Intel announced it is joining Elon Musk's Terafab project alongside Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. Terafab is a joint venture for a vertically integrated semiconductor facility in Austin, Texas, combining logic chips, HBM memory, advanced packaging, testing, and photomask production. The project targets 1 terawatt per year of compute capacity. Intel shares rose 2% on the news.

The industrial logic is vertical integration of the compute supply chain: Intel contributes foundry capacity and packaging, Musk's entities contribute demand commitment and launch infrastructure. Intel needs anchor tenants for its foundry business. Musk needs fab capacity independent of TSMC. Terafab's stated applications include powering the orbital data center architecture that underpins the SpaceX-xAI combined thesis. The key question is execution timeline: chip production and orbital compute demand need to converge for the economics to hold.

A violent Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of a Starship component was captured on camera at SpaceX's Boca Chica facility. Starbase observer Zack Golden described it as among the most dramatic RUDs seen at the site in some time, sharing footage including slow-motion video. The specific component has not been publicly identified, and it remains unclear whether this was a deliberate pressure-to-failure stress test or an unexpected malfunction.

SpaceX routinely tests hardware to destruction as part of qualification, so a planned burst test would be a normal step in V3 production flow. If unplanned, it is a second hardware setback after the November 2025 Booster 18 test stand failure and adds schedule risk to the already-slipping IFT-12 timeline. SpaceX has not commented. 

ULA's Atlas V launched Amazon Leo 5 from Cape Canaveral, deploying 29 Kuiper satellites, the heaviest payload ever flown on an Atlas V. ULA has now delivered 139 Amazon Leo satellites total. Amazon faces a hard FCC deadline: it must launch and operate roughly 1,500+ satellites by July 30, 2026. As of early April, only about 212 satellites are in orbit.

At current deployment rates, Amazon cannot meet the July 30 deadline. The company filed in January 2026 to extend and disclosed contracts for 10 additional Falcon 9 and 12 additional New Glenn launches. Amazon is now relying on SpaceX's launch cadence to deploy a competing constellation. The gap between Kuiper (~212 deployed) and Starlink (10,168 operational) continues to widen. Whether the FCC grants the deadline extension is the single largest near-term variable for Kuiper's viability.

Space Pioneer's Tianlong-3, a Falcon 9-class partially reusable rocket powered by nine TH-12 engines, failed approximately 33 seconds after liftoff from Jiuquan on its inaugural flight. The vehicle was designed for vertical first-stage landing and up to 10 reuses. This is the third Chinese orbital launch loss of 2026.

Space Pioneer was the furthest along in China's commercial reusable launcher cohort. LandSpace's Zhuque-3 and Deep Blue Aerospace's Nebula-1 are the remaining near-term candidates, but neither has attempted an orbital flight. Three orbital losses in four months also raises questions about quality control across China's commercial launch sector as it scales. Falcon 9 remains the only operational reusable medium-lift vehicle in the world, and that gap is widening, not narrowing.

NASA's SLS rocket launched the Orion spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 PM EDT, carrying four astronauts on a 10-day lunar flyby: NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Closest lunar approach is expected around April 6, with splashdown approximately April 10. This is the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since 1972.

Artemis 2 validates the deep-space crew operations architecture that SpaceX's Starship HLS is contracted to support on future surface missions. A successful flyby strengthens the program's funding basis and moves the procurement timeline forward. The current Artemis III plan includes a 2027 LEO test of the Starship lander before a targeted 2028 crewed lunar landing. Watch milestone definitions and funding stability, because those tend to matter more than the headline schedule.

Effective April 1, new U.S. and Canadian customers in select service areas can sign up for Starlink Residential at $35/month for 100 Mbps (down from $50), $65/month for 200 Mbps, and $105/month for 400+ Mbps, with no upfront hardware cost (dish provided as a rental). The promotion runs through April 30 and is limited to areas with excess network capacity. This is a four-month introductory rate; standard pricing resumes after.

Starlink ended 2025 with 9.2 million subscribers and over $10 billion in revenue. Analysts project 16.8 million subscribers by year-end 2026. The rental model is the structural shift worth watching: moving hardware cost off the customer's balance sheet and into Starlink's recurring revenue line changes the unit economics presentation. Capacity-gated promotions also signal that SpaceX is managing network utilization by geography, not simply buying growth.

SpaceX submitted a confidential S-1 registration to the SEC on April 1, putting it on track for a June Nasdaq listing. The company is targeting a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion and aims to raise between $50 billion and $75 billion, which would make it more than three times the size of the largest U.S. IPO in history. The filing follows the February 2026 all-stock merger with xAI that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion.

 

The public S-1, expected late April or May, will contain the first audited financials for the combined entity. The material disclosures: Starlink revenue and margin structure, xAI merger accounting and goodwill treatment on a $250 billion acquisition, defense contract concentration risk, and the dual-class governance framework. How SpaceX values the xAI layer against its current operating state will set the tone for the entire roadshow.