What would it be without another day of space news led by SpaceX. SpaceX continues to make news and this time it was on two different fronts.

The first thing has to do with funding as SpaceX released amended finance forms. After initially releasing that they had raised $850 million in a February round of financing it turns out they raised even more. They brought in $1.16 billion was brought in over the last two months! It appears that this line of financing continued the increase in SpaceX's evaluation to a whopping $74 billion and interestingly enough included Alphabet, Google's parent company.

The second announcement was really really cool as it plays a part in putting humans back on the moon and building a more permanent presence there. SpaceX's Heavy Falcon was selected by the contractor NASA had hired, Astrobotics. The Falcon Heavy will carry the Volatiles Investigating Polar Explorer Rover or VIPER to the moon. This rover has been nicknamed the ice sniffing rover as it is designed to locate ice for future use by manned missions. While no launch time frame has been offered yet the lander is supposed to land on the moon in 2023 so it might be a few years until we see the Falcon Heavy fire up again. 

Blue Origin also did a full dress rehearsal and it was honestly pretty boring to watch. After years now of watching SpaceX the Blue Origin was a pretty bland launch. While SpaceX has cameras on the craft itself Blue Origin does not and because of that it was hard to see the rocket once it really started to get up there. Also the New Sheppard craft is honestly kind of ugly. Its a stubby little rocket while SpaceX has a nice sleek design.