SpaceX
SpaceX’s Elon Musk says Raptor will be installed on Starship prototype this week
Speaking on Friday, March 8th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that the company’s second completed Raptor engine was already “on [its] way to [Star]hopper” to – nominally – be installed on the prototype vehicle as early as the week of March 11th (this week).
According to an official SpaceX statement, once Raptor is installed on Starhopper, the integrated vehicle will perform a combination of ground systems testing, propellant loading, static fire tests, and low-altitude hover demonstrations to prove out the brand new vehicle, engine, and facilities. Prior to the final months of 2018, the build site, launch pad, and prototype Starship now preparing for imminent hop tests were little more than empty dirt lots on the southern tip of the Texas coast.
“SpaceX will conduct checkouts of the newly installed ground systems and perform a short static fire test in the days ahead,” he said. “Although the prototype is designed to perform sub-orbital flights, or hops, powered by the SpaceX Raptor engine, the vehicle will be tethered during initial testing and hops will not be visible from offsite. SpaceX will establish a safety zone perimeter in coordination with local enforcement and signage will be in place to alert the community prior to the testing.” – James Gleeson, March 8th, SpaceX
Prior to February 3rd, barely one month ago, SpaceX’s next-generation Raptor engine had yet to even ignite in its final(ish), full-scale form. Less than two weeks after that, SpaceX’s propulsion team had pushed the engine to the point of damage, quite possibly throttling it above its nominal max thrust and main combustion chamber pressures. According to Musk, Raptor serial number 2 (SN02) will feature moderate changes to mitigate the cause of that damage.
Along the path to hop tests, it’s unclear if Raptor SN02 – following the mild problems more or less intentionally forced upon its predecessor – will be test-fired at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas development facilities before heading south to be installed on Starhopper. Given SpaceX’s methodical approach to engine and vehicle testing prior to the launch of any of its rockets, chances are good that it will have already conducted a number of basic acceptance tests in McGregor. If Musk is to be taken literally, the second
It has not yet been confirmed if Starhopper will initially perform static fire and hop tests with just one Raptor installed, but the sheer power of the fairly compact engine (upwards of 200 metric tons or 450,000 lbf of thrust at full throttle) should more than enable an extremely heavy prototype to lift off even with 50+ metric tons of propellant onboard. While it could simply be a matter of convenience and efficiency to start integrated Starhopper testing immediately instead of waiting for the completion of additional Raptor engines, the process of testing a thrust structure or integrated rocket with an increasing number of engines installed is a relatively common practice in aerospace. Regardless of its history, SpaceX itself also began its first integrated testing of a Falcon 9 first stage in the same way, starting with one Merlin engine installed and ultimately graduating to 3, 5, and the final 9 engines over the course of a few months of testing.
While Starhopper is unlikely to need more than a handful of Raptor engines to exhaust its usefulness, the first orbital Starship prototype – and, even more so, the first Super Heavy booster – will almost certainly end up going through the same process of methodical hot-fire testing before SpaceX even thinks of attempting the first orbital BFR launch. Featuring 7 and 31 Raptors respectively, Starship and Super Heavy will radically push the envelope of both SpaceX’s own experience and the aerospace industry as a whole, potentially becoming the most powerful liquid rocket ever launched if or when the vehicle begins flight tests with both stages.
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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.
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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.
Elon Musk
The FCC just said ‘No’ to SpaceX for now
SpaceX is fighting the FCC for spectrum that could put satellites inside every smartphone.
SpaceX was dealt a new setback on April 23, 2006 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after the U.S. government agency dismissed the company’s petition to access a Mobile Satellite Service spectrum that would allow direct-to-device (D2D) capabilities.
The FCC regulates communications by radio, television, wire, and cable, which also includes regulating D2D technology that lets your existing smartphone connect directly to a satellite orbiting Earth, the same way it would connect to a cell tower.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been building toward this through its Starlink Mobile service, formerly called Direct-to-Cell, in partnership with T-Mobile. The service officially launched on July 23, 2025, starting with messaging and expanding to broadband data in October of that year.
T-Mobile Starlink Pricing Announced – Early Adopters Get Exclusive Discount
It’s worth noting that SpaceX is not alone in this race. AT&T and Verizon have their own satellite texting deals with AST SpaceMobile, while Verizon separately offers free satellite texting through Skylo on newer phones.
The regulatory foundation for all of this dates to March 14, 2024, when the FCC adopted the world’s first framework for what it called Supplemental Coverage from Space, allowing satellite operators to lease spectrum from terrestrial carriers and fill gaps in their coverage. On November 26, 2024, the FCC granted SpaceX the first-ever authorization under that framework, approving its partnership with T-Mobile to provide service in specific frequency bands. SpaceX then went further, completing a roughly $17 billion acquisition of wireless spectrum from EchoStar, which gave it the ability to negotiate with global carriers more independently.
Starlink’s EchoStar spectrum deal could bring 5G coverage anywhere
This recent ruling by the FCC blocked SpaceX from going further, protecting incumbent spectrum holders like Globalstar and Iridium. But the market momentum is already in motion. As Teslarati reported, SpaceX is targeting peak speeds of 150 Mbps per user for its next generation Direct-to-Cell service, compared to roughly 4 Mbps today, which would bring satellite connectivity close to standard carrier performance.
With a reported IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation on the horizon, each spectrum fight, carrier deal, and regulatory win or loss now carries weight beyond just connectivity. SpaceX is quietly becoming the infrastructure layer underneath the phones of millions of people, and the FCC’s next move will help determine how much further that reach extends.
FCC Satellite Rule Makings can be found here.
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