SpaceX launched Starship on its 13th suborbital test flight July 24, correcting some of the issues seen on the previous flight while deploying functioning satellites for the first time.
The post SpaceX conducts 13th Starship test flight appeared first on SpaceNews.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is many different things to many different people — but one thing that it definitely isn’t is a get-rich-quick scheme.
Since its debut on the public tickers back in early June, SpaceX shares have sunk from a high of over $225 to a dismal $110 today, as compounding failures and overvaluation fears take their toll. Overall, SpaceX is down nearly 30 percent compared to its opening stock price of $150 — and all those day-one rubes are now seeing red.
“Elon has ruined me,” one Redditor posted on r/WallStreetBets, along with a screenshot showing a loss of nearly $455,000 CAD on thousands of SpaceX shares. “He was supposed to take us to Mars and burn short sellers. Still holding 7300 shares. Please Elon fly again.”
On Musk’s X-formerly-Twitter, investor’s spirits, like his rockets, weren’t any higher.
Under a post showing off SpaceX’s Starship at sunset, dejected Musk acolytes moped about their fortunes, begging the company to get its act together.
“It sure would be cool if this stops crashing… 30 percent short interest and down 40 percent on the month,” one fanboy groused. “I believed in you and lost over 20k in a month. I really hope that it comes back.”
On Thursday, when SpaceX announced it was delaying the launch of Starship’s thirteenth test flight by a day, commenters were quick to point out that the update came just minutes after US stock markets closed. (The stock continued sinking the next day, falling more than another 3 percent by press time.)
“Notice they wait until market close now,” one poster quipped.
“Sure,” said another user, “wait till market close to announce…lol…as if we didn’t know what the weather was going to do hrs in advance.”
With that major test now scheduled for Friday evening, it remains to be seen whether a successful test will be enough to win back investors. On the flipside, a high-profile failure now could severely compound the company’s woes, putting SpaceX even further from the $2 trillion valuation Musk has promised. Time will tell.
More on SpaceX: China Is Catching Up With SpaceX Fast, Landing First Reusable Rocket Booster on Offshore Platform
The post SpaceX Investors in Meltdown Over All the Money They’ve Lost appeared first on Futurism.
A spacecraft fitted with two flexible robotic arms is on the way to geosynchronous orbit after launching earlier this week on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, kicking off a planned decade-long mission to open new frontiers in satellite servicing.
The Mission Robotic Vehicle, owned and built by Northrop Grumman, rocketed into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday. Three small propulsion pods, each functioning as standalone spacecraft, accompanied the MRV aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.
The Falcon 9 deployed all four payloads within about an hour of liftoff. It will take about a year for the satellites to maneuver from their initial elliptical drop-off orbit into a circular orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. At this altitude, the MRV and the three Mission Extension Pods (MEPs) will travel in lockstep with Earth's rotation, operating in the same kind of orbit as numerous civilian and military communications satellites, missile warning platforms, and a growing number of spy satellites.
© US Navy/Sarah Peterson
A spacecraft fitted with two flexible robotic arms is on the way to geosynchronous orbit after launching earlier this week on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, kicking off a planned decade-long mission to open new frontiers in satellite servicing.
The Mission Robotic Vehicle, owned and built by Northrop Grumman, rocketed into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday. Three small propulsion pods, each functioning as standalone spacecraft, accompanied the MRV aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.
The Falcon 9 deployed all four payloads within about an hour of liftoff. It will take about a year for the satellites to maneuver from their initial elliptical drop-off orbit into a circular orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. At this altitude, the MRV and the three Mission Extension Pods (MEPs) will travel in lockstep with Earth's rotation, operating in the same kind of orbit as numerous civilian and military communications satellites, missile warning platforms, and a growing number of spy satellites.
© US Navy/Sarah Peterson
A spacecraft fitted with two flexible robotic arms is on the way to geosynchronous orbit after launching earlier this week on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, kicking off a planned decade-long mission to open new frontiers in satellite servicing.
The Mission Robotic Vehicle, owned and built by Northrop Grumman, rocketed into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday. Three small propulsion pods, each functioning as standalone spacecraft, accompanied the MRV aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.
The Falcon 9 deployed all four payloads within about an hour of liftoff. It will take about a year for the satellites to maneuver from their initial elliptical drop-off orbit into a circular orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. At this altitude, the MRV and the three Mission Extension Pods (MEPs) will travel in lockstep with Earth's rotation, operating in the same kind of orbit as numerous civilian and military communications satellites, missile warning platforms, and a growing number of spy satellites.
© US Navy/Sarah Peterson
Welcome to Edition 9.04 of the Rocket Report! We've had to wait an extra week for SpaceX to get its 13th Starship test flight off the ground. A last-second abort on July 16 led engineers to roll the booster back to its hangar in South Texas to swap out engines. Starship is now back on the launch pad. Liftoff is set for Friday evening. A flawless launch and reentry will put SpaceX on the cusp of an orbital flight later this year. Ars will have a comprehensive recap story after the completion of the test flight.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
India's first private rocket reaches orbit. Indian space officials celebrated the debut flight of Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 rocket, India’s first fully commercial satellite launcher, as a “grand success” Saturday after an on-target climb into a 280-mile-high orbit following liftoff from an island spaceport in the Bay of Bengal, Ars reports. The Vikram-1 lifted off from India’s primary spaceport on Sriharikota Island around midday local time. The launch was delayed more than a half-hour to resolve a last-minute technical problem. The countdown resumed, culminating in the command to ignite Vikram-1’s solid-fueled first stage booster to propel the rocket off the launch pad.
© Zhou Quan/VCG via Getty Images
Welcome to Edition 9.04 of the Rocket Report! We've had to wait an extra week for SpaceX to get its 13th Starship test flight off the ground. A last-second abort on July 16 led engineers to roll the booster back to its hangar in South Texas to swap out engines. Starship is now back on the launch pad. Liftoff is set for Friday evening. A flawless launch and reentry will put SpaceX on the cusp of an orbital flight later this year. Ars will have a comprehensive recap story after the completion of the test flight.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
India's first private rocket reaches orbit. Indian space officials celebrated the debut flight of Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 rocket, India’s first fully commercial satellite launcher, as a “grand success” Saturday after an on-target climb into a 280-mile-high orbit following liftoff from an island spaceport in the Bay of Bengal, Ars reports. The Vikram-1 lifted off from India’s primary spaceport on Sriharikota Island around midday local time. The launch was delayed more than a half-hour to resolve a last-minute technical problem. The countdown resumed, culminating in the command to ignite Vikram-1’s solid-fueled first stage booster to propel the rocket off the launch pad.
© Zhou Quan/VCG via Getty Images
Welcome to Edition 9.04 of the Rocket Report! We've had to wait an extra week for SpaceX to get its 13th Starship test flight off the ground. A last-second abort on July 16 led engineers to roll the booster back to its hangar in South Texas to swap out engines. Starship is now back on the launch pad. Liftoff is set for Friday evening. A flawless launch and reentry will put SpaceX on the cusp of an orbital flight later this year. Ars will have a comprehensive recap story after the completion of the test flight.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
India's first private rocket reaches orbit. Indian space officials celebrated the debut flight of Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 rocket, India’s first fully commercial satellite launcher, as a “grand success” Saturday after an on-target climb into a 280-mile-high orbit following liftoff from an island spaceport in the Bay of Bengal, Ars reports. The Vikram-1 lifted off from India’s primary spaceport on Sriharikota Island around midday local time. The launch was delayed more than a half-hour to resolve a last-minute technical problem. The countdown resumed, culminating in the command to ignite Vikram-1’s solid-fueled first stage booster to propel the rocket off the launch pad.
© Zhou Quan/VCG via Getty Images
Astronomers may soon witness an unusual celestial event that could be observable from parts of Earth using ground-based telescopes. The upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to collide with the Moon on August 5 at approximately 09:35 Kyiv time (2:35 a.m. ET). The impact is predicted to occur near Einstein crater. The […]
The post The End of a Long Space Journey: Scientists Predict When and Where a Falcon 9 Upper Stage Will Impact the Moon appeared first on AERONAUT.media.
In interview, billionaire says instead of running ‘Doge’ he should’ve ‘worked on my companies’ and shares extreme predictions
Elon Musk has admitted he became too consumed by politics during his volatile alliance with Donald Trump and his brief appointment as the president’s financial axman, running the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).
The world’s richest person, and briefly its first trillionaire after his SpaceX company floated on the New York stock exchange in June, made the confession in a wide-ranging interview with the Economist published on Thursday. He shared his positions on subjects from foreign wars to AI, and made a number of eye-opening predictions for the future.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
© Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
© Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Elon Musk hinted at a merger between Tesla and SpaceX on Tesla’s Q2 2026 earnings call, pointing to “more and more overlap” between the two companies he controls.
He stopped short of confirming anything, deferring to Tesla’s general counsel and “the appropriate process” — but the exchange is the closest Musk has come to addressing the merger speculation directly.
Shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX are continuing their weeks-long decline, hitting a new all-time low of around $115 by Wednesday afternoon.
The scale of the accumulating losses since the company’s hotly-anticipated IPO last month is staggering. The company has wiped out over $1.1 trillion in market value since hitting an all-time high of $225 last month, and it’s possible that its decline is just getting started.
The rocket company has given investors little to grasp onto, apart from an ever-optimistic Musk claiming that it could one day be worth more than the entire Earth. On Thursday, the company was forced to scrub the launch of its Starship spacecraft because several engines failed to start — a perfect metaphor for the company’s recent stock market performance.
Meanwhile, countless short sellers are making billions by betting against the company, adding plenty of downward pressure on the stock.
Looming in the background is the second quarter earnings call of Musk’s EV maker, Tesla, on Wednesday evening. The company has been burning through cash at an alarming rate despite seeing sales and revenues jump. Analysts are still keeping close tabs on the chance that Musk may fold Tesla into SpaceX, a merger of unprecedented proportions. Tesla will likely be facing plenty of questions about the possibility during this week’s earnings call.
“I think there’s over 80 percent chance that Tesla and SpaceX get together in 2027,” tech analyst and longtime Tesla bull Dan Ives said in a note. “It’s the logical move from a data engineering perspective and Musk ownership. It makes too much sense for it not to happen.”
The level of uncertainty is palpable. SpaceX is lining up its prototype Starship rocket for another launch attempt on Thursday. Roughly a week and a half later, the company is expected to release its second quarter financials, a major litmus test of where the company is headed. As Yahoo Finance notes, investors are interested in how much the rocket company will be spending on AI products and the growth of its Starlink internet satellite business.
What likely won’t change is the fact that the company’s lofty valuation remains largely disconnected from its ability to make any money. SpaceX lost almost $5 billion last year — and xAI, which was folded into the company when it took over X-formerly-Twitter, lost a further $6.4 billion.
More on SpaceX: SpaceX Is Learning a Nasty Lesson About Going Public When Your Main Product Is Experimental
The post SpaceX Stock Hits All-Time Low of $115 appeared first on Futurism.
As shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX continue to dip, short sellers betting against the company are making an absolute fortune.
As Reuters reported last week, short sellers had already made a whopping $8.7 billion in profit — and that was when the company’s stock was trading around $135. Since then, shares have cratered, dipping all the way down to an all-time low of $118 by Wednesday.
As a result, even more short sellers are throwing themselves at the chance to bet against the company, as CNBC reports. According to estimates from financial software company S3 Partners, around 206 million shares are being shorted, just under a third of all publicly tradable shares. That’s up from around 185 million just last week and only 40 million shares one month ago.
“We continue to see short sellers adding exposure ahead of several key upcoming catalysts, including the company’s first earnings report as a public company and subsequent lock-up expirations,” S3 head of research Matthew Unterman told CNBC.
Musk, who has an extensive track record of raging against Tesla short sellers, is clearly letting the issue get under his skin.
“The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” he tweeted.
The almost-trillionaire also rehashed his belief that “SpaceX will be worth more than Earth if we achieve our goals,” stating without evidence that his extremely far-fetched prediction was “obviously true.”
But before it has any chance to take over the entire world, SpaceX has a lot to prove. The company confirmed this week that it will release its first quarterly earnings report on August 4, a major litmus test of where the company’s headed.
Chances are it won’t be pretty. SpaceX’s market capitalization of over $1.6 trillion — making it one of the most valuable companies in the world — has little to no bearing on its current business fundamentals. The company lost almost $5 billion last year. Musk’s xAI, which was folded into SpaceX earlier this year and renamed to SpaceXAI, similarly lost $6.4 billion.
To regain ground lost ground, Musk will have to convince investors of his lofty and untested goals of sending data centers into space and settling on the Moon with the help of SpaceX’s behemoth Starship spacecraft.
Those claims will be put to the test Thursday, when the company has scheduled another test of the mammoth rocket — and regardless of the outcome, we’re likely to see substantial stock movement in its wake.
More on SpaceX: Short Sellers Are Having a Field Day Betting Against SpaceX as Shares Continue to Slip
The post Short Sellers Are Going Hog Wild Against SpaceX as Its Stock Craters appeared first on Futurism.
Tesla and Starlink say SpaceX’s satellite internet is now “directly integrated” into the Cybercab, Tesla’s dedicated robotaxi.
The reveal came through a pair of posts on X on Monday, with a cutaway diagram showing a Starlink antenna sitting in the vehicle’s roof. Neither company explained why a car that drives itself on its own computer needs internet from space.
On Thursday, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was forced to call off the latest launch attempt of its enormous Starship spacecraft. According to the almost-trillionaire, several engines failed to start, unintentionally serving as the perfect metaphor for the company’s persistent Wall Street woes.
While a scrub of a rocket launch isn’t exactly anything out of the ordinary, it was the first attempt following the company’s blockbuster IPO last month. At first, SpaceX’s stock rocketed to an all-time high of $225 by mid-June, buoyed by plenty of pent-up investor enthusiasm.
But ever since, the company has struggled to recapture that early unbridled optimism. Shares have slid consistently over the last four weeks, a bruising Wall Street performance that sheds light on lingering doubts over SpaceX’s ability to justify its vast multi-trillion dollar valuation.
Shares dipped below a bruising $120 before trading stopped on Monday afternoon, a new record low that’s well below SpaceX’s IPO price of $135. That means the plummeting stock has wiped out almost half of its value compared to its all-time high, representing over $1 trillion in market cap. Anybody who bought shares after the IPO is now officially underwater.
It’s not difficult to come up with reasons behind the company’s ongoing stock market troubles. As SpaceX’s years-long struggle to develop its super heavy launch platform demonstrates, Musk’s ambitions for the company are largely built on hopes and dreams, from orbital data centers to a city on Mars, which are cool sci-fi concepts but entirely unproven in the real world.
SpaceX is now targeting this Thursday evening for its next attempt to launch its Starship, the 13th test flight in over three years. Despite billions of dollars spent, many of these launches have ended in enormous explosions.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. SpaceX’s long-term ambitions are all tied up with the success of its Starship platform. Without it, the company may not be able to keep up with its ambitious plans to expand its Starlink satellite constellation, help NASA reach the surface of the Moon, and settle on Mars. That’s not to mention SpaceX’s lucrative multibillion-dollar contracts with the Pentagon.
On the other hand, SpaceX has bought itself plenty of time by raising tens of billions of dollars following its IPO. That’s despite having lost almost $5 billion in 2025.
Whether that will be enough cash to turn Starship into a viable and quick-turnaround space launch platform remains to be seen. For one, the degree of complexity is enormous. The spacecraft is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — and sticking the landing without erupting into a fireball is proving far more difficult than SpaceX may have anticipated.
More on SpaceX: SpaceX Investors Are Lamenting All the Money They’ve Lost
The post SpaceX Is Learning a Nasty Lesson About Going Public When Your Main Product Is Experimental appeared first on Futurism.
It seems as though $5.6 billion wasn't enough. That was the news from the US Space Force on Friday, when military officials announced they were tripling the maximum value of one of the service's National Security Space Launch contracts to $17 billion.
The expansion of the Space Force's National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 contract comes as the Pentagon signals rising demand for military satellite launches. The NSSL program is set up to allow Space Systems Command, which oversees the Space Force's launch program, to select from a pool of launch providers for individual missions to deliver the military's satellites to orbit.
The NSSL program has two parts. Lane 1 covers the Space Force's more risk-tolerant missions, such as medium-lift launches with experimental payloads or rideshare missions carrying satellites for the Pentagon's surveillance or data relay constellations. Lane 2 includes higher-priority strategic missions, like the government's largest and most expensive spy satellites, or radiation-hardened communications satellites designed to survive a nuclear war.
© SpaceX
It seems as though $5.6 billion wasn't enough. That was the news from the US Space Force on Friday, when military officials announced they were tripling the maximum value of one of the service's National Security Space Launch contracts to $17 billion.
The expansion of the Space Force's National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 contract comes as the Pentagon signals rising demand for military satellite launches. The NSSL program is set up to allow Space Systems Command, which oversees the Space Force's launch program, to select from a pool of launch providers for individual missions to deliver the military's satellites to orbit.
The NSSL program has two parts. Lane 1 covers the Space Force's more risk-tolerant missions, such as medium-lift launches with experimental payloads or rideshare missions carrying satellites for the Pentagon's surveillance or data relay constellations. Lane 2 includes higher-priority strategic missions, like the government's largest and most expensive spy satellites, or radiation-hardened communications satellites designed to survive a nuclear war.
© SpaceX
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