SpaceX Shares Soar on Successful ISS and Google Missions

[Financial News]  

SpaceX shares surged more than 7% on the 2nd (local time), approaching $160. The gains came after a successful spacecraft launch sent astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), while a Google satellite also reached orbit.
According to Yahoo Finance, SpaceX successfully launched a spacecraft the previous day carrying four astronauts to the ISS. A spacecraft carrying Google's Project Suncatcher satellite was also launched that day. The Google satellite was designed to test whether artificial intelligence (AI) can perform large-scale computing in space.
The test to determine whether Google's AI inference chip, the TPU (Tensor Processing Unit), can operate in space reached orbit, sending shares of its parent company, Alphabet, up more than 1%.
Earlier, SpaceX successfully placed its largest and most powerful rocket, Starship, into Earth orbit for the first time and deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites. One engine shut down during the ascent, but the mission was completed successfully.
Some observers offered an optimistic outlook, saying the successful Starship launch marked a significant step forward for SpaceX and could add momentum to the stock's rise.
SpaceX Senior Vice President John Edwards said in a post on social media platform X, "It was an amazing week for SpaceX," adding, "We launched our entire spacecraft lineup, including Starship, Dragon, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy." He continued, "It was a week in which we realized what is possible with rocket reusability and what our SpaceX team can accomplish when it remains relentlessly focused and consistently maintains the highest level of execution."
SpaceX closed at $158.96, up $10.89, or 7.35%.

[email protected] Song Kyung-jae Reporter