usatoday24
Elon Musk became the richest man in the world thanks to Tesla, but his new golden egg chicken It’s called Starlink. The tycoon has given credibility to something that It had been commenting Since the White House announced NASA’s historic cuts: Spacex’s income is one year after overcoming the annual budget of the planet’s largest space agency.
More money than NASA. Elon Musk He just put the data On the table: “Spacex’s income for its commercial activities in space will exceed NASA’s total budget next year.”
Spacex is a private company controlled by Musk itself, so it is not obliged to publicly present its results. However, we now know that it plans to enter 15.5 billion dollars in 2025. If approved in Congress, NASA’s annual budget for 2026 will be 18.8 billion dollars, 24% less than the previous year.
The whole mountain is Starlink. Spacex receives NASA money to transport astronauts to the International Space Station or develop space programs such as the lunar Starship, but in 2025, that transaction has been “only” 1.1 billion dollars. Most of what Spacex earns comes from Starlink, although the amount of NASA contracts will rise to 1,747 million dollars in 2026, adding the Moon To Mars program.
Starlink has more than 5 million customers, a figure that has been duplicating from year to year. The bulk of the business are residential customers, but satellite Internet service has been diversifying with agreements in the maritime sector (mercantile vessels and cruises), the aviation sector (Chárter operators and commercial airlines), the operators (Direct-to-Cell) and the government sector (especially The Starshield constellation of the number).
The perpetual movement machine. Starlink’s success would not be possible without Spacex’s launching capacitywhich continues to be beating reuse records with its Falcon 9. The company celebrated its 500 mission last night. The propeller that has taken and landed the most times has done it 28 times, 17 of them to put Starlink satellites in orbit.
The integration of the company is totally vertical. Spacex manufactures rockets, satellites and terminals. And innovation is constant. At the end of May, a Falcon 9 deployed 29 Starlink v2 mini optimized satellites225 kg lighter than previous versions and with a bandwidth of 96 Gbps.
How much Spacex is worth. With more than 7,000 active satellites in orbit, an incomparable number of any other constellation, Starlink has triggered the assessment of Spacex at stratospheric levels. The most recent valuation is 350,000 million dollars, which makes it the company not quoted in the largest stock market in the United States.
Taking into account that Spacex Starlink’s benefits reinvested on the Starship programIt is worth asking who will lead the space exploration of the United States in the coming years, if NASA or Elon Musk’s company.
Image | Spacex
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