SpaceX stock surges after successful ISS and Google launches

SpaceX ( SPCX ) stock rose on Friday after the company's rockets successfully sent humans to the International Space Station (ISS) and a Google ( GOOG ) satellite into orbit.

On Thursday, Elon Musk's rocket company launched four astronauts to the ISS, sending NASA's Crew-13 mission aloft from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Also on Thursday, Google's Project Suncatcher — a moonshot satellite prototype aimed at testing whether AI computing can be done at scale in space — launched aboard a SpaceX Transporter-18 smallsat rideshare mission.

Now in orbit, Google will conduct research on how Google's tensor processing units, or TPUs, perform in space.

In a blog post, Google wrote that the test is "designed to gather in-orbit data on how our TPUs handle the physical stress of spaceflight and the radiation and thermal extremes of space."

Earlier in the week, SpaceX put Starship — its largest and most powerful rocket — into Earth orbit for the first time and deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites on board, despite an engine going out during ascent.

Starlink is SpaceX's largest business, and a working Starship is central to how the company plans to expand the network's capacity and reduce the cost of launching each satellite into orbit.

"What an extraordinary week for SpaceX! We launched our quiver of space vehicles: Starship, Dragon, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy," SpaceX senior vice president of Falcon and Dragon Jon Edwards posted on X . "This week is a powerful reminder of what rocket reusability unlocks and what the SpaceX team can accomplish when we stay relentlessly focused and consistently execute at the highest level."