SpaceX files for IPO
One of the most anticipated IPOs in recent memory will take place on the Nasdaq exchange by mid-June.
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Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of The View from Space.
💰 Elon Musk’s SpaceX filed documents for an initial public offering of stock, one of the most hotly anticipated in recent memory. The IPO is likely to take place on the Nasdaq exchange by the middle of June. SpaceNews reported:
‘The company filed its S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after the markets closed. That document is a step towards one of the most anticipated IPOs in recent memory, expected to take place on the Nasdaq exchange by mid-June.
The S-1 form did not include details such as the number of shares the company plans to sell or pricing, details that are frequently excluded in the initial filing of the document and updated closer to the IPO. SpaceX is seeking to raise up to $80 billion at a valuation of around $2 trillion, according to numerous reports.
The document, though, does provide financial details that the privately held company has not disclosed previously. The company reported in 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $6.6 billion, while in the first quarter of 2026 SpaceX recorded $4.7 billion in revenue and adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 billion.
SpaceX splits its financial results into three business segments: space, connectivity and AI. The space segment, which includes launch and related activities, like its Dragon spacecraft, recorded revenue of $4.1 billion in 2025 and $619 million in the first quarter of 2026, with adjusted positive EBITDA of $653 million in 2025 and adjusted negative EBITDA of $351 million in the first quarter of 2026.’
🇩🇪 Defense News reported that Germany is touting a ‘pan-German space command’:
‘Germany’s defense minister used a rare four-nation gathering of German-speaking defense chiefs this week to push forward plans for a European military space command, calling on close partners including Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg, to help shape the initiative rather than simply join it.
Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense minister, announced at a press conference in Berlin that Germany is developing a European Space Component Command alongside a Weltraumakademie − a multilateral space training academy − and insisted that partner nations will be “embedded in the design phase” rather than presented with finished structures.’
🧑🚀 Space work and travel are just ‘a decade away’, said tech leaders. Fortune reported:
‘Sam Altman is known for being CEO of OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT), but he’s also joining the growing list of billionaires who are bullish about life in space. In fact, he said he believes young people a decade from now may be leaving behind career prospects on Earth in favor of the broader solar system.
“In 2035, that graduating college student, if they still go to college at all, could very well be leaving on a mission to explore the solar system on a spaceship in some completely new, exciting, super well-paid, super interesting job,” Altman told video journalist Cleo Abram in 2025.
These jobs will not only enable Gen Alpha graduates to reel in sky-high salaries, but they’ll also be “feeling so bad for you and I that we had to do this really boring, old work and everything is just better.”’
🌍 Kayrros used its satellite data to show that Iran was stockpiling oil, the FT reported:
‘Antoine Halff, chief analyst at energy data firm Kayrros, said that Iran was attempting to “expand their runway” to avoid shutting down production.
Iran’s onshore storage has increased by roughly 10mn barrels, Kayrros data showed, pushing it to about 64 per cent full and giving Iran “a couple of weeks” of additional production time.
Iran has additional empty tankers within the US blockade that it could use for about 24mn barrels of additional floating storage, according to estimates from Kpler.’
🤖 The Wall Street Journal asked if data centers in space was ‘a pipe dream, or AI’s next big thing’:
‘Space is cold, but it is a vacuum. As such, AI satellites will need sophisticated systems to regulate temperatures to keep chips operating.
Keeping satellites cool as AI chips throw off heat is a major hurdle in making orbital data centers cost competitive with infrastructure on the ground.
“Managing heat in space is difficult, which really means expensive,” said Shanti Rao, a spacecraft consultant who formerly worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.’
👩🚀 The BBC told the surprising story of the first British astronaut to go to space:
'“One pleasant evening at the end of June 1989, I was driving home from the Mars factory in Slough, listening to the car radio,” she writes in her memoir. “While I sat in a traffic jam, I flicked through the radio stations trying to find something to listen to.”
It wasn’t the most auspicious of moments – but as she goes on to recount, her attention was caught by an ad on one of the channels she tuned into: “Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary.”
Sharman had stumbled upon the recruitment slogan for a project that marked the thawing of Cold War relations. The Juno mission was a commercial venture to send a Briton to Mir funded by a private consortium – with a Soviet space crew.’
🔋 Jensen Huang of NVIDIA sat down with CNBC to discuss data centres in space: