SpaceX Rockets into a New Era: Three Launches, Soaring Stock, and the Dawn of Orbital AI

What an incredible week it’s been for SpaceX, with its stock absolutely soaring – up over 7% on Friday, pushing past the $159 mark after closing Thursday at $148.07. But it wasn’t just the market getting excited; the company delivered a truly astonishing feat: three successful launches in less than 13 hours. Yes, you read that right. And if that wasn't enough to capture imaginations, these launches also underscored a pivotal step in SpaceX's ambitious vision for artificial intelligence in orbit, a future that Google is now actively exploring right alongside them.

The pace was nothing short of breathtaking. Thursday kicked off with a critical mission at 11:10 a.m. ET, as a Falcon 9 rocket gracefully launched NASA's Crew-13, sending four astronauts on their way to the International Space Station. Just a few hours later, at 2:32 p.m. ET, another Falcon 9 roared to life from California, this time carrying a staggering 130 payloads on the Transporter-18 rideshare mission. Then, to cap off a truly epic day, a mighty Falcon Heavy thundered into the night sky at 11:54 p.m. ET, delivering the classified NROL-97 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office – marking the first time the NRO had entrusted a payload to the powerful Falcon Heavy. Three missions, three different rockets, all within a single workday. It’s a logistical masterclass.

But beyond the rockets themselves, there's a fascinating subplot developing: the push for AI computing in space. Elon Musk, never one to shy away from grand pronouncements, revealed this week that SpaceX's forthcoming Starmind satellites are designed to wield serious power, potentially carrying over 250 kilowatts of solar capacity. This isn’t just about communication; it’s about creating an orbital network capable of sophisticated AI computations. In fact, SpaceX is already collaborating with Nvidia, working to optimize Nvidia’s cutting-edge Vera Rubin AI hardware specifically for the unique demands of space.

And speaking of AI in space, Google, under the Alphabet Inc. umbrella, is making its own significant moves. Tucked among those 130 payloads on the Transporter-18 mission was a prototype satellite for Project Suncatcher – Google’s very own orbital AI experiment. The company confirmed on Thursday that they’ve made contact and the satellite is operating normally. This mission is a real crucible, putting four of Google's in-house Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) through their paces. They’re essentially seeing how well these crucial AI chips can withstand the brutal realities of launch, the constant bombardment of radiation, and the extreme temperature swings of space, all while performing at scale in orbit.

While the excitement is palpable, with market traders on Kalshi even placing a 36% chance on a one-megawatt data center going live in orbit before 2035, some voices offer a dose of caution. Andrew Bonwick, a VP at Relm Insurance, recently suggested that while the idea of AI in space might be "overestimated" in some circles, an orbital one-megawatt data center is certainly plausible. The real challenge, he points out, lies in scaling such an ambitious endeavor. Yet, the rapid progress from both SpaceX’s launch cadence and Google’s pioneering experiments indicates that what once felt like science fiction is now rapidly becoming an engineering reality.