Private aerospace company
Appears in 19 stories
Controller of world's largest satellite internet constellation
Ukraine's military has depended on Starlink satellite internet since the first week of Russia's 2022 invasion. On February 5, 2026, SpaceX cut off Russian forces from that network, collapsing command systems and halving daily assault operations within hours.
Updated 2 days ago
Public S-1 filed mid-May 2026; IPO roadshow targets June 4; pricing June 11; Nasdaq debut June 12 under SPCX at $1.75T–$2T valuation; 2025 revenue $18.67B; 2025 net loss $4.94B
In February 2026, SpaceX bought xAI for $250 billion, the largest acquisition in corporate history. By mid-May, all 11 original xAI co-founders had left, and more than 50 SpaceXAI researchers and engineers had departed for Meta and Thinking Machines Lab.
Updated 3 days ago
Starship development continues for future Artemis missions; no longer pacing item for Artemis III after program overhaul
No human has traveled beyond low-Earth orbit since December 1972. On January 17, 2026, NASA rolled its 322-foot Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center.
Updated 7 days ago
S-1 filed with SEC on May 20; IPO roadshow begins June 8, Nasdaq pricing targeted June 12
SpaceX scrubbed the first V3 launch attempt on May 21 when a hydraulic pin on the launch tower arm failed to retract at T-40 seconds. The company repaired the fault overnight and rescheduled the debut of Booster 19 and Ship 39 for May 22 from Starbase Pad 2.
Operating 10,200+ Starlink satellites across 160 countries; 10 million subscribers as of February 2026
In December 2025, a newly formed Chinese state institute filed for 200,000 satellites with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It claimed spectrum priority for the largest constellation ever proposed. Under ITU rules, early filers get priority on orbital slots and radio frequencies—a move that buys options in the race against American dominance of low Earth orbit.
Conducting evacuation
NASA evacuated one crew member from the International Space Station on January 14, 2026, for a serious but stable medical condition. The SpaceX Crew Dragon carried four astronauts home six weeks early, splashing down safely off California on January 15 after 167 days in space. This ended a 25-year streak without a medical evacuation, despite predictions of one every three years.
Updated May 21
Rapid iteration model adopted as Pentagon acquisition blueprint; awarded $739M Space Force contract
Trump wants to spend $1.5 trillion on defense in 2027—a jaw-dropping 66% jump from this year's $901 billion. This would be the largest single-year defense increase since the Korean War.
Updated May 19
Competitor and contracted launcher
A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Sunday morning carrying replacement satellites Globalstar needs to keep its mobile network alive. The same launch ticks off one of the conditions Amazon set before paying about $10.7 billion to buy the company.
Updated May 17
Alternate launch provider for multiple iQPS satellites, underscoring iQPS’s multi-provider strategy
Rocket Lab ended 2025 with another success. On Dec. 21, Electron lifted off from Māhia and placed iQPS's QPS-SAR-15 into orbit, extending a run of repeat business that positions Rocket Lab as a default launcher for constellation operators.
Updated May 15
Major NASA contractor; central to Artemis lander plans and political scrutiny
One day after his 67–30 confirmation, Jared Isaacman was sworn in on Dec. 18, 2025 as NASA's 15th administrator—walking directly into a White House-driven acceleration campaign that now has his name on the clock, not just the contracts.
Starlink market leader; also launching some Kuiper/Leo satellites
At 3:28 a.m. ET on December 16, ULA lit an Atlas V and pushed 27 Amazon Leo broadband satellites into orbit. It's another clean launch in a campaign that's starting to look like a metronome: stack satellites, light rocket, repeat.
Runs the world’s highest-cadence launch system and the dominant LEO broadband constellation
SpaceX doesn’t “do launches” anymore. It does output — another pair of Starlink v2-mini batches is on the manifest, each packing 29 satellites, the orbital equivalent of sliding more servers into a data center rack.
Dominant global launch provider; operates the rideshare program enabling this mission
For most of the space age, putting a satellite into orbit meant booking an entire rocket—an option available only to governments and the largest companies. SpaceX's rideshare program inverted that model: pay by the kilogram, share the ride, and launch on a schedule set by the operator, not the customer.
Updated May 3
Successfully returned Falcon Heavy to flight on April 29, 2026, delivering ViaSat-3 F3 to geostationary transfer orbit
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on April 29, 2026 at 10:13 a.m. Eastern time, successfully placing the third and final ViaSat-3 satellite into geostationary transfer orbit. It was the rocket's first flight in 18 months and its 12th since its 2018 debut. Both side boosters landed simultaneously at Landing Zone 2 and Landing Zone 40 at Cape Canaveral — the first time Falcon Heavy used LZ-40, a pad that opened with a Crew Dragon mission in February 2026 — while the center core was expended into the Atlantic as planned for this high-energy trajectory. Two days earlier, rain and clouds moving over Kennedy Space Center had forced the countdown to stop with 28 seconds left on the clock.
Updated Apr 29
Contracted to launch Roman on Falcon Heavy
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is fully built, under budget, and targeting a September 2026 launch — eight months ahead of its formal deadline. Unveiled on April 21, 2026, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the observatory carries a 300-megapixel infrared camera with a field of view at least 100 times wider than Hubble's, designed to photograph a billion galaxies and discover more than 100,000 new worlds over its first five years. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who attended the unveiling, noted that what Hubble would need 2,000 years to survey, Roman can cover in a year.
Updated Apr 22
Dominant launch provider; only prior company to reuse orbital boosters
Blue Origin flew a previously used New Glenn rocket booster for the first time on April 19, 2026, becoming only the second company ever to reuse an orbital-class rocket stage. The booster, named 'Never Tell Me the Odds,' first flew in November 2025 and landed successfully again on the drone ship Jacklyn roughly ten minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. But the milestone was immediately overshadowed: one engine on the rocket's expendable upper stage did not produce enough thrust during its second burn, leaving AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 satellite stranded in an orbit far too low for the satellite's own electric thrusters to correct.
Updated Apr 21
Confidential Nasdaq IPO filing submitted April 1, 2026; targeting June 2026 listing at ~$1.75 trillion valuation
AEVEX Aerospace, a maker of military drones and airborne surveillance systems, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on April 17, 2026, under the ticker AVEX—and its first day answered a key question about the defense tech IPO wave. Shares opened at $23.01 and closed at $26.93, a 34.7% gain that pushed its market capitalization to roughly $3 billion, well above the $2.35 billion valuation at pricing. The company had raised $320 million by pricing 16 million shares at $20 each, and the offering was multiple times oversubscribed. Private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners retained 79% voting control. On its second day of trading, April 18, AEVEX shares held near that level, trading in a $23 to $27.96 range as institutional positioning stabilized. AEVEX was not the only defense company testing public market appetite that week or in the months prior: satellite maker York Space Systems raised $629 million in a January 2026 NYSE debut, components maker Arxis raised $1.13 billion on April 16 and held its gains near $38 in subsequent trading, Ukrainian drone software company Swarmer jumped more than 500% on its March 17 Nasdaq listing, and signals intelligence firm HawkEye 360 had filed its own IPO prospectus days before AEVEX's debut.
Updated Apr 19
CRS cargo provider and launch vehicle operator for Cygnus
For more than a decade, NASA has relied on private companies to haul groceries, lab equipment, and experiments to the International Space Station — a deliberate bet that commercial logistics would be cheaper and more reliable than government-built rockets. On April 11, 2026, Northrop Grumman's enlarged Cygnus XL spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9, delivering roughly 11,000 pounds of science cargo to the station, including hardware for quantum physics research and therapeutic stem cell production.
Updated Apr 11
Primary commercial cargo carrier for ISS; demonstrated new reboost capability
For over two decades, the International Space Station has been the only place where humans can grow tissues, crystals, and cells in ways impossible on Earth. On February 26, a SpaceX Dragon capsule undocked after 185 days, carrying frozen stem cell samples and bioprinted liver tissue back from orbit—research that scientists say cannot be replicated at any ground-based laboratory. The capsule also completed six orbital reboosts during its stay, marking the first time a commercial cargo vehicle has routinely helped keep the station from falling out of the sky.
Updated Feb 26
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