Posted: Sat, May 23 8:37 AM ET (1237 GMT)
SpaceX launched the newest version of its Starship vehicle Friday on a suborbital test flight. Starship lifted off from the company’s facility at Starbase, Texas, at 6:30 pm EDT (2230 GMT) on the Flight 12 suborbital mission after problems with the launch tower scrubbed a launch attempt Thursday. The vehicle flew a suborbital flight ending 66 minutes later with a soft splashdown by the Starship upper stage. During the flight both the Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster suffered engine failures, which for Super Heavy prevented it from making a controlled descent after stage separation. Starship was able to deploy Starlink mass simulators during the suborbital flight. This was the first flight of Starship V3, with extensive upgrades to both stages along with a new launch tower. SpaceX plans to use Starship V3 for orbital missions as soon as later this year.

Related Links:

•  SpaceNews article
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•  Bloomberg News article
•  NASASpaceFlight.com article

Posted: Sat, May 23 8:19 AM ET (1219 GMT)
SpaceX officially filed plans to go public Wednesday, offering details about its finances and long-term ambitions. The company filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public on the Nasdaq exchange, but did not disclose how many shares it plans to sell or at what price. The filing did provide details about the company's finances, showing it generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 and adjusted EBITDA of $6.6 billion, but a net loss of $4.9 billion. SpaceX divides its business into three segments, called space, connectivity and AI; space includes launch and related services while connectivity includes its Starlink system. Starlink accounted for the majority of its 2025 revenue. SpaceX projected a total addressable market for its services of a whopping $28.5 trillion, a figure dominated by AI, which in turn relies on orbital data centers.

Related Links:

•  SpaceNews article
•  Wall Street Journal article
•  AP article
•  Reuters article
•  New York Times article

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