volume of experience successfully launching, landing, recovering, and refurbishing orbital-class rockets and spacecraft, as well as a proven track record of success and an ability to confront and move past challenging vehicle failures.
Crew Dragon demo mission (DM-1) is set to launch early tomorrow morning, March 2, at 2:49 a.m. EST from Kennedy Space Center. What an absolutely breathtaking scene at LC-39A. #spacex #nasa #CrewDragon #falcon9 pic.twitter.com/T95wCumGzq
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) March 1, 2019
Crew Dragon’s successful launch is no less of a major achievement, even if it was about as much of a known quantity as any other Falcon 9 mission. The real challenge ahead of the spacecraft is successfully demonstrating the efficacy of its design and operations in space, particularly while interacting and docking with the ISS. Prior to tomorrow morning, all SpaceX Dragons have berthed with the ISS, meaning that they effectively come up from underneath the ISS (a lower orbit), stop a few meters away, and are ‘grappled’ by a large robotic arm (known as Canadarm2) that also attaches the spacecraft to a docking port. If – at any point during the pre-berthing approach – Cargo Dragon were to lose control, the spacecraft would essentially fall back down the gravitational hill it had just climbed, a built-in abort that would nominally prevent the spacecraft from impacting the Station in most failure scenarios.
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The launch of Crew Dragon demo (DM-1) as seen from the roof of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building. What a powerful and moving mission. Another step closer! #spacex #nasa #CrewDragon pic.twitter.com/aWIPtDcVir
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) March 2, 2019
Crew Dragon, on the other hand, has been designed to dock with the ISS. Generally speaking, this means that the spacecraft will approach the Station side-on, as if it were a car accelerating faster than another car in the same ‘lane’. While there are many built-in points during the docking approach where Crew Dragon will halt all forward movement, the differing docking approach means that any loss of control or contact while on a vector towards the ISS could mean that it is unable to abort, significantly increasing the likelihood of an impact event in worst-case scenarios. While Crew Dragon is designed with extreme redundancy and fault-tolerance in mind, the stakes are definitively higher compared to Cargo Dragon.
Liftoff of Dragon 2 at 2:49am! SpaceX’s first flight of their new capsule preparing to take astronauts back to the International Space Station from American soil.
See the full launch gallery and support NASAspaceflight by subscribing to L2: https://t.co/whUFQd0FNU pic.twitter.com/TIhJxCSM8j
— Brady Kenniston (@TheFavoritist) March 2, 2019
Conscious of this fact, the new spacecraft will be tasked with completing a significant number of on-orbit maneuvers to verify nominal performance before allowing the autonomous vehicle to attempt a docking with the ISS. While that docking attempt is scheduled to occur as early as 6 am EST (13:00 UTC), live coverage – hosted by both NASA and SpaceX – will begin around 3:30 am EST (10:30 UTC) on Sunday, March 3rd. While these on-orbit webcasts can admittedly be rather dry compared to the thrill of launch, it will arguably be the most significant and mission-critical portion of Crew Dragon’s launch debut, alongside the spacecraft’s safe reentry and Atlantic Ocean landing and recovery. Follow along live at spacex.com/webcast.
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Elon Musk’s space exploration company, SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), is set to report its earnings for the second quarter today in what will be its first-ever earnings call since going public in July.
SpaceX is trading down roughly 25 percent from its IPO. These early stock signals are usually a bit tumultuous, and considering this is the first company actively launching rockets that is available on the stock exchange, investors might have a tendency to be a bit skittish.
However, there are going to be some details that investors will hear for the first time today on the earnings call. Here’s what to look for:
Wall Street Expectations
Revenue is expected to fall somewhere around $6.8 billion, and will be heavily driven by Starlink, which is SpaceX’s widely popular satellite internet platform that has been adopted by numerous airlines, cruise ships, and other maritime operations. It is also available for consumers at home or in their cars.
Earnings Per Share (EPS) expectations fall at a net loss of $0.23 per share. Wall Street sees this as a total net loss of roughly $1.9 billion.
EBITDA is expected to come in between $2 billion and $2.1 billion.
What Investors Want to Know
Tesla uses the Say platform to help work with both retail and institutional investors to answer relevant and quality questions that address concerns or questions that they might have.
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However, SpaceX is doing things differently, as the company launched its own Investor Relations website where these questions are being fielded. Just like the Tesla questions, they seem to be less focused on the operational tasks and overall progress of the company, and more novelty.
Here are the top five:
- Has the team thought about what possibilities there are with your mascot Asteroid? Whether it’s starting additional foundations for kids in its name, helping kids learn about space, etc. Kids are our future, and Asteroid would be a fun and easy way to help.
- Baby Asteroid is already making a difference through charity around the world. Could SpaceX take it even further with programs that inspire kids to explore space?
- SpaceX has some legendary vehicle names. Would you ever allow the public to name a Starship, even knowing there is a 99% chance it becomes Shipy McShipface?
- When can we expect to see more footage of the Human Landing System?
- Will Asteroid (your mascot) go to Mars?
SpaceX will report its earnings today, August 4, at 4:30 P.M. EDT.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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