SpaceX
SpaceX begins static Starhopper tests as Raptor engine arrives on schedule
SpaceX has officially begun static ground testing of Starhopper, a full-scale pathfinder Starship prototype meant to support an early series of Raptor-powered hop tests at SpaceX’s South Texas launch site. Simultaneously, the second completed Raptor engine arrived at the site on Monday, March 11th, confirming CEO Elon Musk’s March 8th tweets about the delivery.
While reasonably routine for any rocket test program, the first tanking test of Starhopper effectively marks the first time that SpaceX has begun tests with a more or less fully integrated Starship (previously BFS). Likely performed with liquid nitrogen instead of liquid oxygen/methane, the first few tanking tests will be used to determine the quality of the prototype’s stainless steel tanks – built en
In November 2016, SpaceX began propellant-loading tests of its first finished full-scale Starship (then Big Falcon Spaceship) hardware, a massive carbon composite liquid oxygen tank stretching 12 m (~40 ft) in diameter. Over the course of 2017, SpaceX transitioned from liquid nitrogen to liquid oxygen and ultimately conducted one final burst-test in which the composite tank was pressurized until it exploded, ending full-scale BFR composite testing with a bang. Within 6-12 months, Musk had come to the conclusion that a stainless steel BFR would ultimately be a superior path forward for the rocket and spaceship and attempted (apparently successfully) to get his team of R&D engineers on board with such a radical change so late in the development phase.
Despite the fact that that radical design departure may have occurred as few as 6-8 months ago, SpaceX engineers and technicians have accomplished an extremely rapid development program that will – in part – culminate in the hopefully successful hop testing of Starhopper, the first Starship prototype. While more of a rough testbed than an actual representation of the hardware and structures that will be required for a reusable orbital-class Starship, Starhopper has at least acted as a crash course (either technically or organizationally) on fabricating and assembling stainless steel aerospace structures, a material largely foreign to SpaceX flight hardware prior to late 2018.
Although the early vehicle was less than encouraging, as was the demise of its nosecone as a consequence of improper planning and/or bad workmanship, Starhopper as it now stands might actually be flightworthy in the context of suborbital, subsonic hop tests. Powered by the same or similar Raptors that would power orbital prototypes, Starhopper’s hop tests would optimally provide a wealth of experience and engineering data for both building 9 meter/30 foot-diameter stainless steel rocket sections and operating full-scale Raptor engine(s) in actual flight configurations. Extensive testing with Raptor will help to ensure that the fit and finish of the new engine’s flight-grade avionics and hardware are up to the challenge of safe, reliable, and gentle operations for a nominally crew-rated launch vehicle and spacecraft.
Around two days after Starhopper was briskly transported from its build site to SpaceX’s brand new launch facility, local Twitter account @SPadre (short for South Padre Island) posted a video of tanking test that occurred on March 11th, capturing the sound of venting as the liquid involved turned to gas inside its propellant tank(s). The fact alone that the person behind the camera was allowed to be where they were during the test all but guarantees that this first test was performed with an inert liquid, most likely liquid nitrogen given a massive delivery that occurred the day before (March 10th). In no conceivable world would SpaceX or local law enforcement willingly allow for Starhopper to be loaded – for the first time ever – with even a partial load of liquid methane or liquid oxygen with bystanders barely a few hundred feet distant.
When SpaceX gets to the point that they are confident enough in the structural integrity of Starhopper to begin wet dress rehearsals and tests with actual propellant, it’s a safe bet that the company will cooperate with local law enforcement to block off the lone access road to a distance of at least 1-2 miles, if not more. It’s unclear if local homeowners and residents will be forced to vacate the adjacent Boca Chica Village during testing, but chances are good that nobody will be within several thousand feet of Starhopper when those propellant loading tests begin, let alone actual static fire activity once Raptor(s) are installed.
According to an official SpaceX statement on the progress, propellant load tests and static fires could begin “in the days ahead”, although the spokesperson was under the impression that those tests – as well as initial hop tests – “[would] not be visible from offsite”. Unless SpaceX plans to draw a keep-out zone with a radius of multiple miles, interested observers will almost certainly be able to get close enough to at least catch a glimpse of Starhopper, but the statement still offers an idea of just how focused the company will be on safety during these early tests.
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Investor's Corner
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope heads to orbit this August aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with massive scientific ambitions.
SpaceX is set to play a central role in one of NASA’s most anticipated science missions in years. The company’s Falcon Heavy rocket, currently the most powerful operational launch vehicle in the world, will carry the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into orbit on August 30 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Roman is now in final preparations inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where on June 26 technicians used a crane to lift the observatory into a specialized stand for fueling and pre-launch testing.
Roman is named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief of astronomy, whose career helped shape how the agency approaches space science.
NASA chose SpaceX Falcon Heavy because of Roman’s needs to reach a specific orbit far from Earth, well beyond where a standard Falcon 9 can deliver it. The Falcon Heavy, which first flew in 2018, has since become NASA’s go-to option for missions that need serious muscle without the cost and complexity of older launch systems.
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Roman will carry a field of view at least 100 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope, meaning it can photograph enormous swaths of the universe in a single shot rather than the narrow slices Hubble captures. That difference in scale is significant. While Hubble reshaped our understanding of the cosmos over 30 years, Roman is built to work faster and wider, surveying hundreds of millions of galaxies at once.
One of Roman’s most compelling capabilities is its potential to discover and photograph planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, and with enough precision to directly image planets that would otherwise be lost. That means scientists could study the atmosphere and surface characteristics of distant worlds rather than simply confirming they exist. Combined with Roman’s sweeping field of view, the telescope could detect thousands of exoplanets, and some of those planets may be in habitable zones where liquid water could exist. No telescope currently in operation has this level of power and capability. That capability alone could change what we know about other worlds, and perhaps finally answer the question: are we the only intelligent lifeforms in existence?
What Roman actually finds once it reaches orbit is an open question, and that is exactly what makes this launch worth watching.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest logo confirms everything about what it’s become
SpaceX officially absorbed xAI under the SpaceXAI brand, completing the largest private merger in history.
SpaceX made its corporate transformation official in May 2026 when Elon Musk posted on X that xAI would cease to exist as a standalone company. “xAI will be dissolved as a separate company, so it will just be SpaceXAI, the AI products from SpaceX,” he wrote.
A new SpaceXAI logo was announced today, visually embedding the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity, which can be seen as a deliberate design choice that signals the merger is not a partnership but a full absorption and XAi a core function of the same company. The same way Starlink is not a separate brand but a SpaceX product. The announcement closed the loop on a process that began February 2, 2026, when SpaceX acquired xAI in the largest private merger in history, valued at $1.25 trillion. SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion.
We are now @SpaceXAI. pic.twitter.com/ema66xDWC9
— SpaceXAI (@SpaceXAI) July 6, 2026
The reason SpaceX bought xAI was stated plainly by Musk at the time of the deal: to build orbital data centers. SpaceX had simultaneously filed with the FCC to launch up to one million satellites designed to function as AI compute nodes in low Earth orbit, escaping what Musk described as the energy constraints limiting AI development on Earth.
xAI provided the AI software stack, with Grok, the X platform, and the Colossus supercomputer infrastructure in Memphis with over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs, while SpaceX provided the rockets, Starlink, and the capital base to fund it. The two companies needed each other. xAI was burning $2.5 billion in losses on $250 million in revenue. SpaceX was generating an estimated $8 billion in profit on $15 billion in revenue and needed an AI narrative to command the valuation it was targeting for its IPO.
What SpaceX has done, regardless of how the orbital AI vision ultimately plays out, is walk into a public market as something no company has been before: a rocket manufacturer, satellite internet provider, AI software company, social media platform, and supercomputer operator under one ticker. Whether that combination is worth $2 trillion depends entirely on which of those businesses you believe in most.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
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