Towering 407 feet (124 metres), Starship soared from the company's base at the southern tip of Texas. NASA monitored the flight, a critical step toward using the Starship as a lunar lander for moon crews. Elon Musk's SpaceX replaced six of the 33 engines on the first-stage booster after they failed to ignite last week, resulting in a last-second launch abort. The previous Starship flight in May also experienced engine trouble, which prevented the booster from making a controlled return. It was the 13th flight of the world's biggest and most powerful rocket, and the second this year of the new version dubbed V3. Like the previous demo that climbed as high as 125 miles (200 kilometres), neither the booster nor spacecraft was being saved, instead ditching into the sea. The booster was bound for the Gulf of Mexico and the stainless steel, retro-looking spacecraft for the Indian Ocean more than 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometres) from where the hourlong flight began. The Starlinks had a job
SpaceX's mega Starship rocket came within a few seconds of blasting off on a test flight, but some of the engines failed to start triggering a launch abort. Elon Musk's company said on Thursday that it will have to figure out what went wrong before making another attempt to send Starship on a space-skimming flight halfway around the world. It was supposed to be the 13th flight for Starship, which at 407 feet (124 metres) tall with 33 main engines is the world's biggest and most powerful rocket. Twenty of SpaceX's newest and most advanced Starlinks were on board Starship for release during the planned hourlong flight. The internet satellites were going to try communicating with Starlinks already in orbit while taking photos of Starship's heat shield. Neither the first-stage booster nor spacecraft were meant to be recovered, with both ending up in the sea. NASA is counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in the next few years.
Stock closed at $135.27, marginally above its offer price after a fourth straight day of declines, reflecting cooling investor enthusiasm
The Long March 10B's first stage made a vertical landing on an offshore platform, making China the second country after the US to achieve the feat
Japan's ispace will launch a lower-cost lunar cargo service using SpaceX's Starship, aiming to expand commercial access to the Moon by 2030
SpaceX has lost nearly $600 billion in market value in just one week, with shares plunging 23% from their recent peak. Investors are worried about the company's massive $20 billion bond offering
India's draft spectrum rules move satellite reforms forward, but low earth orbit operators such as Starlink, OneWeb and Jio-SES still await security clearance and separate regulations
The stock fell 16% Monday to close at $154.60, the lowest level since the company's first day of trading, pushing its 3-day loss to 23% and erasing over $600 billion in value over that period
In the month of the Covid year, the share had fallen to less than 1 basis point
There are also social risks that accompany huge bets on labour-saving technologies like AI and robotics
SpaceX formally agreed to buy Cursor Tuesday in an all-stock deal that values the company at $60 billion
At the stock's intraday high, the market value of Elon Musk's rocket and AI company topped Microsoft Corp. to briefly become the world's fourth-largest stock
Today's opinions explore India's external vulnerabilities, the concentration of global capital in US technology, energy reforms, disclosure norms, and a nuanced portrait of Kashmir through the Chenab
SpaceX has sealed its $60 billion takeover of Cursor, strengthening Elon Musk's push to compete in the fast-growing AI coding market
SpaceX's record IPO highlights how global capital is gravitating towards US tech giants, raising concerns over funding, innovation and market depth elsewhere
The IPO is the headline, but the real story is about index methodology, said Dina Ting, head of global index portfolio management at Franklin Templeton
SpaceX's record-breaking Nasdaq debut proceeded smoothly, easing concerns over market infrastructure ahead of expected IPOs from OpenAI and Anthropic
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's investment firm Kingdom Holding Co surged after SpaceX's share gains on its first day of trading drove the value of the Saudi firm's holding to almost $7 bn
The IPO, the biggest in US history, vaulted SpaceX's value above two Mag 7 members: CEO Elon Musk's other company, Tesla , and Meta Platforms
The protest also echoed another critique that resonated with denizens of the capitalist set: the case against fast-tracking SpaceX into equity indexes