SpaceX's Starship Reaches Earth Orbit for the First Time on Its 14th Launch

Rocket Lab Corporation announced a multi-year agreement to launch 20 new Electron missions from Launch Complex 1 for Synspective, carrying StriX synthetic aperture radar satellites to sun-synchronous orbit annually from 2028 through 2031. The contract is the largest commercial launch deal for Electron so far and lifts Rocket Lab's backlog above 100 missions, deepening its role in building Synspective's global Earth-imaging constellation. The deal reinforces Electron's position as a high-cadence small-launch workhorse and slightly reduces near-term lumpiness risk in the launch book, though the key near-term catalyst and risk remain Neutron test progress and ongoing cash burn. Rocket Lab's US$1.944 billion equity raise to fund the pending Iridium acquisition shows management leaning on the balance sheet to expand into higher-value space systems and communications, amplifying the benefits of large multi-year contracts like Synspective's while raising the stakes around dilution and execution. Analysts had already modeled revenue near US$2.2 billion and earnings around US$365 million by 2029 on the optimistic side, against a more cautious consensus that treats cash burn and contract lumpiness as core risks.

SpaceX shares have stabilized after notching an all-time low of $104.83 in early August, with the company citing fresh catalysts that could drive the stock higher into year-end and into 2027. Starship, SpaceX's two-stage rocket and the largest human-made flying object, recently reached orbit for the first time, and the recent flight deployed the first 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites. Anthropic expanded its computing agreements with SpaceX, committing up to $84.5 billion through May 2029 for NVIDIA-based AI infrastructure, while Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest SpaceX will grow revenue by 147% in 2027. The odds of a SpaceX and Tesla merger by the end of next year have spiked to 63% on Polymarket. The company also pointed to Planet Labs and Google's launch of the first AI satellite as proof of concept for its ambitions in space-based AI data centers.

Google said Thursday that its prototype satellite for Project Suncatcher, built in partnership with Planet Labs, launched into orbit aboard the Transporter-18 rideshare mission with SpaceX. The tech giant said its team has confirmed contact with the satellite, and it is operating as expected. Travis Beals, senior director of Project Suncatcher, wrote in a blog post following the launch that this is the first step in a long-term research moonshot exploring whether space could one day host scalable machine learning infrastructure, and that over the coming weeks the team will gather in-orbit data on how its TPUs handle the physical stress of spaceflight and the radiation and thermal extremes of space. Alphabet holds a stake worth more than $82B in SpaceX, which went public in June in a record IPO. SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, has also announced that it plans to build and launch its orbital data centers.