A discarded upper stage from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2583318-spacex-rocket-crashes-into-moon-at-8700-kilometres-per-hour/">crashed</a> into the moon early Wednesday morning, traveling at about 5,400 miles per hour. The impact is believed to have occurred at around 2:35 a.m. ET near the moon&#8217;s Einstein crater.
<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/commercial-space/nasa-will-attempt-to-observe-rocket-parts-lunar-impact/">NASA</a> estimates the new crater caused by the crash is roughly 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep. Images of the area before and after the impact are expected soon. Lunar orbiters from South Korea and the United States will also examine the location.
The rocket stage was nearly 45 feet long and weighed about 8,800 pounds. Independent astronomers initially tracked its path using public data, and NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies later confirmed the trajectory. The agency said the object posed no danger to Earth and that it would study the impact site for scientific purposes.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 launched on January 15, 2025, carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and ispace’s Resilience lander. The first stage returned back to Earth. The upper stage sent the landers toward the moon and then stayed in space. Blue Ghost landed successfully in March 2025, but Resilience’s landing attempt failed.
For lower orbit missions, upper stages usually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. This high-energy flight required a different disposal approach. Julianna <a href="https://www.ksl.com/article/51605781/a-spacex-rocket-is-about-to-crash-into-the-moon">Scheiman</a> of SpaceX said the company completed the required maneuver. Solar activity and gravity later put the stage on a path toward the moon.
“But for high-energy missions, we need to perform a different maneuver to ensure the second stage itself is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations,” Scheiman said. “We did that here for the Ispace and Blue Ghost missions’ second stage, and what has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon.”
Hannah Sargeant of the University of Leicester said telescopes worldwide were watching the site. She noted that randomly sending debris to the moon is not ideal and should not become routine, citing risks to sites of interest or historical hardware such as the Apollo landers.
NASA and the European Space Agency are required to plan for safe disposal of spacecraft, while commercial operators currently operate under different rules.
The heavy payload on this launch required extra thrust, leaving the stage in an uncontrolled state that led to the collision course.
Scientists expect useful data and astronomers hope to capture images of a crater forming and of the material thrown outward. Knowing the mass, speed, and path of this object can still provide concrete information on how planetary surfaces respond to impacts. The flash of the impact itself was expected to last about one second.
A preprint study estimated the crater diameter between 60 and 100 feet. Material ejected from the crash could travel as far as 500 miles before falling back to the moon. South Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter aimed to image the stage before impact. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will survey the site afterward.
Artificial impacts on the moon have been rare. Researchers plan to use the data as more missions, including those under the Artemis program, seek to travel to the moon.

US-SPACE-ROBOTICS-SATELLITE-SPACEX

SpaceX Rocket Crashes Into The Moon

Discarded Falcon 9 upper stage hits near Einstein crater, creating an estimated 60 foot wide crater

Falcon 9

Moon

Space

SpaceX

A decommissioned SpaceX rocket that got off course is expected to slam into the moon at 5,400 miles per hour on Wednesday morning. 
The upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will likely crash into the moon at 2:35 a.m. ET on Wednesday after drifting for 19 months in a moon-crossing high-Earth orbit. Typically, the upper stage of the rocket would enter a highly elliptical orbit of the Earth before eventually being brought down and catching fire before it landed in a remote part of the ocean. But gravitational pulls from Earth, the moon, and the sun gradually altered the rocket&#8217;s trajectory. The rocket was used to launch commercial moon landers into space before it was decommissioned.
Julianna Scheiman, the director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, <a href="https://www.space.com/astronomy/moon/a-spacex-rocket-will-crash-into-the-moon-this-week-why-is-it-on-a-collision-course">said</a> that the company performed &#8220;a different maneuver [than deorbiting] to ensure that the second stage itself is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations.&#8221; 
&#8220;What has happened is, essentially, a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon,&#8221; Scheiman added. 
Astronomer Bill Gray, who first predicted the date and time of the collision, <a href="https://time.com/article/2026/08/04/spacex-moon-crash-what-to-know/">estimates</a> the crash will release energy equivalent to 15,000 sticks of dynamite and will create a considerable debris plume. Despite the power and scale of the impact, scientists say the crash will be too dim and too fast to spot with the naked eye from Earth. NASA says the collision poses no threat to Earth and that the agency “will continue to track the booster for training purposes, as well as later observe the impact site for scientific purposes.”
Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Benjamin Fernando said that the collision &#8220;provides an opportunity to test pipelines for measuring flash properties to locate impact events seismically, and to better understand the multi-modal hazards posed to future lunar infrastructure and astronauts from space debris impacting the moon.” 
The crater caused by the collision is expected to be 90 feet wide and 16 feet deep. NASA will point its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a robotic spacecraft that maps the moon, at the site before and after the strike. 
Wednesday&#8217;s impact will mark just the second time a spent rocket has hit the moon accidentally. In 2022, a Chinese rocket booster collided with the moon’s far side. In that crash, researchers initially suspected it was a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket before realizing it was China’s Long March 3C rocket that had launched a trip around the moon in October 2014. 
As NASA prepares to establish a sustained human presence on the moon, managing space debris in lunar orbit will become increasingly important. Future collisions could eject debris from the lunar surface, creating potential hazards for astronauts, spacecraft, and nearby operating infrastructure.

A SpaceX Rocket Is About To Crash Into The Moon

Elon Musk

rocket

Elon Musk has become the world&#8217;s first former trillionaire after steep declines in Tesla and SpaceX shares wiped roughly $200 billion from his net worth.
Musk joked about becoming the world&#8217;s first former trillionaire on Friday after his fortune briefly dipped below $1 trillion.
At the height of the SpaceX IPO frenzy, Musk’s fortune hit $1.3 trillion as shares surged from their $135 IPO price to as high as $225 before retreating to <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPCX/">$112</a> on Monday. 
The massive swings are consistent with past IPOs, with new stocks often swinging 30-50% as the market digests excitement and volatility. However, the former trillionaire’s automaker also experienced a massive swing on Wednesday. Tesla <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-price-loses-year-gains-6acf48c3">erased</a> a year of gains when shares fell 18% after the company reported a second-quarter operating profit of $400 million that was well below Wall Street’s expectations of $1.72 billion. 
Stocks tied to Musk tend to be especially volatile because investors are betting on the companies&#8217; potential rather than their current standing. 
Tesla&#8217;s valuation reflects expectations that it will dominate autonomous driving while expanding into robotaxis, Optimus humanoid robots, and artificial intelligence. SpaceX, while a rocket company, is also promising to establish data centers in space, with the company now owning xAI. 
The swings are compounded by the fact that Musk is an unusually active public figure, often posting multiple times a day on his social media platform, X. His comments, product announcements, and political statements can quickly shift investor sentiment and trigger sharp moves in his companies&#8217; stock prices.
Despite the sharp drop from his trillionaire peak, dramatic swings in Musk&#8217;s fortune are par for the course. On June 29, his net worth jumped by more than $60 billion in a single day, and on October 24, he added another $30 billion after Tesla reported stronger-than-expected earnings. With a majority of Musk&#8217;s wealth tied to the market value of his companies, small percentage moves in their stock prices can translate into tens of billions of dollars gained or lost in a matter of seconds.

Elon Musk Becomes World’s First Former Trillionaire

Business

Tesla

SpaceX’s Starship Flight 13 successfully landed in the Indian Ocean with an intact heat shield, a major milestone for the company as it looks to put men back on the moon.
Instead of hitting the water with a fireball, as in previous flights, the rocket flipped into its vertical landing position and touched down in the Indian Ocean before falling over and floating on top of the water.
“That is a first,” Dan Huot, communications manager for SpaceX, said during the livestream. “That is the softest splashdown we have ever had with the Starship there in the Indian Ocean.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the 13th flight test of Starship! <a href="https://t.co/g27YJCQgiN">pic.twitter.com/g27YJCQgiN</a>
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) <a href="https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2080804682918764619?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The July 24 flight was the second test of Starship’s V3 rocket and the first flight to deploy Starlink V3 satellites, <a href="https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-13">according</a> to SpaceX’s website. SpaceX originally planned the test flight for July 16 but aborted just before the launch after some of the engines failed to start.
In the first test of the V3, the rocket hit the Indian Ocean with a planned explosion. This time, the rocket bobbed gently in the water while waiting for the recovery team.
The landing was so successful that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said SpaceX might try to catch the rocket on the next test flight.
“Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight,” Musk said on X.
Cameras on Starship continued sending video of the rocket after landing and provided views of the rocket’s heat shield, which was mostly intact.
“This is the first time we’ve put an intact Starship in the water,” Huot said on the livestream. “This is a dream scenario for the team that’s trying to get this heat shield data.”
Musk highlighted an X post showing the progress the company has made with the heat shield in four test flights.
“Latest heat shield design looks great!” Musk said on X.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Latest heat shield design looks great! <a href="https://t.co/PitlHFwilp">https://t.co/PitlHFwilp</a>
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2080817350069084561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman celebrated Flight 13’s successful launch.
“Excited for what will be learned from this mission,” Isaacman wrote on X. “When Starship comes online, its capabilities will be game-changing, not least of which will be ensuring we never give up the Moon again!”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Pretty clear from this shot that <a href="https://x.com/SpaceX?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SpaceX</a> knows where we are going! Congrats on getting Flight 13 underway. Excited for what will be learned from this mission. When Starship comes online, its capabilities will be game-changing, not least of which will be ensuring we never give up… <a href="https://t.co/aTSUCqUPcB">https://t.co/aTSUCqUPcB</a>
— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) <a href="https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2080794963596726670?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The successful flight is a major milestone for SpaceX as it prepares for NASA’s Artemis III mission. NASA partnered with SpaceX to create a version of Starship to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/reference/human-landing-systems-2/">according</a> to NASA’s website.
This was the first test flight since SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took the company public in the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-musk-becomes-first-trillionaire-after-spacex-ipo">largest</a> initial public offering in history.
“Lucky Number 13,” Huot said. “Hell of a flight for Starship.”

SpaceX Starship Flight 13: Ship 40 And Booster 20 Launch From Starbase

SEE IT: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Shocks With ‘Softest Splashdown ever’ Of Rocket Into Ocean

Air and Space

Rockets

Elon Musk&#8217;s SpaceX IPO will undoubtedly be the biggest IPO in history. 
What&#8217;s unusual about this particular IPO is that it is widely available to retail investors, such as the man on the street. Typically, in any IPO, a certain percentage of the company&#8217;s stock is offered to the public, and a large percentage of that stock is already pre-purchased by institutional investors.
The pre-market valuation of the IPO is likely to be in the $1.77 trillion range, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That is not a bad thing. It is an amazing thing. But you are going to hear from all the wrong people that it&#8217;s immoral, terrible, even evil. Why?
Envy. It&#8217;s a universal human emotion, and envy is bad and wrong, and God explicitly condemns it.
What could destroy the country and the global economy is what has always threatened humanity: Envy.
Jimmy Kimmel is a beautiful example of this. Jimmy Kimmel is a multimillionaire who works for billionaires, and he&#8217;s upset about a prospective trillionaire.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-ben-shapiro-show-ep-2444?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Kimmel is an obnoxious, non-funny, woke pope of late-night TV, who&#8217;s probably worth somewhere between $50 million and $100 million. He is paid by people worth tens of billions of dollars to complain about a guy who built a company that would be worth $1.77 trillion.
Kimmel mocked:
<blockquote>Elon Musk came to the United States from South Africa in 1995, the son of a humble emerald mine owner, and he is so grateful to this country that allowed him to become a trillionaire. Tesla paid almost no federal income tax over the past three years. You know, for a guy who has been openly cheering immigrants getting kicked out of the country for stealing from us, sure seems like an immigrant who&#8217;s been stealing from us, to me.</blockquote>
This is just obnoxious trash. It is not true. Elon did not, in fact, grow up wealthy. His dad was kind of a mess. And as far as the idea that Elon came to the United States wealthy, that is eminently untrue. He was living in some of the worst apartments in America when he came here. And then he didn&#8217;t get a job at Netscape despite applying. And then he ended up becoming this unbelievable success.
The notion that he is stealing from Americans by building several of the most successful companies in American history is totally crazy.
What has Jimmy Kimmel built? Ever?
But here&#8217;s what&#8217;s really going on: Jimmy Kimmel doesn&#8217;t like that Elon is really, really, really rich.
Kimmel continued:
<blockquote>Trillion dollars. It&#8217;s hard for our brains to conceptualize that. I mean, we know a trillion is a number, but it&#8217;s so large. In the same way, we can&#8217;t fathom it the same way. We know, like Elon has a lot of kids when we can&#8217;t fathom him getting laid, right? So let me try to illustrate it. If you tried to count out loud to a trillion, you would be counting until the year 33,736. $1 trillion is 10 billion $100 bills.</blockquote>
I&#8217;m just wondering: Jimmy Kimmel is worth probably $100 million. If you counted to 100 million, it would take you about 3 years, if you counted one number per second and stayed up all night.
Why the envy, why the rage?
There’s certainly something political to it. Jimmy Kimmel was much nicer to Elon Musk back in 2013 when he had him on his show to talk about SpaceX.
He said to Musk:
<blockquote>You know, I want to go over some of your many accomplishments just for the audience in case they&#8217;re not familiar with them. In 1983, at age 12, you designed a video game and sold it to a computer magazine for $500. 1995, you quit the graduate program at Stanford to found Zip2. In 1999, you sold Zip2 to Compaq for $309 million.
You co-founded PayPal in 2000. You sold PayPal to eBay for a billion and a half dollars. You founded Space-X. You co-founded Tesla Motors. You helped create SolarCity, the solar power company. Well, it&#8217;s great to meet you. If you want to watch the launch, why wouldn&#8217;t you want to watch the launch of the Space-x rocket? On March 1 go to Space X.com and take a look.</blockquote>
Barack Obama toured SpaceX with Elon in 2010. The Democratic president of the United States marveled at it.
Musk was talking about reusable rockets back in 2010. That was not achieved for over half a decade. It was an enormous risk. And Obama was marveling at it at the time.
But now we&#8217;ve gone from that inspirational view to giant inflatable Elon Musks in Times Square with no shirt on and looking ugly.
What&#8217;s really going on here?
The answer is very simple: Envy.
There is a very interesting study in the journal &#8220;Frontiers in Psychology&#8221; from 2021 that discusses what are called “the two faces of envy.” The authors <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8578062/">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>Envy is like a wildfire destroying people. We feel envy for, a classmate who gets a good grade or, a neighbor who buys an expensive car. This kind of emotion drives our different behaviors, like small stones in the heart lake, ruining our peace of mind. &#8230; [Scholars] envy as “the intense, unpleasant feeling that one feels when one realizes that another has something that one strives for, pursues, or yearns for.” Envy is a painful emotion.</blockquote>
There are two kinds of envy. One is useful, and one is quite terrible.
One is benign envy: “The envious person may try to make themselves as good as the person being envied. Therefore, envy can increase personal effort, drive behavior to achieve the desired object, and to turn attention to the means of achieving it.”
And then there&#8217;s another type: malicious envy. This is where “The envious person may try to degrade the person being envied, to vilify or denigrate the other person&#8217;s advantages. Envy can increase schadenfreude behavior that leads to hostility and resentment. It can shift attention to the person being envied.”
By the way, it also leads to violence. There&#8217;s literally a full commandment among the Ten Commandments that is directly about envy: “You shall not covet your neighbor&#8217;s house, your neighbor&#8217;s wife, his servant, his ox, his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor&#8217;s.”
God takes the time to say envy is bad.
By the way, this is the only commandment that has to do with your feelings. All the rest are behaviorally driven: Don&#8217;t steal. Don&#8217;t kill, don&#8217;t blaspheme. Respect your parents and everyone else. This one is emotional. Why did God reserve one commandment for the emotion of envy?
Because it turns out the entire history of humanity relies on whether we can actually master our envy. This is the story of Cain and Abel. The story of Cain and Abel is about envy. Cain decides to sacrifice to God, and Abel follows suit. And God, for reasons we don&#8217;t understand from the Bible, accepts Abel’s sacrifice, but not Cain&#8217;s.
And then God says, “Surely if you do right, you will be uplifted. But if you do not do right, sin crouches at your door. Its urge is toward you, but you can be its master.”
What is that sin? It&#8217;s envy. And what does Cain do? Instead of going to Abel and saying, “What did you do right and I did wrong? How can I do better?” he kills Abel.
Envy is destructive. It is terrible.
What&#8217;s interesting here is when we get envious, because it&#8217;s not a universal timing thing; it&#8217;s a universal human emotion, we feel it all the time.
But it tends to kick in for anyone who&#8217;s just above you on the wealth index. So if you make 100 grand, you may be envious of the guy who makes 200 grand.
But it&#8217;s not every person who makes more than you.
There is a particular envy for people who take risks.
That’s because in our heart of hearts, we think we could have done that too. We look at Elon, we say, “I could have founded a SpaceX company. He thought of it, but I could have thought of it. I could have taken the risk. It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s within my purview.”
It&#8217;s really, really interesting to watch New Yorkers who just voted for a Democratic socialist like Zohran Mamdani, who riffs on Citadel CEO Ken Griffin all day long and roots for the Knicks this season. The Knicks are super rich. Really, really, really rich. Karl-Anthony Towns made $53 million this year. OG Anunoby made $40 million. Jalen Brunson makes $35 million a year. That is a lot of money.
But you&#8217;re not seeing jealousy or outrage in the stadium. People aren&#8217;t showing up and yelling at them about how they need to redistribute their income and pay more taxes, and how many school teachers are out of a job, and do we need more government-sponsored grocery stores.
So why are people so envious of these guys? Because everyone recognizes that these guys have unique talents given by God. You&#8217;re not seven feet, you&#8217;re not 270 pounds, and you can&#8217;t shoot the three.
But when it’s a smart person who doesn&#8217;t have exceptional physical qualities, then we get pretty jealous. “Why didn&#8217;t we get what he has? Why don&#8217;t we all get to be Elon Musk-rich? He&#8217;s not that much better than we are.”
But here is the thing. The reason that Elon is super-rich — and I know a lot of people who are as bright as Elon, I know a lot of very high IQ people, and Elon has a very high IQ, he is much richer than any of them — is because he took risks, huge risks, unprecedented risks.
And that is good because risk is what creates innovation. If you don&#8217;t have people risking, you don&#8217;t get better stuff. If you don&#8217;t have people taking out mortgages on their homes to sponsor and subsidize them, a company won&#8217;t get built.
If you don&#8217;t have people willing to put their own money where their mouth is, their own time, their own effort, you do not get new things.
We need new things. Not only that, we need a system that allows you to keep what you make.
For every single Elon Musk in any industry, there are 10,000 dudes who thought of it, risked it, and failed.
What is the only thing that will keep people risking it and trying to do the thing that actually builds? The only thing that incentivizes that is the possibility of making a lot of money.
That’s what generates people willing to take the risks that actually make the world a better place.
Risk-taking is risky. Take, for example, Blue Origin, run by another billionaire, Jeff Bezos, a competitor to SpaceX. A couple of weeks ago, we watched a Blue Origin rocket explode on the ground. Billions of dollars were lost in one millisecond.
That’s what it looks like when you take risks, because sometimes you fail. You know how many videos there are of Elon Musk&#8217;s rockets blowing up on the launch pad?
How do you incentivize a person to keep looking failure in the face over and over and over again? You have to have an American system, a free-market system that rewards risk-taking and punishes failure and rewards success.
That is what you require. People forget that Elon Musk risked pretty much his entire early fortune on SpaceX and Tesla.
This is risk-taking, and it&#8217;s awesome, and it should be rewarded.
No matter what Jimmy Kimmel thinks.

spacex_envy

The Sin Fueling America’s War On Success

Ben Shapiro

Envy

Jeff Bezos

Jimmy Kimmel

Opinion

Elon Musk’s SpaceX opened at $150 on Friday after the company sold 555 million shares at $135 each in what would be the largest initial public offering in history.
The company raised approximately $75 billion in the IPO, surpassing the previous record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. Shares quickly climbed more than 10% in early trading.
“It’s certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public in the largest IPO ever,” Musk said from SpaceX headquarters in Starbase, Texas. 
“I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all,” Musk added. “In fact, I told people this. I said, ‘Look, we’re probably going to fail, but you know, we should give it a try, because if we don&#8217;t, if there&#8217;s not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly space-bearing civilization.&#8221;
The public offering also cemented Musk&#8217;s status as the world&#8217;s wealthiest person. His net worth is now <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">valued</a> at more than $1.2 trillion, making him the first person to reach trillionaire status. Musk owns roughly 42% of SpaceX shares and is required to hold them for one year.
The IPO also created a major windfall for SpaceX employees. More than 4,000 workers became millionaires through company stock holdings, including cafeteria employees who participated in the company&#8217;s stock program.
One employee, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/technology/spacex-ipo-employee-millionaires.html">Trevor Hise</a>, started at SpaceX as an intern in 2011 and accumulated more than 100,000 shares, now valued at more than $15 million. Hise said his parents once urged him to turn down the SpaceX offer and take a job with General Electric instead.  
More than <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/spacex-millionaires-wealth-management.html">100</a> SpaceX employees now reportedly have combined assets valued between $1 billion and $5 billion. 
Musk and SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell marked the company&#8217;s public debut by ringing Nasdaq’s opening bell, with Musk appearing from Texas and Shotwell from New York City. 
Shotwell said the company could pursue major deals following the record-breaking IPO, while also hinting at future overlap between SpaceX and Musk&#8217;s other companies. 
“There’s no question that there are synergies between Tesla and SpaceX in our futures,” she <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/spacex-ipo-spcx-live-updates.html">said</a>. “There’s a convergence of what we’re all trying to accomplish in the future, but right now I’m focused on keeping the lights on here.”
Musk has also floated the possibility of eventually merging Tesla and SpaceX. SpaceX bought xAI earlier this year, giving the aerospace company ownership of xAI&#8217;s data centers, Grok AI models, and X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. 
For now, Musk said the IPO proceeds will help fuel “a significant growth phase” for SpaceX. His plans include placing more than 1 million satellites in orbit and building artificial intelligence data centers in space.

SpaceX Listed On Nasdaq Exchange

SpaceX Just Pulled Off Something Wall Street Has Never Seen

Technology

A Blue Origin rocket exploded Thursday night in Florida, causing immense damage to its billion-dollar launch pad and complicating NASA’s plans to build a base on the moon. 
The explosion rocked Blue Origin’s launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as the space company ran a ground test on one of its rockets. The cause of the explosion has not yet been determined. 
“We experienced an anomaly during today&#8217;s hotfire test. All personnel have been accounted for. We will provide updates as we learn more,” Blue Origin said on social media. 
Videos posted online showed a rocket sitting on the launch pad before becoming completely engulfed in flames after a massive explosion. 
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Nuclear explosion? No, it&#039;s Jeff Bezos&#039; rocket." width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ihV6PjqA8Dw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Blue Origin, said it was too early to know what prompted the explosion. 
“All personnel are accounted for and safe. It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it,” Bezos <a href="https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/2060182822170902622">said</a>. “Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”
“Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly,” said Elon Musk, who runs the rival space exploration company SpaceX. 
&#8220;Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard,&#8221; Musk added.
Blue Origin was preparing to send out 48 low-Earth orbit satellites <a href="https://x.com/Amazonleo/status/2059677904296919106">used</a> by Amazon Leo, a high-speed internet provider rival of Musk&#8217;s Starlink. The satellites were set to be carried out by Blue Origin&#8217;s New Glenn rocket, a heavy-lift rocket designed to be reusable. The rocket was <a href="https://www.blueorigin.com/new-glenn">named</a> after American astronaut John Glenn. 
The explosion did extensive damage to Blue Origin’s Launch Complex 36. The launch complex cost more $1 billion to build and was completed in 2021. Costs from New Glenn have been estimated to be around $68 million per launch, <a href="https://spaceinsider.tech/2025/01/10/new-glenn-vs-starship-a-detailed-comparison-in-2025">according</a> to Space Insider. 
Space Force issued a statement on Thursday warning the public that debris from the explosion may wash up on the shores in the next few days and weeks. It warned people not to touch the materials, but alert the authorities. 
The explosion could impact NASA plans for space exploration as Blue Origin was set to be involved in transporting NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon out of lunar orbit. NASA is <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/">supposed</a> to test its spacecraft integration with landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX for the Artemis III mission. 
“Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult,” <a href="https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2060186268772835475">said</a> NASA administrator Jared Isaacman. “We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets. We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available.”

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Bezos-Owned Rocket Explodes, And It Looks Like A Nuclear Bomb Went Off

Blue Origin

NASA

SpaceX just pulled off one of its wildest Starship tests yet — launching the biggest and most powerful version of the rocket ever built before intentionally slamming it into the Indian Ocean in a fiery ending straight out of a sci-fi movie.
Elon Musk’s company launched the 12th Starship test flight Friday using the brand-new Super Heavy V3 booster, a towering 407-foot rocket built to eventually carry humans back to the Moon and, one day, all the way to Mars.
The upgraded Starship blasted off from a brand-new launch pad in South Texas carrying roughly 45 tons of payload simulators, making it one of the biggest payload launches the world has seen in decades.
Of course, this being SpaceX, things got a little chaotic.
One of Starship’s engines failed during ascent, but the giant spacecraft somehow kept powering forward anyway and still completed its primary mission objectives.
The rocket successfully deployed 20 mock Starlink satellites before continuing its planned path halfway around the world. SpaceX also used modified camera-equipped Starlink satellites to capture footage of Starship flying through space.
Then came the jaw-dropping ending.
After nearly an hour in flight, Starship slammed into the Indian Ocean in a massive fireball that looked more like the finale of a Hollywood disaster movie than a routine aerospace test.
But unlike previous Starship explosions, this one was completely intentional. SpaceX planned for the spacecraft to burn up at the end of the mission while engineers gathered critical flight data for future launches.
“Congratulations @SpaceX team on an epic first Starship V3 launch and landing!” Musk posted on X. “You scored a goal for humanity.”
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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman also celebrated the launch, writing: “Congrats @SpaceX team and @elonmusk on a hell of a V3 Starship launch. One step closer to the Moon… one step closer to Mars.”
This is the same giant rocket NASA is now betting on to help land astronauts back on the Moon as part of the Artemis program before Musk ultimately tries pushing humanity toward Mars.
SpaceX is also attempting to make Starship fully reusable, with future plans involving giant mechanical arms literally catching rocket stages out of the sky during landing.
The launch comes just days after Musk announced plans to take SpaceX public in what could become the biggest IPO in history.
The company is reportedly seeking a staggering $1.75 trillion valuation and could raise between $40 billion and $80 billion.
SpaceX currently owns both Starlink and Musk’s AI company xAI.

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WATCH: SpaceX Just Pulled Off Its Wildest Starship Launch Yet

Poised to be the largest initial public offering (IPO) of all time, SpaceX’s IPO is expected to break with tradition through a reworked roadshow and an outsized allocation to retail investors. If the company does go public, it is expected to raise between $40 and $80 billion. China’s Alibaba holds the current record for the largest IPO with $22 billion raised in 2014. 
Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-02/spacex-is-said-to-target-more-than-2-trillion-valuation-in-ipo?srnd=homepage-americas">reports</a> that the company is seeking a $1.75 trillion valuation with a listing in June. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs are the banks leading the offering, which are projected to receive <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musks-go-to-banker-is-back-in-action-for-the-spacex-ipo-1dac530a">$400 million</a> from fees.
But in 2020, Elon Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1310672832783884290?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1310672832783884290%7Ctwgr%5E5a935ef8b4d0a3cbb4a7e2977788ea09d4cd261a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2020%2F09%2F28%2Felon-musk-spacex-will-probably-ipo-starlink-in-several-years.html">promised</a> not to leave out the retail investor. “We will probably IPO Starlink, but only several years in the future when revenue growth is smooth &amp; predictable. Public market does *not* like erratic cash flow haha. I’m a huge fan of small retail investors. Will make sure they get top priority. You can hold me to it,&#8221; Musk said. Starlink is a division of SpaceX. 
Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2039046398566625501">posted</a> “stand by me” Tuesday on X, the day before reports emerged that SpaceX had filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). CNBC reports that the billionaire is considering reserving as much as 30% of SpaceX’s IPO for individual investors. Typically, retail investors are allocated about 5 to 10% of shares. Musk also appears to be breaking from the competitive IPO bank selection process by turning to trusted relationships.
Chairman of Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley, Michael Grimes, is expected to lead the IPO. He’s worked with Musk before, helping him take Tesla public in 2010 and Twitter private in 2022. Reporting says that Musk submitted a confidential filing, which allows the company to submit its financials to the SEC for regulatory review before the public and prospective investors are able to view. At least fifteen days before the IPO roadshow, SpaceX will have to release a public filing, where investors will be able to review the company&#8217;s financials, business model, and key risks.
The Wall Street Journal reports Musk will do something nontraditional with the roadshow. Normally, executives hit the road to meet investors, but Musk wants investors to travel to SpaceX, where they can view its manufacturing facilities and potentially witness rocket launches.
Musk’s primary goal for SpaceX is to make human consciousness multi-planetary. He hopes to eventually establish a colony on Mars.
SpaceX owns Starlink, and as of February 2, xAI. SpaceX is planning to construct data centers in space using SpaceX rockets to build out the structure. The power generated from these orbital data centers could help satisfy the enormous energy demands of xAI, depending on whether the technology operates as Musk predicts. Musk has previously stated, &#8220;If we harness even a billionth of the Sun’s power for AI/robotics, it will be a 1000X return.”

Musk Eyes Record-Breaking Listing With Retail Investors At The Center

Starlink

Stock Market

U.S.

Wall Street

A renewed commitment to the Moon, Mars, and American leadership can define the next great era of national achievement.
With President Trump and Jared Isaacman pointing the way, the United States has a chance to lead humanity beyond Earth once again.
After decades of drift, America is finally preparing to reclaim its place at the forefront of space exploration.
For the first time in 50 years, Americans are traveling to the Moon and beyond.
No one should understate the importance of this decision to venture into the solar system beyond near-Earth orbit.
The recent announcements about the Moon, Mars, and beyond by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and the statements and executive orders of President Donald J. Trump are clear signals that America is back on track to carry freedom into space.
This is an important, indeed vital shift from the policies of the last half-century.
America met President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to go to the Moon by the end of the ‘60s — with landings beginning in 1969 and continuing through 1972. Then, the country sadly turned its back on the Moon and settled into a focus on low Earth orbit for a variety of commercial, national security, and scientific activities. During that half-century, we learned an amazing amount about how to operate close to the Earth, and our lives are impacted every minute of every day by these activities. For example, you would not have a cell phone in your pocket were it not for our innovations in low Earth orbit.
However, after the last American left the Moon in 1972, we neglected to invest in the kind of program that would have maintained the momentum of the Apollo program.
In President Trump’s first term, he indicated clearly how strongly he was committed to having America lead in space. He resurrected the National Space Council and then-Vice President Mike Pence did a great job bringing together every element of the Space community. President Trump created a Space Force dedicated to developing American military superiority in space and across the planet.
After a four-year period of neglect under President Joe Biden, the second Trump administration focused once again on pioneering in space and growing commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit.
By picking Isaacman to be the head of NASA, President Trump reached out to a unique and remarkable person. Isaacman had been a successful entrepreneur and was worth well over a billion dollars. He was also passionate about space and had spent a considerable amount to fly into space twice as a customer of SpaceX. He is the only civilian who has completed a space walk outside the International Space Station.
Because Isaacman is a visionary and an entrepreneurial manager, he has already begun to create a new, dramatically more powerful set of goals for NASA. The recent briefing outlined a permanent return to the Moon, the first voyages to preposition equipment on Mars for human development, and the high priority of building a nuclear-powered rocket (which will radically reduce travel time beyond the Moon). These are big, decisive investments in moving freedom into the solar system.
Artemis II will take four astronauts further into space than anyone has ever gone before. Soon, its larger successor, SpaceX’s Starship will revolutionize travel beyond the Earth.
As big as Artemis II is (a little more powerful than the huge Saturn rockets which carried our first manned space flights) it will be dwarfed by Starship.
As a SpaceX customer, Isaacman understands the power of Elon Musk’s determination to get things to work. The SpaceX development of reusable rockets collapsed the price of putting satellites in orbit by 90 percent. This was possibly the biggest affordability breakthrough of the last generation. Today about half of all launches in the world are SpaceX. Starship will be an even greater revolution.
Starship will launch 100 passengers or 100 tons of cargo — and will be usable repeatedly.
The Artemis II launch was the wake-up call that America is back.
This time we are not just going to visit the Moon. This time we are going to develop the Moon as usable property and learn how to get hydrogen out of the water ice which has turned out to be surprisingly abundant. Mastering in-situ resource manufacturing skills will be essential for future missions to Mars.
This time we are not just going to send clever robotic vehicles to the surface of Mars. We are going to land and begin to learn how to terraform and evolve Mars into a more hospitable, productive, and survivable environment.
There was one seeming mishap on the opening days of Artemis II, which — if looked at properly — is a sign of how far we have come.
The toilet suddenly stopped working.
Since it was a $30 million toilet, the first reaction was bad jokes and great skepticism.
Then, as the story came out, it was clear how far we had come in putting humans in space. Artemis II is the first vehicle going beyond low Earth orbit to have a toilet. It is the first time astronauts have a private room. The challenges of relieving oneself in space are enormous (think zero gravity and your imagination will do the rest). The original true pioneers in the Apollo program had astonishingly primitive systems and at times found it embarrassing.
Nevertheless, the toilet is now fixed, the mission continues, and it’s amazing how far we have come — and will go.
As Isaacman warned us, the Chinese are aggressive and serious competitors. They would like to make totalitarianism the standard across the solar system.
We are now on track to carry freedom everywhere, and Congress and the American people must rise to the occasion.
The future is now — if we are prepared to grab it.
* * *
Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999 and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He is chairman of <a href="https://www.gingrich360.net/">Gingrich 360</a>.

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The Race To The Moon And Mars Is Back And This Time Freedom Is On The Line

Artemis II

China

DW Opinion

John F. Kennedy (JFK)

Newt Gingrich

Trump Administration

United States Space Force

When Elon Musk announced that SpaceX would acquire his xAI company, most news outlets framed the merger as a corporate reshuffling, with some even describing the deal as a financial lifeline for the AI company. Musk’s own words, however, suggest something far more ambitious than a rescue mission. With the acquisition taking place on February 2, the early architecture of a system that ties energy, computing, space infrastructure, and artificial intelligence into one vertically integrated machine has begun to come into focus.
In December, Musk stated, “Space-based industries will vastly exceed the value of all of Earth, given that you could harness roughly 100,000 times more energy than Earth and still be using less than a millionth of the Sun’s energy.” The billionaire argued that Earth is the bottleneck and space is the throughput.
Just ten days before the merger announcement, Musk hinted at the scale of his vision: “If we harness even a billionth of the Sun’s power for AI/robotics, it will be a 1000X return. Money won’t mean much at that point.”
AI is rapidly becoming one of the most energy-hungry technologies ever built. Goldman Sachs <a href="https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/ai-to-drive-165-increase-in-data-center-power-demand-by-2030">projects</a> that power demand from data centers will increase by 50% by 2027 and over 165% by 2030. Training advanced AI models requires enormous clusters of GPUs, and keeping them from overheating is an engineering challenge of its own. Nvidia&#8217;s latest chip was engineered to be better optimized to cool down the hardware, highlighting that advances in AI are as much about optimizing energy as increasing computational power.
Musk is taking a different approach to energy, looking to use SpaceX to create power grids in orbit.
Two days before the merger, SpaceX filed a request with the federal government, asking permission to launch a massive orbital data center in space. If the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) grants the request, SpaceX will be able to launch its reusable rockets to build a massive constellation of satellites powered by solar energy.
The power generated from these orbital data centers could help satisfy the enormous energy demands of xAI, depending on whether the technology operates as described.
According to SpaceX, orbital data centers operate with little maintenance cost and never have to deal with a cloudy day, as it is “always sunny in space.” With its vast new energy source, Musk predicts that xAI will, in turn, be able to solve bigger problems and manage larger computations.
Not all are as optimistic as Musk. &#8220;Talk of launching data centers into space, sounds somewhere between optimistic to delusional. The same could be said of the value public markets have ascribed to the billionaire’s corporate efforts to date,&#8221; <a href="https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/spacexs-125-trln-deal-risks-burn-up-re-entry-2026-02-03/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">wrote</a> Robert Cyran for Reuters. He compared SpaceX and xAI&#8217;s merger to bankrupt companies in the dot-com bubble. He added, “Musk’s self-referential merger universe, if anything, revolves around even more outlandish hopes.”
The combined company is now valued at an estimated $1.25 trillion, making it the largest private tech enterprise in history, and the Financial Times reports that SpaceX is still aiming for an initial public offering in June. The IPO of the now combined company is expected to raise up to $50 billion, which would stand as largest IPO of all time.

Elon Musk’s Wild Space Gamble Could Decide Who Controls AI’s Future

Artificial Intelligence

Outer Space

SpaceX has informed investors and representatives of financial institutions that it plans to pursue an initial public offering in the second half of next year, the Information reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the discussions.
The rocket-maker, founded by Elon Musk, is considering a public listing of the entire company, including Starlink, its internet satellite service, according to the report.
Musk had said in 2020 that SpaceX planned to list Starlink several years in the future, once its revenue growth became smooth and predictable.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The news of the potential IPO follows a media report that said SpaceX is kicking off a secondary share sale that would value the rocket-maker at $800 billion, pitting it against OpenAI for the title of the most valuable private company.
SpaceX&#8217;s finance chief, Bret Johnsen, told investors about the sale in recent days, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The new potential valuation is double the $400 billion value it fetched in a recent secondary share sale.
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The $800 billion valuation would put SpaceX ahead of ChatGPT-parent OpenAI, which is valued at $500 billion as of October, making it the most valuable privately held company in the world, according to Crunchbase data.
Separately, Bloomberg News on Friday reported that SpaceX is preparing to sell insider shares that could include a per-share price of around $300, which would value the company at roughly $560 billion.
Several billionaires and private firms, including SpaceX and Jeff Bezos&#8217; Blue Origin, are fueling a new space race in the U.S., pouring money into rockets, satellites and lunar missions.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona)

SpaceX And Elon Musk photo illustration

SpaceX Tells Investors It’s Targeting Late 2026 IPO, Report Says

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