SpaceX Launches Northrop Grumman Satellite Repair Mission, Entering On-Orbit Servicing Market

NASA and Boeing are in talks about using Boeing's Starliner vehicle to handle 10 or more new flights to low-Earth orbit in the coming years, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The Starliner has not flown since summer 2024, when performance problems including failed thrusters that posed safety risks left two astronauts stuck on the International Space Station for months; the astronauts returned to Earth on SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle, and the Starliner came back empty. SpaceX's Crew Dragon has been the only certified vehicle to carry NASA astronauts to the space station from the U.S., but SpaceX has stopped making new Dragon ships and has not said publicly when it plans to stop operating the ship. NASA said Friday it awarded SpaceX three additional astronaut missions to the space station using Crew Dragon, flights worth an average of $315M each and running through 2030. Few other options exist for flights to low-Earth orbit: Northrop Grumman has a cargo capsule that flies to the space station for NASA but not a human-rated one, while Russia flies vehicles to the ISS that handle crews and cargo.

Elon Musk has reignited speculation that Tesla and SpaceX could merge, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on September 14 that with so much close collaboration across so many areas, "who can imagine what action one might take," and adding that combining companies "can't" be discussed on an earnings call and must follow the appropriate process. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, appearing alongside Musk, said SpaceX personnel had already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, describing the businesses as integrating "faster than I thought" though "not fully integrated yet." Tesla and SpaceX shares each fell about 2% on September 14 before edging higher in overnight trading, with TSLA recovering 0.2% and SPCX adding 0.1%. Central to the merger case is Terafab, the joint chip venture between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI confirmed in early 2026, whose first phase alone SpaceX said in a May filing would cost $55 billion, with the full buildout potentially reaching $119 billion and ARK Invest floating a long-term estimate of $1 trillion. Wedbush's Dan Ives puts the odds of a combination at 80% to 90% with a deal expected in the first half of 2027, Jefferies estimates Musk could retain roughly 55.3% voting control in a nil-premium transaction, and JPMorgan calls a tie-up strategically coherent, while BNP Paribas kept an underperform rating on Tesla and warned SpaceX's cash burn could delay any combination.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is targeting a late-2027 launch for orbital AI data centers, but industry analysts say real scale is more likely a 2030s event, CNBC reported on September 6, 2026. Experts point to four unresolved hurdles: dissipating heat in a vacuum, protecting hardware from radiation, the risk that GPUs become obsolete before an expensive satellite launch pays off, and building enough ground-to-space connectivity to support hyperscale computing. SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq in June 2026 under the ticker SPCX following its merger with Musk's AI company xAI, and shares have since pulled back from a post-IPO high near $225 to around $148. Industry consultant Blaine Curcio noted that experts in the late 2010s would have considered SpaceX launching 10,000 satellites by 2025 almost impossible, yet the company achieved that scale, a track record that gives investors reason not to dismiss the orbital data-center target. Transcelestial CEO Rohit Jha identified high-volume data transfer between orbit and Earth as a key challenge and said hyperscale facilities could require nuclear power, while Neuberger's Evelyn Chow expects significant scale only after several years of satellite launches and connectivity investment, supporting a 2030s timeline rather than Musk's late-2027 target. By the end of its first full quarter as a public company, 119 hedge funds had built a combined position in SpaceX worth $116.45 billion, while Rocket Lab's holder count rose to 52 funds from 43 even as its position value dipped to $736 million from $932 million.