Connect with us

SpaceX

SpaceX is about to get real busy: EchoStar and NASA on deck

Published

on

SpaceX ’s Falcon 9 return to flight (RTF) mission was a picture-perfect comeback, both figuratively and literally. On January 14, 2017, the company’s enthusiastic launch customer, Iridium, witnessed ten of its NEXT satellites deployed into orbit while Falcon 9’s first stage booster successfully landed onto its west coast droneship, “Just Read the Instructions”.

Elon Musk and SpaceX later tweeted a photograph of the landing that captured its spot-on landing, along with a link to a photo collection posted to SpaceX’s Flickr account.

Now that the highly-anticipated RTF event has arrived, it’s time for Falcon 9 to march towards the next chapter of reusability. SpaceX has recovered seven first stage cores to date, most of which are potential candidates to be reused on a future mission.

On April 8, 2016, SpaceX completed its Falcon 9 Dragon cargo mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS), and the first stage of its booster made history by successfully landing on a droneship for the first time. The same core recovered from that mission is now scheduled to make history once again and launch SES-10 no earlier than (NET) February 22, 2017.

SES-10, owned by SES of Luxembourg and built by Airbus Defense and Space, will be flown into geostationary orbit to provide telecom services to Latin America. Also notable, SES and SpaceX have history together: SES was SpaceX’s first commercial customer with the launch of SES-8 in December 2013. This relationship was acknowledged by Elon Musk when the contract for the refurbished booster was signed.

Advertisement
-
-

SES previously confirmed that it received a discount for being the first customer to fly on a refurbished rocket. The satellite has reportedly been relocated to Florida after having been transferred from its manufacturing origin of Toulouse, France.

SES 10 isn’t SpaceX’s only mission in the coming weeks. Two other customers are awaiting their slot: EchoStar Corp. and NASA.

The next scheduled launch for Falcon 9 has been tentatively set for January 26th from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its cargo will be EchoStar Corp’s EchoStar 23, a satellite providing Ku, Ka, and S-band communications capacity for direct-television broadcast services in Brazil. The company has been driven by a mid-2017 Brazilian regulatory deadline to begin broadcast services, thus Falcon 9’s restored flight status is a welcome relief.

The EchoStar 23 mission will be the first Falcon 9 launch conducted from historic Launch Complex 39A, former host of the Apollo missions. Pad 39A has been under construction since it was leased by SpaceX from NASA in April 2014, its primary intended purpose being that of hosting Falcon Heavy launches.

NASA also has another ISS cargo mission on the books with SpaceX, currently scheduled for February 8th. This will be the 10th Dragon cargo mission that SpaceX has been contracted for. While not scheduled to break any historical records, this mission is another reminder of both the working relationship SpaceX has with NASA and abilities as a serious launch provider heading towards transporting American astronauts into space.

Advertisement
-
-

Stay tuned as we bring you more coverage of upcoming booster landings and possibly a Falcon Heavy launch expected to take place later this year.

Accidental computer geek, fascinated by most history and the multiplanetary future on its way. Quite keen on the democratization of space. | It's pronounced day-sha, but I answer to almost any variation thereof.

Advertisement -
Comments

Investor's Corner

SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet

SpaceX revealed a new Nvidia satellite partnership, then Musk pledged an exclusive Nvidia hardware commitment.

Published

on

By

SpaceX and Nvidia are now working together on the hardware that will power Musk’s orbital data center ambitions. SpaceX announced on X on Tuesday that it is partnering with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in orbit. Each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia’s Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, according to the post, which included renderings of the payload design.

The announcement landed hours before SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, where Musk went further, saying the company has committed to building its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. “We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it’s the best AI computer, and we greatly value our close cooperation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia,” Musk told investors on the call,. “So we’re exclusive to Nvidia.”

Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space. He set a target of 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year, scaling to roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.

SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete

Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. The idea is massive in scope and instead of moving data down to ground based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.

The Nvidia exclusivity marks a shift in tone from just two weeks ago, when Musk was busy knocking down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news at the time. The dollar figure in that rumor may have been wrong, but the underlying direction seems correct. SpaceX’s AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and Tuesday’s earnings report showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp up.

Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% in Tuesday trading on the news, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the day before giving back gains after hours as investors digested the earnings report’s capital spending figures.

Advertisement
-
-
Continue Reading

Investor's Corner

SpaceX reports beat in first earnings while minimizing losses

Published

on

Credit: SpaceX | X

SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) reported a beat in revenues and EBITDA in its first earnings call report while also minimizing losses as its business continues to gain momentum.

After its IPO in July, SpaceX saw some tough losses on Wall Street due to a major selloff after a delay in its 13th Starship test flight. The ship launched later that week and completed what was arguably the most successful IFT operation in the Starship program’s history.

Nevertheless, the company is continuing on and reported some encouraging financials while also promoting what appears to be a robust outlook moving forward in its Space, AI, and Connectivity divisions.

SpaceX to report first-ever earnings today: here’s what to expect

Earnings Results

  • Revenues: $7.8 billion reported vs. $6.7 billion expected
  • Adjusted EBITDA: $3.5 billion vs. $2 billion expected
  • Net loss of $541 million, an improvement of $467 million from net loss of $1.0 billion

Additionally, CFO Bret Johnsen had these comments:

“2026 has been a momentous year so far, and the second quarter demonstrated the true power of SpaceX. Revenue growth accelerated across all our business segments and we delivered strong operating leverage, with significant margin expansion led by our new AI compute agreements. Our unparalleled leadership in launch, Starlink subscriber growth, new enterprise and government partnerships, and best-in-class AI infrastructure underscore our ability to drive meaningful scale and deliver attractive returns. As a newly public company, we are delighted to welcome our broad base of shareholders and bondholders. We ended the second quarter with $100 billion of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and $47.5 billion in backlog. This financial strength gives us substantial capacity to invest in Starship, Starlink Broadband and Mobile satellites, and our AI platform, while maintaining a disciplined long-term capital allocation framework.”

Space Business Highlights

SpaceX shared some of its biggest Space Business Highlights for Q2:

  • Space revenues grew 55% sequentially and 29% year-over-year to $962 million, driven by a higher number of large customer launches and a favorable customer shift compared to the prior year
  • Total costs and expenses for the Space segment were up by $389 million year-over-year, as we continued to accelerate R&D investments in our Starship program, which we believe will reduce the cost to orbit by 99% or more relative to the historical average, and unlock significant revenue potential across all business segments
  • Leading launch provider for the world with 78 launches and 1,041 metric tons of mass to orbit deployed over the six months ended June 30, 2026, primarily allocated to Connectivity for the deployment of our Starlink constellation
  • Starship V3 development continued to advance towards full and rapid reusability:
    • Completed Starship V3’s first suborbital mission in May, Flight 12, which achieved a successful lift off from our new Starbase pad, a precision landing of Starship’s upper stage, and deployment of modified V2 Starlink satellites
    • Subsequent to the second quarter, completed Starship Flight 13 in July, which achieved all flight objectives including deploying 20 production V3 satellites, demonstrating in-space relight of a Raptor engine, and executing the softest ever splashdown of Starship, providing critical views of an intact heatshield

SpaceX will report its earnings today at 4:30 P.M. EDT.

Advertisement
-
-
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk sends second warning to SpaceX shorts ahead of first earnings

Published

on

Credit: Grok Imagine

Elon Musk issued a second pointed warning to SpaceX short sellers on Tuesday, just hours before the company was set to release its first quarterly earnings as a publicly traded firm. Responding to a report highlighting elevated short interest, Musk wrote on X: “I try to warn them, but they just double down …

The comment came as data from S3 Partners showed roughly 95 percent of available SPCX shares to borrow were on loan, translating to about 34 percent short interest as a percentage of the float. The stock has traded under pressure since its record-breaking IPO in June 2026, declining significantly from early peaks.

This marks the second such message from Musk in under three weeks.

On July 17, amid post-IPO volatility, he stated: “The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low.” At that time, SPCX had fallen roughly 30 percent from its peak above a $2.6 trillion valuation, with short sellers reportedly realizing gains of about $8.7 billion.

Elon Musk sends first warning to SpaceX short sellers

Advertisement
-
-

Musk’s warning aligned with optimistic analyses projecting that Starship-driven cost reductions could enable a multi-trillion-dollar space economy through applications such as orbital solar power, asteroid mining, data centers, and Mars-related projects, positioning SpaceX as critical infrastructure.

SpaceX is scheduled to report second-quarter results after the market close later today, followed by a webcast. Analysts anticipate revenue near $6.9 billion, reflecting growth in Starlink, launch services, and AI-related segments. The earnings release precedes a major lockup expiration on August 6 that could free hundreds of millions of insider shares.

Musk has a long track record of confronting short sellers, particularly regarding Tesla, where he has argued that persistent bearish positions underestimate transformative technologies. Critics view his optimism as overly ambitious given near-term stock fluctuations, while supporters see temporary dips as opportunities in a longer-term expansion of the space economy.

As SpaceX opens its books to public scrutiny for the first time, the high short interest and Musk’s repeated cautions set the stage for heightened market attention on the results and management’s commentary.

Continue Reading