On Tuesday, SpaceX (SPCX.US) shares surged sharply during intraday trading, rising more than 2% to $149.05 as of press time.
On the news front, SpaceX's flagship rocket Starship successfully entered Earth orbit for the first time on September 28, completing the commercial space company's most ambitious mission to date. This means the giant rocket, which cost over $15 billion and took nearly a decade to develop, has finally crossed the critical threshold from suborbital testing to orbital flight.
According to reports, Starship lifted off from Starbase in Texas at 7:49 a.m. local time on Monday. Although one engine shut down prematurely during the flight, the spacecraft continued to execute a key ignition maneuver after engineers assessed the situation in real time, and successfully entered its designated orbit. The mission had originally been planned to last about 10 hours and circle the Earth six times, but SpaceX ultimately decided to end the flight early. The flight team was expected to command Starship to deorbit three hours after it entered orbit.
While in orbit, Starship also deployed 26 V3 Starlink satellites for the first time. Musk posted on X that the batch of V3 satellites was operating normally. The single-satellite download capacity of V3 Starlink satellites is about 10 times that of the current V2 satellites.
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