SpaceX
SpaceX ships two Falcon boosters to Florida for a busy spring of launches
Two days before the first attempted launch of Falcon Heavy Block 5, a Florida local caught a separate Falcon booster crossing the state border on its way to one of SpaceX’s two Cape Canaveral launch pads.
Soon after, a separate Falcon booster was tracked heading East through Arizona, Louisiana, and Florida, a rare back-to-back rocket shipment bringing to an end two months of little visible activity. Prelude to a busy spring and early summer manifest, these Falcon booster arrivals signify a new influx of rocket hardware as SpaceX prepares for several upcoming missions. Ranging from Falcon Heavy Flight 3 to Crew Dragon’s critical in-flight abort test, SpaceX has no less than seven launches planned between now and the
Core Spotting – Episode 74
This brings us to another episode of analysis of SpaceX’s ever-changing fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. The cast of flightworthy Block 5 rockets now includes either seven or eight flight-proven boosters and perhaps 2-3 unflown boosters. The new center core believed to be assigned to Falcon Heavy’s third launch (B1057) is reportedly already in Florida, while both flight-proven Falcon Heavy side boosters (B1052 and B1053) were transported to SpaceX’s Pad 39A hangar for refurbishment less than a week after their first launch and landing.
Of the above fleet, B1047, B1048, B1050, B1051, B1052, and B1053 are already known to be located at SpaceX’s Florida facilities, all of which launched from Cape Canaveral within the last five months. After successfully supporting Crew Dragon’s orbital launch debut in March, B1051 is currently assigned to SpaceX’s second West Coast launch of the year and will likely be shipped to California in the next few weeks. B1057, believed to be the next new Falcon Heavy center core, is likely already in Florida to prepare for its a launch as early as late June.
This leaves either two known flight-proven boosters or new Falcon boosters as the likely suspects captured in a duo of April core spottings, one on April 8th and another on April 17th. SpaceX has two flightworthy Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters – B1047 and B1048 – at its Florida facilities, so it’s not out of the question that both spotted cores are new. They could also be B1046 and B1049, both of which recently completed launches from SpaceX’s Vandenberg pad and have been undergoing refurbishment in California. SpaceX’s West Coast manifest could have just two launches for the rest of 2019, meaning that there is no practical reason to keep unassigned boosters nearby.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has plans to begin operational Starlink constellation launches as early as mid-May and likely has more than one planned for 2019. The launch-hungry venture will need as many Falcon 9 boosters as it can get – the more, the merrier. Heading into Q3 2019, SpaceX’s first crewed launch of Crew Dragon (DM-2) is in need of a new Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and is reportedly scheduled no earlier than (NET) October. One of the cores spotted in the last week or so could be that very rocket, arriving early due to the gravity of DM-2 and the need to double, triple, and quadruple-check the hardware to best ensure mission success.
At the end of the day, the most likely explanation is that one of the boosters spotted is new, while one is B1046 or B1049. This is supported by the fact that the second instance was coincidentally tracked throughout its journey, with fans in California, Tuscon, Louisiana, and Florida all catching glimpses between April 12th and April 17th. SpaceX static fires all unflown boosters in McGregor, Texas before they are delivered to a launch site, a procedure that typically takes no less than two weeks from arrival to departure. The booster spotted entering Florida on April 8th, however, does not seem to have been spotted by the same unofficial network of SpaceX fans.
Finally, there is a chance that one of these boosters is a new Falcon 9 assigned to SpaceX’s next Cargo Dragon mission to the International Space Station. CRS-17 is scheduled for launch on April 26th, cutting it extremely close for the booster to be arriving just two weeks before its static fire test.
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SpaceXAI announced today that it had signed an agreement with Anthropic to give the company access to its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee.
It is a monumental deal as Anthropic will gain access to all of the compute at the plant, delivering more than 300 megawatts of power and over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs within the month.
Anthropic’s Claude AI account on X announced the partnership:
“We’ve agreed to a partnership with SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity. This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API.”
The company is also:
- Doubling Claude Code’s 5-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, and Team plans;
- Removing the peak hours limit reduction on Claude Code for Pro and Max plans; and
- Substantially raising its API rate limits for Opus models.
We’ve agreed to a partnership with @SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity.
This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API.
— Claude (@claudeai) May 6, 2026
SpaceX also published its own release on the new agreement, noting that it is “the only organization with the launch cadence, mass-to-orbit economics, and constellation operations experience to make orbital compute a near-term engineering program rather than a research concept.”
CEO Elon Musk also commented on the partnership and shed light on intense meetings he had with senior members of Anthropic last week, stating, “nobody set on my evil detector.”
Same here.
By way of background for those who care, I spent a lot of time last week with senior members of the Anthropic team to understand what they do to ensure Claude is good for humanity and was impressed.
Everyone I met was highly competent and cared a great deal about…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2026
This has turned the argument that SpaceX is as much an AI company as a space exploration company into a very valid argument:
SpaceX is following in Tesla’s footsteps in a way nobody expected
Nevertheless, this is an incredibly valuable and important move in the grand scheme of things. AI scaling is fundamentally bottlenecked by compute, and demand for Claude has surged, bringing terrestrial power grids, land, and cooling operations hitting limits everywhere.
Anthropic has been aggressively signing multiple large-scale deals to be competitive in the space, including:
- Up to 5GW with Amazon
- 5GW with Google and Broadcom
- Strategic $30b Azure deal with Microsoft/NVIDIA
- $50b U.S. infrastructure investment with Fluidstack
Access to Colossus 1 gives Anthropic immediate relief on NVIDIA GPU capacity. For SpaceXAI, it turns its rapid buildout into revenue. It also showcases its ability to deliver at world-leading speed and scale.
Most importantly, it plants the seed that its much larger vision, orbital AI compute, is totally viable.
Starlink V3 satellites could enable SpaceX’s orbital computing plans: Musk
Within the month, Anthropic will begin using 100 percent of Colossus 1’s compute, directly expanding capacity for Claude Pro and Max subscribers and the API. This means fewer limits, faster responses, and support for heavier workloads.
In the long term, meaning 2026 and beyond, there will be a continued rollout of other multi-GW deals Anthropic has signed, and an early exploration of orbital compute with SpaceXAI.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Board has set a Mars bonus for Elon Musk
SpaceX has given Elon Musk the goal to put one million people on Mars.
SpaceX’s board approved a compensation plan for Elon Musk that ties his pay directly to colonizing Mars and building data centers in outer space. The details surfaced this week after Reuters reviewed SpaceX’s confidential registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, making it one of the first concrete looks inside the company’s financials ahead of a public offering.
The pay package will reportedly award Musk 200 million super-voting restricted shares if the company hits a market valuation milestone, with the most ambitious targets going further. To unlock the full award, SpaceX would need to reach a $7.5 trillion valuation and help establish a permanent human settlement on Mars with at least one million residents. Additional incentives are tied to developing space-based computing infrastructure capable of delivering at least 100 terawatts of processing power.
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
Long before SpaceX filed anything with the SEC, Elon Musk had already spent years framing Mars colonization as an insurance policy against human extinction. The philosophy traces back to at least 2001, when Musk first began researching Mars missions independently, before SpaceX even existed. By 2002 he had founded the company with Mars as the stated long-term goal.
In a 2017 presentation at the International Astronautical Congress, Musk outlined the specific vision that still underpins SpaceX’s architecture today. He described a self-sustaining city on Mars requiring roughly one million people to become viable, the same number now written into his compensation package.
SpaceX’s Starship, still in active development, was designed from the ground up to support the eventual colonization of Mars. Musk has stated publicly that getting the cost per ton to Mars below $100,000 is necessary to make mass migration economically feasible. Everything from Starship’s payload capacity to its full reusability targets flows from that single constraint. One can say that Musk’s latest compensation package has put a formal valuation on Mars for the first time.
SpaceX is targeting an IPO around June 28, Musk’s birthday, at a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion. Between the Mars rover contract, the Golden Dome software group, Space Force satellite launches, and now a pay structure built around interplanetary colonization, SpaceX has become the single most consequential contractor in American space and defense. The IPO will put a public price tag on all of it for the first time.
News
UPDATE: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy that launched a Tesla into space is back on a mission
SpaceX Falcon Heavy returns after 18 months away to deliver a satellite that only it could carry.
UPDATE: 10:29 a.m. et: SpaceX is standing down from today’s Falcon Heavy launch of the ViaSat-3 F3 mission due to unfavorable weather. A new target date will be shared once confirmed.
After an 18-month absence, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is returning to mission on Monday morning when it’s scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 10:21 a.m. EDT.
The mission is called ViaSat-3 F3, and the heavy satellite payload needs to reach geostationary orbit, sitting 22,236 miles above Earth where its speed matches the planet’s rotation. Getting a satellite that heavy to that altitude demands more thrust than a single-core Falcon 9 can deliver.
This marks the Falcon Heavy’s 12th flight overall since its debut in February 2018, and its first since NASA’s Europa Clipper mission in October 2024.
Arguably, the most exciting element for spectators will be watching the booster recoveries in action when the two side boosters, B1072 and B1075, will attempt simultaneous landings at Landing Zone 2 and the newer Landing Zone 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, while the center core will be expended over the ocean.
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
Following satellite deployment, expected roughly five hours after launch, ViaSat-3 F3 will spend several months traveling to its final orbital slot before undergoing in-orbit testing, with service entry expected by late summer 2026
As Teslarati reported, NASA awarded SpaceX a $175.7 million contract on April 16, 2026, to launch the ESA Rosalind Franklin Mars rover aboard a Falcon Heavy no earlier than late 2028, which would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars. That contract came on top of an already deep pipeline that includes the Roman Space Telescope, the Dragonfly Saturn mission, and multiple national security payloads.
SpaceX executed 165 missions in 2025 and now accounts for approximately 85% of all global orbital launches. With Starlink surpassing 10 million subscribers and an IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation still ahead, Monday’s launch is one more data point in a company that has quietly become the backbone of both commercial and government space access worldwide.
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