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Falcon Heavy Flight 2 has been completed successfully after marking SpaceX's first ever triple booster recovery. (SpaceX) Falcon Heavy Flight 2 has been completed successfully after marking SpaceX's first ever triple booster recovery. (SpaceX)

SpaceX

SpaceX Falcon Heavy just nailed a triple rocket landing for the first time

Falcon Heavy Flight 2 has been completed successfully after marking SpaceX's first ever triple booster recovery. (SpaceX)

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SpaceX has pulled off an incredible feat, successfully recovering all three of Falcon Heavy’s Block 5 boosters shortly after the rocket’s commercial launch debut. Followed about two minutes later by the center core’s bullseye drone ship landing, both side boosters once again performed a near-simultaneous recovery at SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Landing Zones.

With this flawless triple recovery in hand, SpaceX now has plans to reuse both side boosters as early as June 2019, while the center core will likely support critical reusability analysis and may also launch again in the near future. Above all else, Falcon Heavy Flight 2 has demonstrated that SpaceX’s super heavy lift rocket is truly ready to offer routine commercial services for customers – both public and private – around the world. With a combination of reusability, affordability, and performance unlikely to be matched for a minimum of 2+ years, SpaceX and its Falcon Heavy rocket have the opportunity to create an entirely new market in the coming years.

Completed less than 35 minutes after launch, this mission included a wealth of major events and firsts, including the first launch of Falcon Heavy Block 5, the first successful triple booster recovery, and one of the highest orbital apogees yet seen during a SpaceX mission – >90,000 km (55,500 mi) above Earth.

The huge Arabsat 6A satellite – weighing around 6450 kg (14,200 lb) is not quite the heaviest individual spacecraft SpaceX has launched, but it is by far the highest energy orbit SpaceX has reached with a spacecraft anywhere close to its size. Known as a supersynchronous (perhaps ultrasynchronous?) transfer orbit, the extremely high apogee – almost three times higher than the nominal circular orbit Arabsat 6A is destined for – will help the satellite reach that orbit far sooner than it otherwise would. The sooner a spacecraft can begin nominal operations, the sooner it can begin making money for its owner/operator.

Falcon Heavy Block 5 lifts off for the first time, April 11th. (Tom Cross)

Around seven and a half minutes after launch, Falcon Heavy side boosters B1052 and B1053 nailed a flawless simultaneous landing at SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral-based Landing Zones (LZ-1 & LZ-2). Less than three minutes later, center core B1055 hit the bullseye on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, wrapping up the first successful landing of the critical Falcon Heavy booster.

With three once-flown Block 5 boosters now in hand, SpaceX will attempt to turn around both side boosters – basically just Falcon 9 first stages with nose cones – for Falcon Heavy’s third launch, potentially as early as June 2019. Meanwhile, the center core will complete another 1000 km journey, this time back to the Florida coast before likely shipping to Hawthorne, California or a local hangar for analysis. Falcon Heavy’s center core, as is fairly visible, is dramatically different from the Falcon 9 boosters SpaceX is used to reusing, including a range of connection hardware that is absolutely flight-critical and protrudes rather aggressively into the rocket’s often-violent airstream.

In other words, Falcon Heavy center cores could get far more toasty than Falcon 9 or even their side booster companions, potentially damaging hardware that simply has to be perfect for Heavy launches to succeed and do so reliably. As such, SpaceX will likely be expecting to learn a fair bit of new information and gather critical data in the hopes of eventually optimizing Falcon Heavy center core refurbishment and reuse to Falcon 9’s current level of finesse.

SpaceX’s spectacular Arabsat 6A webcast can be watched in full below.

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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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SpaceX makes first acquisition post-IPO

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX has exercised its option to acquire Cursor, the innovative AI coding company, in an all-stock transaction valued at $60 billion. The deal, announced on June 16, marks a significant step in SpaceX’s expansion into advanced artificial intelligence, building on months of close collaboration between the companies.

Cursor, officially operated by Anysphere, Inc., is an AI-native code editor and coding agent designed to transform software development. Founded in 2022 by a group of MIT graduates in San Francisco, Cursor builds on the familiar foundation of Visual Studio Code but integrates powerful AI capabilities directly into the core experience.

Unlike traditional code editors or simple extensions, Cursor functions as a full “coding agent” that turns natural-language instructions into actionable code.

Developers interact with Cursor through features like its Composer agent, which can search entire codebases, edit multiple files, run terminal commands, debug issues, and complete complex multi-step programming tasks autonomously.

Users describe high-level goals, such as “build a scalable API endpoint with authentication,” and the AI plans, implements, tests, and refines the solution while the human oversees decisions. Additional tools include advanced autocomplete (Tab), context-aware chat, and infrastructure for handling billions of daily requests.

The platform has gained considerable traction, surpassing $3 billion in annual recurring revenue by early 2026 and earning adoption by over half of the Fortune 500 companies. Its agentic approach accelerates development dramatically, allowing engineers to focus on architecture and creativity rather than repetitive coding.

The acquisition integrates Cursor’s leading product, expert team of roughly 300 engineers, and distribution network among top software developers with SpaceX’s unparalleled computational resources. SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer, equivalent to a million H100 GPUs, has already powered joint training of next-generation models. These models are expected to launch soon within Cursor and SpaceX’s Grok Build environment.

This combination positions SpaceX to develop the world’s most capable AI systems for coding and knowledge work. Access to Cursor’s real-world usage data from millions of professional developers provides unparalleled feedback loops for model improvement. Training on Colossus enables rapid iteration on massive datasets, potentially creating AI that outperforms current leaders in reliability, context handling, and complex reasoning.

For SpaceX, the benefits extend far beyond software tools. Rocket engineering, satellite constellation management, autonomous flight systems, and Starship development involve millions of lines of highly specialized, safety-critical code.

Cursor’s AI agents, supercharged by proprietary models trained on SpaceX’s domain expertise, could slash development timelines, reduce errors, and enable faster innovation cycles. This vertical integration of AI tooling strengthens SpaceX’s competitive edge in both aerospace and the broader AI race, complementing its xAI initiatives.

The deal reflects the exploding value of AI-native developer platforms. By owning Cursor outright, SpaceX secures a strategic talent pool and product pipeline that will accelerate internal projects while potentially offering enhanced tools to the wider engineering community. As AI continues reshaping software creation, this acquisition underscores SpaceX’s commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology for ambitious goals, from Mars colonization to global connectivity.

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SpaceX soars with its first launch as a public company, marking a new era

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX executed its first Falcon 9 launch since going public on June 15, a routine yet symbolically powerful Starlink mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Liftoff of the Falcon 9 booster B1093, on its 14th flight, occurred at approximately 8:34 a.m. PDT from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E), deploying 24 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites into low-Earth orbit.

The first stage successfully landed on the droneship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific Ocean, underscoring the company’s unmatched reusability track record.

This mission comes just three days after SpaceX’s historic IPO on June 12, which shattered records as the largest ever. The company raised $75 billion by pricing shares at $135, with trading under ticker SPCX on Nasdaq opening at $150 and closing at $160.95—a 19 percent gain—valuing SpaceX at over $2.1 trillion.

The launch highlights the seamless transition from private innovator to public powerhouse. SpaceX, founded in 2002, has revolutionized access to space with over 650 Falcon 9 flights and a massive Starlink constellation now serving millions globally.

As a public company, it faces new pressures: quarterly earnings, shareholder scrutiny, and expectations to accelerate Starship development for Mars ambitions and deeper NASA partnerships. Yet the market response signals strong confidence in its dominance, as launch costs are slashed by 95 percent, rapid satellite deployment, and a backlog of government and commercial contracts.

SpaceX maintains bold advertising push for Starlink, contrasting Tesla’s minimalistic approach

Analysts view today’s flight as business as usual, but it carries extra weight. With shares volatile in early trading days, successful operations reassure investors that core capabilities remain unaffected by public status.

SpaceX now operates under heightened transparency, potentially unlocking capital for ambitious goals like Starship orbital tests and global broadband expansion.

Challenges loom, including regulatory hurdles for megaconstellations, competition in reusable rockets, and orbital debris concerns. Nevertheless, this morning’s flawless execution reinforces SpaceX’s trajectory.

As Musk often notes, the company’s mission—to make humanity multiplanetary—now aligns with Wall Street’s growth demands. The stars, it seems, are aligning for both.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla and SpaceX’s biggest bull just placed a massive $1B bet on the stock

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Ron Baron on Tesla stock

Renowned investor Ron Baron, founder and CEO of Baron Capital, has once again demonstrated his unwavering faith in Elon Musk’s ventures.

Just after SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO, Baron announced he purchased an additional $1 billion in SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) shares. This move pushes Baron Capital’s total holdings in the company to a staggering $25 billion in market value, underscoring one of the most successful private-to-public investment stories in recent history.

Baron’s relationship with SpaceX dates back to 2017, when his firm began investing approximately $1.75–2 billion through secondary markets and employee tender offers at valuations around $20–22 billion.

By the time of the IPO, which valued SpaceX at over $2 trillion with shares closing near $161, those early stakes had generated more than $13 billion in unrealized gains. Post-IPO, Baron’s position ballooned further, reflecting the company’s meteoric rise driven by reusable rocketry, Starlink’s global satellite internet constellation, Starshield defense applications, and ambitious plans for orbital infrastructure.

In a recent interview, Baron articulated his bullish outlook with characteristic enthusiasm.

“I think we’re going to make hundreds of billions of dollars,” he stated, emphasizing that SpaceX’s achievements in rocketry and satellite technology are “not possible for anyone else to accomplish.” He envisions the company as a cornerstone of humanity’s multi-planetary future, potentially reaching valuations of $10–30 trillion within 10–15 years.

Baron has repeatedly affirmed he has no plans to sell, viewing SpaceX as a “lifetime investment” alongside Tesla.

Tesla bull Ron Baron reveals $100M SpaceX investment, sees 3-5x return on TSLA

This conviction stems from SpaceX’s unparalleled execution. The company has revolutionized access to space with Falcon 9 reusability, deployed thousands of Starlink satellites, and is advancing Starship for Mars missions and point-to-point Earth transport.

Baron highlights emerging opportunities like space-based AI data centers and direct-to-cell satellite connectivity, positioning SpaceX at the forefront of a new space economy projected to generate trillions in value.

Critics may question the lofty projections amid high valuations and execution risks, but Baron’s track record speaks volumes. His Tesla holdings, initiated in the mid-2010s, have also delivered outsized returns. As one of the largest institutional holders of SpaceX pre-IPO, Baron Capital’s funds, such as Baron Partners, benefited immensely from valuation markups.

Baron’s $1 billion IPO purchase signals deep confidence in SpaceX’s post-IPO trajectory. In an era of short-term market noise, his strategy exemplifies patient capital: backing visionary leadership and transformative technology.

For investors watching the space sector, it serves as a powerful endorsement that the final frontier may indeed yield the next great wealth-creation engine. As Baron puts it, SpaceX isn’t just building rockets—it’s trying to “save humanity” by expanding our horizons beyond Earth.

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