The $4.3 billion “Eye of the Dark Universe” takes off! NASA space orders fuel SpaceX (SPCX.US) space exploration growth ambitions

The Zhitong Finance App learned that the Falcon Heavy Rocket under the AI and space exploration leader SpaceX (SPCX.US), which Musk founded and steered, successfully launched the Roman telescope of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), further verifying SpaceX's reliability, heavy carrying capacity and long-term order barriers for government flagship missions, and adding credit to it to carry out more complex space orbit infrastructure projects. However, $4.3 billion is the overall project value of the Roman space telescope project, not direct revenue data from the launch business obtained by SpaceX. Roman will fly about 1 million miles from Earth to study dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets at about 1,000 times the speed of Hubble.

Roman's successful launch further verifies Falcon Heavy's mission reliability and strengthens SpaceX's competitive barriers in the government's high-value launch market. Wall Street's valuation logic for SpaceX's “space AI empire” is to focus on large-scale rocket launches such as Starships and Starlink to form a realistic business base, and then transform space orbital AI computing power infrastructure resources into highly elastic long-term growth rights. The SpaceX prospectus expects to deploy orbital AI computing power satellites as early as 2028, launch the first batch of modular orbital computing power clusters before the end of this decade, and begin commercialization. The long-term goal is to deploy 100 gigawatts of AI computing power to space every year; however, the document also admits that full commercialization is still limited by Starship reuse, heat dissipation, radiation protection, launch frequency, capital expenditure, and regulatory approval.

Musk previously posted on social media X predicting that SpaceX's annual revenue will reach about 3.5 trillion US dollars around 2033, which is more aggressive than the “1 trillion US dollars by 2030” proposed earlier; if Wall Street's estimated revenue of 100 billion US dollars in 2027 is used as a base, it is equivalent to a 35-fold increase over six years, with a compound annual growth rate of about 81%. However, this aggressive prediction is Musk's personal prediction and is not an official company guideline.

SpaceX successfully launches NASA's $4.3 billion Roman space telescope project to explore the dark universe

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman Space Telescope) on Sunday local time, thus starting a mission expected to last 5 to 10 years.

The telescope took off aboard SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket at 7:26 a.m., in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It will fly to a distance of about 1 million miles from Earth. Scientific observations are scheduled to begin as early as December, and the first images are expected to be available in late 2027.

Roman will study dark matter and dark energy — invisible phenomena believed to influence the formation of galaxies and the expansion of the universe. It will also search for planets outside the solar system, including worlds that may be similar to Earth.

“According to our current understanding of physics, something may be fundamentally missing, so Roman has the potential to provide clues to this.” Christine McQueen, head of the Roman mission office at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said before the launch.

For investors, this successful launch is yet another high-profile achievement for Elon Musk's privately held SpaceX and its Falcon Heavy rocket. It also highlights the government's continued demand for launch services, spacecraft components, and high-end cutting-edge scientific instruments; however, Roman's budget history shows that NASA's large-scale projects are still vulnerable to cost overruns and changes in political priorities.

Named after NASA's first chief astronomer and first female executive, Roman uses a reflector similar in size to the Hubble Space Telescope. However, its wide-angle infrared camera can capture an area 100 times larger than the Hubble and inspect the sky at a much faster speed.

“It maps the sky about 1,000 times faster than Hubble.” McQueen said.

Roman is also equipped with a corona instrument that can block starlight, which is expected to allow scientists to photograph weak planets orbiting nearby stars.

The task was first proposed by the Obama administration in the early 2010s, and has continued for many years since then amid rising costs and political uncertainty. The first administration previously led by Trump tried to cancel the project in 2018; a budget proposal in early 2025 did not include relevant funding for a while, and NASA space exploration funding was restored in the final budget application soon thereafter.

Furthermore, L3 Harris Technology (LHX.US), one of the leaders in US military technology, provided the key components for the project, namely the 2.4-meter optical telescope component assembly manufactured by NASA, which acted as Roman's “eye.”

Wall Street agencies' latest target share price and joint judgment on SpaceX

The Roman mission verified SpaceX's heavy launch reliability and government order barriers, and provided engineering credit for a higher-risk space AI data center blueprint. Falcon Heavy represents a realistic business that can be realized, while the space orbital AI data center launch mission forms a highly elastic second growth curve and long-term valuation options.

The SpaceX prospectus clearly defines “building a space civilization that continues to expand, and eventually moving towards a Type II civilization that can use all of the Sun's energy” as a long-term paradigm shift; Musk himself has stated that the lunar satellite factory, Mass Driver (Mass Driver), and AI hardware deployment of more than 100 terawatts per year will push humans to make “non-trivial progress” towards Type II civilization. Therefore, the orbital AI data center is not an isolated project, but a first-tier infrastructure connecting “Earth's limited computing power — solar system-level energy — multi-planetary civilization.” The so-called Kardashev Type II Civilization (Kardashev Type II Civilization) is capable of using all the energy of this star.

The latest NASA Roman mission strengthens the growth certainty of SpaceX's existing space launch business; orbital AI computing power mainly provides long-term valuation convexity. As of late August 2026, all four mainstream Wall Street financial institutions have maintained positive ratings on SpaceX's stock price prospects, but their assumptions about the pace of commercialization of SpaceX-led space orbital AI data centers are clearly different. As of last Friday's US stock close, SpaceX's stock price closed at $141.50.

Citi maintains a “buy” rating and a bullish target price of $200 for 12 months. The agency's $900 or more per share scenario is a long-term condition scenario, not the current official target price; provided that Starships are reused on a large scale and that SpaceX establishes an unquestionable dominant position in the global satellite internet connection and space AI computing power infrastructure market.

Deutsche Bank maintains a “buy” rating and a target price of 235 US dollars, stressing that the current non-computing cost of orbital data centers is about 6 times that of the terrestrial solution; it is expected to drop to 1 to 1.5 times before the end of this decade, and may be lower than ground costs in the early to mid-2030s.

Goldman Sachs expects all of SpaceX's AI-related joint revenue data to increase from US$3.2 billion in 2025 to US$322 billion in 2030, but large-scale space AI orbital computing power infrastructure still implies extremely high engineering and capital execution requirements. Goldman Sachs maintained its “buy” rating for the stock and raised its target price from $205 to $220. Another financial giant, Morgan Stanley, believes that the market has not fully taken into account the value of SpaceX's AI platform; however, the most optimistic bull market scenario of $600 per share requires that orbital AI computing power deployment costs be reduced to half of the current level, and that Starship, Starlink, and AI businesses can be co-scaled.