By
Steve Muchoki
April 26th, 2024
Earlier in August, SpaceX revealed in its SEC filing that it had raised $1.9 billion in what appears to be the company’s biggest fundraising in its 18 years of existence, bringing the firm’s total valuation to $49 billion.
Masten Space System, a spacecraft technology company awarded a space mission contract by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has drafted SpaceX help to complete the mission billed for December 2022. As reported by TechCrunch, the Masten’s contract is in line with NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and will take the company’s XL-1 lunar lander to the south pole of the moon with NASA payloads on board, including scientific experimentation instruments, as well as cargo from commercial passengers.
Renowned for non-stop space missions, NASA’s CLPS program as detailed by TechCrunch is part of its ongoing efforts to expand partnerships with commercial space companies in order to ultimately lower its costs by sharing providers with other customers from private industry and commercial ventures. The partnership with these commercial space companies will also serve as a springboard for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land the first American woman and the next American man on the surface of the moon by 2024.
While NASA’s aim to take humans to space aligns with the Elon Musk owned SpaceX, the firm will be using its advanced space travel technology to help Masten meet up with the terms of its contract with NASA. The other schedule in the CLPS program include Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander scheduled for launch in June 2021, the first of the four planned lunar missions under the program, Intuitive Machines’ will launch its expedition shortly after in October 2021.
Masten’s mission set for 2022 comes third and the last confirmed mission is Astrobotic’s VIPER launch of its larger Griffin lander billed to launch in 2023. Thus far, SpaceX is only confirmed to be involved with Masten and Intuitive Machines’ scheduled missions.
Can SpaceX File for IPO Before 2022 Amid Boosted Funding?
Despite increasing strides, SpaceX remains a privately held company. While the firm has fared quite well to date drawing from funding from private investors, Wall Street analysts nurses the possibility of the space tech company to debut an IPO, probably before 2022 in a bid to call up funding for its extensive operations.
After successfully completing the testing for the company’s Crew Dragon Capsule, Elon Musk revealed details of its space travel mission with NASA astronauts on board. This historic achievement returned the question of whether the company will show signs of IPO push anytime soon.
Back in August, SpaceX revealed in an SEC filing that it has raised $1.9 billion in what appears to be the company’s biggest fundraising in its 18 years of existence, bringing the firm’s total valuation to $49 billion. The funding comes at a time when SpaceX focuses on building out its Starlink satellite constellation to offer broadband internet commercially by the end of 2020.
While Elon Musk-led Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) is one of the top-performing Wall Street stocks in the past year, speculation mounts that an IPO debut by SpaceX can usher the company into a huge new growth path.
Undeterred by the speculations and calls to file for an IPO, Elon Musk through his antecedents seems to favor privately-owned companies. This he made known when he tweeted back in August 2018 that he is taking Tesla (TSLA) private. Should this claim be reckoned with, he may not favor plans to consider a SpaceX IPO against current expectations.
