4–5 minutes

WASHINGTON — A Redwire subsidiary working on space biotech and pharmaceutical applications has signed an agreement to fly microgravity research payloads on SpaceX’s Starfall reentry vehicle.

Space Microgravity Development, or SpaceMD, a subsidiary of Redwire, announced Aug. 6 it purchased a dedicated Starfall mission scheduled to launch in late 2028. Starfall is SpaceX’s reentry vehicle that made its first test flight in June.

The spacecraft will carry up to 32 of Redwire’s Pharmaceutical In-Space Laboratory, or PIL-BOX, experiment packages, which the company said will be redesigned to optimize the capabilities offered by Starfall. SpaceMD said it will use the mission to perform pharmaceutical research, taking advantage of what it calls the “highly tailorable microgravity environment and mission duration” offered by Starfall.

“Space-based pharmaceutical development is reaching an inflection point,” said John Vellinger, chief executive of SpaceMD, in a statement. “By combining our flight-proven microgravity payloads, such as PIL-BOX, with SpaceX’s innovative transportation capabilities, we’re dramatically expanding our ability to serve customers, increase research cadence and accelerate the creation of life-changing therapies.”

SpaceMD is the first established microgravity research company to announce plans to use Starfall. SpaceX said little publicly about Starfall before the June test flight, with some technical details about the spacecraft disclosed in a Federal Aviation Administration environmental assessment published in May.

Redwire has flown 54 PIL-BOX systems to the International Space Station since 2023, with 12 more slated to launch later this year. SpaceMD has used those systems to crystallize compounds for pharmaceutical research.

Peter Cannito, chairman and chief executive of Redwire, announced the Starfall contract in the company’s second-quarter earnings call Aug. 6. “The unprecedented capabilities that SpaceX’s Starfall offers will dramatically accelerate our ability to deliver pharmaceutical, biotech and other in-space microgravity manufacturing capabilities,” he said.

He noted the Starfall mission, as planned, will be the largest dedicated commercial microgravity research mission to date. “SpaceMD’s Starfall mission provides a major leap forward in scaling our microgravity capabilities. It’s a game changer.”

The contract illustrates both the interest in commercial microgravity research and manufacturing and the competitive threat posed by SpaceX. That interest has stimulated work on reentry spacecraft by several startups in the United States, Europe and Asia. Most are still developing their vehicles, but one, Varda Space Industries, has flown six missions to date, several carrying pharmaceutical payloads.

The entry of SpaceX into the market has raised concerns that it may be able to undercut those startups, based in part on the experience in the launch market, where SpaceX rideshare missions offered cheaper access to space for smallsats than dedicated small launch vehicles.

Those startups have countered that SpaceX’s entry into the field is a validation that there is a market for microgravity research and manufacturing. They also believe they can find niches to avoid directly competing with Starfall, based on the payload capacity of their vehicles or other attributes.

Redwire’s Cannito, though, said Starfall was the best fit for them. “With a platform partner like SpaceX’s Starfall, we are creating a new path to accelerate commercial microgravity manufacturing at scale.”

5–7 minutes

In an Aug. 4 earnings call, the first by the company since it went public nearly two months ago, SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company would deploy Starlink V3 satellites on Starship’s next launch, the vehicle’s first orbital launch attempt.

“Flight 14 will be our first flight to fly our version three Starlink satellites, our communication satellites, to operational orbit,” he said. That launch is tentatively scheduled for the end of August, he said later in the call.

He also said the company will attempt to catch the upper stage, or ship, back at the launch site on Flight 14. The company has not attempted a ship catch before, electing instead to perform soft splashdowns in the Indian Ocean. That catch, he added, is pending regulatory approval.

Musk said the plans to make Starship’s first orbital flight came after analysis of Flight 13, the most recent suborbital flight on July 24. That flight achieved most of the company’s announced milestones, including deployment of 20 functioning Starlink V3 satellites, which completed brief tests before reentering.

The ship survived both reentry and splashdown, unlike on previous flights when the vehicle exploded after tipping over in the water. The ship is still floating in the Indian Ocean, and SpaceX has sent vessels to recover it and tow it back to land.

“This flight actually went incredibly well. The heat shield appears to be very robust,” he said. “The ship is still floating in the ocean, and we expect to recover the ship and bring it back for analysis.”

“I would say things look very good, and that’s why we, assuming we receive regulatory approval to do so, will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on the next flight, which is tentatively scheduled for the end of this month,” he said.

He downplayed concerns from some about the state of Starship’s heat shield after splashdown. The ship’s tiles had an array of white streaks that some have interpreted as evidence that hot gas was able to penetrate gaps between the tiles, undermining their integrity.

“I don’t want to jinx it or anything, but I think I’d consider the heat shield problem solved at this point,” he said, adding the company wanted to inspect the ship floating in the Indian Ocean to confirm that assessment. “But I would say that we do not see any technical obstacles at this point to achieving full and rapid reusability.”

He did not address in his remarks the one setback on Flight 13, the failure to perform a controlled splashdown of the Super Heavy booster after its boostback burn ended early. It was the second consecutive flight in which the booster failed to make a controlled splashdown.

He offered a bold prediction for Starship’s future flight rate. “We expect the cadence of flights to be increasing rapidly and, probably a year from now, we will be doing at least one flight a day, possibly more,” he said. That flight rate would be more than double the 165 Falcon 9 launches SpaceX achieved in 2025, 15 years into operation of that vehicle. Financials

The discussion of Starship was a small part of an hourlong earnings call that also touched on its Starlink connectivity service and investments in artificial intelligence.

The company reported second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion, nearly double the $4.1 billion the company had in the same quarter a year ago. The company had a net loss of $541 million in the quarter, compared with $1 billion in the second quarter of last year.

Space, the smallest of the company’s three business segments and the one that includes launch, reported $962 million in revenue in the quarter and an operating loss of $542 million. Connectivity, which includes Starlink, had $4.29 billion in revenue and operating income of $1.66 billion. SpaceX’s AI segment had $2.56 billion in revenue and an operating loss of $1.26 billion.

SpaceX said it spent $1.17 billion in capital expenditures, or capex, on space in the second quarter, primarily on Starship development, while its connectivity division had $1.37 billion in capex. Those were dwarfed by the AI division, which had $15.8 billion in capex to build computing infrastructure.

Musk projected that SpaceX would achieve ARR, or annual recurring revenue, of $100 billion by December. He added in the call that the company was moving up by a year, from 2031 to 2030, when it expected to achieve $1 trillion in annual revenue, but did not disclose the breakdown in revenue among its space, connectivity and AI divisions at that point.

While space is SpaceX’s smallest division by revenue, it is essential to its connectivity and AI businesses because it will be used to deploy Starlink and AI satellites. That includes both Starlink V3 and the next generation of direct-to-cell satellites optimized for Starship.

Musk said that the new Starlink V3 satellites will make a notable improvement in the overall Starlink service once a “critical mass” of them are in orbit. He estimated that to be “on the order of about 1,000” satellites. “Approximately second quarter next year would be, I think, when we’d get to that point.”

4–5 minutes

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX two launch task orders worth $1.6 billion to deploy military satellite constellations, marking the largest publicly announced batch of missions yet under the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 program.

The award covers 18 Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027 in support of the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a collection of satellite programs intended to improve how the military detects, tracks and communicates information about threats in near real time.

The task orders reinforce SpaceX’s central role in the military’s next-generation satellite networks. Beyond providing the launches, the company is building two of the portfolio’s largest satellite systems under separate multibillion-dollar contracts, giving it responsibility for both placing the constellations in orbit and supplying key elements of the architecture itself.

Space Based Sensing and Targeting is one of the Space Force’s newly established acquisition portfolios. It oversees the Space Development Agency’s Tracking Layer, a constellation of infrared satellites designed to detect and track advanced missile threats; the Space Data Network Backbone, an optically linked communications network being built by SpaceX to move large volumes of military data across the Joint Force; and the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator program, another SpaceX-led constellation intended to track aircraft and other airborne targets from orbit.

SpaceX previously received contracts worth $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone and $4.16 billion for the Airborne Moving Target Indicator system.

The launch award is the largest publicly disclosed order under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s commercial-style procurement program for lower-risk national security missions that allows pre-qualified providers to compete for individual launch orders without completing the military’s most demanding certification process.

The contract also follows the Space Force’s decision earlier this month to raise the Phase 3 Lane 1 contract ceiling to $17 billion from $5.6 billion, reflecting expectations that military launch demand will grow substantially faster than originally anticipated.

The schedule itself is notable. Completing 18 launches by the end of 2027 will require a sustained campaign averaging roughly one mission a month from Vandenberg, depending on the timing of satellite deliveries.

That cadence also highlights the gap between the number of companies eligible to compete for national security launches and those capable of executing them today.

Seven companies currently hold positions on the Lane 1 contract vehicle. For now, SpaceX remains the only company with the combination of launch frequency, operational Falcon 9 rockets and West Coast infrastructure needed to support a campaign of this scale.

Col. Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the awards also demonstrate how quickly the Lane 1 contracting approach can move. He said the service completed the procurement in roughly two months from identifying the requirement to making the award, including a month for industry to prepare proposals.

SpaceX has started to turn away satellite operators seeking dedicated rides to orbit aboard its staple Falcon 9 rocket beyond 2028, people familiar with the matter said, underscoring the massive bet Elon Musk is making on its unproven Starship.

Musk’s rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence juggernaut has also stopped building some non-reusable components for the Falcon family, such as the rocket’s massive upper stage, said one of the people.

SpaceX is currently not taking future reservations for its Falcon 9 rideshare program, in which multiple satellite operators hitch a ride to orbit on a single rocket, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is confidential.

SpaceX’s plans could change for a number of reasons, including development setbacks with the futuristic Starship vehicle, the people said. The company is likely to still use the Falcon 9 for launches for the Department of Defense and NASA, some of the people said.

Representatives for SpaceX, the Pentagon and NASA didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

SpaceX has publicly stated that it intends to offramp its Falcon 9 rocket for Starship, but has not disclosed a timeline. When the company does take the step, it will mark one of the most significant strategic shifts in its launch business in decades. It’s also a major undertaking, requiring SpaceX to push through development setbacks and cement the technology leaps needed to bring the long-delayed vehicle to market in the span of about a year and a half.

Delays with Starship have contributed to a stock selloff that has seen the shares fall below the $135 price at its history-making initial public offering last month. SpaceX rose 2.6% and closed at $118.24 in regular trading on Thursday, but remains down about 24% over the last month.

For years, SpaceX has commanded a near-monopoly on sending people and cargo to orbit using Falcon 9, the most prolific launch vehicle in the world. The Falcon 9 slashed the cost of getting to space and enabled the growth of large-scale satellite networks, including SpaceX’s Starlink.

Starship is central to Musk’s ambitions to put data centers in space, expand the Starlink communications network and send humans to the moon and Mars. But it is not yet operational and has so far faced a testing cycle marred by explosive setbacks, malfunctions and delays. SpaceX delayed its scheduled test flight on Thursday for the second time in about a week.

If Starship is not ready to launch commercial missions by the end of 2028 and the company doesn’t revert to the Falcon family, it would slash access to orbit for the many space companies that rely on SpaceX to get to space amid a global heavy-lift rocket shortage.