Verge Science is here to bring you the most up-to-date space news and analysis, whether it’s about the latest findings from NASA or comprehensive coverage of the next SpaceX rocket launch to the International Space Station. We’ll take you inside the discoveries of new exoplanets, space weather, space policy, and the booming commercial space industry.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman tells Reuters that the agency is “still very much planning” for a 2027 timeline, despite Blue Origin’s launchpad explosion in May. Blue Origin is supposed to launch a test version of its lunar lander for the mission later this year as it rebuilds its launchpad.
The craft used Mars to get a gravity-assisted boost on the way to its namesake asteroid. The mission isn’t expected to intercept the asteroid until 2029, but in the meantime we’ve got this great view of Mars to enjoy.
On July 16th, 2024, a meteor deposited two pounds of space rock in a Hillsborough, New Jersey, man’s bedroom. Scientists have now analyzed it and found amino acids and salts left behind by the evaporation of water ice, offering further insight into how organic matter may have arrived on primitive Earth.
The Pentagon may make a deal where it would pay for billions of dollars of compute from SpaceX, according to The Wall Street Journal.
SpaceX already provides compute to Google and Anthropic, and the company wants to do more in cloud computing, the WSJ says.
[The Wall Street Journal]
SPCX sunk another three percent in extended trading after last night’s aborted Starship launch, falling further beneath its IPO price of $135. The record-setting IPO made Elon Musk the world’s first (paper) trillionaire. Today he’s worth $838.1 billion. Concerning.
The thirteenth, and first post-IPO, flight test of SpaceX’s massive Starship vehicle was supposed to occur Thursday night, but when the countdown hit zero just before 7PM ET, “Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” writes Elon Musk.
AST SpaceMobile was targeting the end of 2026 to begin service, but its low-Earth orbit constellation won’t reach its target of 45 BlueBird satellites until “early 2027.” This is partly due to Blue Origin’s failure to properly deploy one of AST’s giant cell towers, but also a reduction in launch capacity now that the New Glenn rocket is sidelined by a subsequent launch pad explosion.
The Japanese space agency flight tested its RV-X prototype for the first time, with the reusable rocket rising 36 feet and moving 52 feet horizontally before touching back down, as reported by the Associated Press. China also successfully launched and recovered its reusable rocket last week in a bid to compete with SpaceX.
SpaceX dominates satellite launches because nobody else can match the cost-effective, reusable booster of its Falcon 9. Blue Origin landed its New Glenn booster last year, but then blew up its only launch pad in May. Now it’s China’s turn, although with a bit less finesse, according to the BBC:
Long March 10B does not autonomously land on a ground pad or drone ship. Instead “landing hooks” on the rocket catch a net attached to a floating platform.
Lego included a replica of the telescope with its Space Shuttle Discovery set that launched in 2021, but this new 15-inch long Hubble replica is much larger and far more detailed. Inside you’ll find mirrors and gyroscopes, while outside are adjustable solar arrays and antennas. It launches on August 1st for $139.99.
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No, not the 2,500 baby jellyfish NASA launched in 1991 to tell us how the human body reacts to spaceflight, but the rocket-launch phenomenon caused by sunlight reflecting off high-altitude rocket gases at twilight, while the observer watches in darkness.
The new Fi Ultra adds satellite connectivity to track your dog anywhere in the US, even in cellular dead zones.
By looking through data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), researchers uncovered a planet through microlensing for the first time — a concept theorized by Einstein that picks up on planets as their gravity warps space-time.
Though the ESA’s now-retired Gaia telescope first discovered hints of the planet in 2023, TESS’s data revealed a planet that’s 1.6 times Jupiter’s mass and almost 40,000 light-years away from Earth.
The company formerly known as xAI has referred to itself as SpaceXAI before following the acquisition by SpaceX. There’s a new logo, too.
In an update on Tuesday, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp says the company is working to “identify and correct” the issue that led its New Glenn rocket to explode on the launchpad last month. Limp adds that the company plans to return to flight by the end of this year with a new launch pad configuration.
SpaceX bonds are creating losses for the fast-money types who piled in at the offering. “Bond types either aren’t sure that SpaceX will hang on to its investment-grade credit ratings, or will only get involved if they get paid a fat risk premium for doing so,” the Financial Times explains. SpaceX stock is, as of this writing, trading below its IPO price. Gee, if only someone had pointed out that this company is a stinker.
[Financial Times]
President and COO Gwynne Shotwell has apparently told investors that SpaceX plans to launch a new terrestrial Starlink service that would sell mobile contracts directly to individuals in the US — a threat that could extract better revenue-sharing deals from its current telecom partners. Analysts think a T-Mobile acquisition makes sense to accelerate the move and solve SpaceX’s spectrum deficit issue.
Musk’s total net worth is now $957 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That figure is still $660 billion higher than Larry Page, the next person on the list, whose net worth is $297 billion.
[Bloomberg]
The open-source AI startup has a deal through 2029, similar to Anthropic and Google, to rent compute capacity from SpaceX’s Colossus 2 data center for $150 million per month (up to $6.3 billion), reports the Wall Street Journal.
[Wall Street Journal]
While SpaceX plans satellite-based AI servers, Bloomberg reports it ran into trouble trying to develop and run Grok AI in Memphis, citing unnamed sources. They claim that deals renting capacity to Anthropic ($15 billion annually) and Google ($920 million per month) happened following hardware variation and lag issues:
Elon Musk’s company had planned to train its most cutting-edge AI models on a massive amount of computing power by using a cluster of three data center campuses. However, the firm encountered latency issues when connecting Colossus 1 with two other sites located more than 10 miles away, the people said, compounded by aging network infrastructure.
As reported by CNBC, the New York Times, and others, trading commenced at a price 11 percent above the $135 IPO price, but lower than the $175 shown in some earlier indications. It’s already spiked as high as $167, before falling back to $155. As long as the share price remains above $138, that is enough to make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
It also gives SpaceX a market cap of over $2 trillion, making it currently the 6th most valuable public company in the US.
That price puts SpaceX at a market valuation of around $1.77 trillion ahead of its record-breaking stock market debut on Friday. CNBC reports that SpaceX may allocate 20 percent of shares to retail investors, down from the previous expectation of 30 percent.
No telling if that Starlink Mini dish on the right includes an integrated battery, per rumors, but both terminals look thinner than current models. Elon Musk revealed them yesterday without any specs, pricing, or dates.
Instead of paying hundreds up front, new customers in “select markets” will have to rent their Starlink hardware for $10 per month on top of the monthly fee. It only applies to Residential plans currently, and renters can’t pause the service, but can buy their kit later by ”creating a support ticket,“ according to a support page. The move comes after Starlink recently raised prices on its monthly plans.
