SpaceX shares rose slightly in early trading after the company completed a successful Starship test flight on Friday evening.
Starship is SpaceX’s large, reusable rocket system. It is built to lower the cost of reaching orbit, which could make new uses possible, like space-based data centers. SpaceX also plans to start building a group of AI computing satellites in 2028.
Shares of Elon Musk’s rocket and AI company went up a little in premarket trading, matching small gains in the wider market.
Friday’s test was the 13th for Starship, and it seems all goals were reached. The rocket’s upper stage released 20 new Starlink satellites, restarted an engine in space, and landed safely in the Indian Ocean. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, now has over 10 million subscribers.
The next test should happen in a few weeks. Musk said on social media that SpaceX will probably try to catch the rocket’s upper stage with the company’s mechanical launch-tower arms. SpaceX has done this once before with the booster stage. This method is meant to make rocket reuse faster as the company aims to launch Starship thousands of times, much like its Falcon 9 rocket already flies hundreds of times each year.
The successful test gave the stock a boost after three weeks of losses, during which it dropped about 38%. Shares are still below their IPO price and far from the record high set soon after the company went public.
Other issues have also affected the stock besides recent test delays. Valuation is still a worry, as SpaceX is valued at about $1.5 trillion and trades at around 40 times its expected 2026 sales, which is much higher than other trillion-dollar companies. Investors are also cautious about possible profit-taking as more shares become available to trade soon.
It is still unclear if Friday’s successful test will be enough to raise the stock in a big way. SpaceX’s next big test will be its quarterly earnings report on Aug. 4.
