The Starlink 10-50 mission launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at 6:50 a.m. EDT (1050 UTC). Space Force meteorologists had predicted an 85 percent chance of favorable weather. Alongside 29 v2 Mini Starlink satellites, the Falcon 9 first-stage booster carried two Besxar manufacturing pods on an eight-minute, 19-second ride to space and back.
In October 2025, Besxar revealed it had booked 12 Falcon 9 flights to test the space-based semiconductor substrate manufacturing plants it calls Fabships. The company said it would use the vacuum of space to produce ultra-pure substrates and precursor materials for the semiconductors essential to electronic devices. The company originally planned to begin Fabship testing aboard the Falcon 9 before the end of 2025.
On a Starlink mission, the first-stage booster typically reaches an altitude of about 115 kilometers, above the 100-kilometer Karman Line, before gravity pulls it back for a landing on a drone ship in the ocean. Besxar says these short-duration, sub-orbital flights with rapid turnarounds are ideal for fine-tuning its manufacturing process. The test-bed Fabships, called the Clipper Class, are about the size of a microwave oven.
Ashley Pilipiszyn, Founder and CEO of Besxar, who previously worked for OpenAI in its early days, said the early Clipper Class Fabships will carry a variety of terrestrial-manufactured semiconductor wafers to see how they hold up against the rigor of a rocket launch and reentry. “You can think of this similar to the ultimate egg drop challenge,” she said in an interview on the CNBC podcast Manifest Space. “We want to ensure not only can we get wafers to space, do our manufacturing, but also that we’re able to successfully bring back wafers without any type of cracking or damage like that.” Besxar has received support from Nvidia’s Inception Program for startups, and SpaceX is listed as one of its investors.
Pilipiszyn framed the effort as a response to physical limits on Earth. “We’re reaching the limits of what can be built on Earth. AI data centers are straining against power and cooling limits, silicon is nearing its physical edge, and fabrication plants can’t achieve the vacuum or yields that next-generation materials demand,” she said last year. She added that a regular cadence of launch and reentry missions lets the company iterate faster than ever, “transforming space into a critical extension of America’s semiconductor supply chain.”
Besxar has 11 further Falcon 9 flights booked under its 12-flight agreement to continue Fabship testing. Sunday’s launch was SpaceX’s 62nd Starlink delivery mission of the year, and SpaceX confirmed deployment of the Starlink satellites, slated to occur one hour, three minutes, and 31 seconds after launch.
