SpaceX
SpaceX ships two Falcon boosters to Florida for a busy spring of launches
Two days before the first attempted launch of Falcon Heavy Block 5, a Florida local caught a separate Falcon booster crossing the state border on its way to one of SpaceX’s two Cape Canaveral launch pads.
Soon after, a separate Falcon booster was tracked heading East through Arizona, Louisiana, and Florida, a rare back-to-back rocket shipment bringing to an end two months of little visible activity. Prelude to a busy spring and early summer manifest, these Falcon booster arrivals signify a new influx of rocket hardware as SpaceX prepares for several upcoming missions. Ranging from Falcon Heavy Flight 3 to Crew Dragon’s critical in-flight abort test, SpaceX has no less than seven launches planned between now and the
Core Spotting – Episode 74
This brings us to another episode of analysis of SpaceX’s ever-changing fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. The cast of flightworthy Block 5 rockets now includes either seven or eight flight-proven boosters and perhaps 2-3 unflown boosters. The new center core believed to be assigned to Falcon Heavy’s third launch (B1057) is reportedly already in Florida, while both flight-proven Falcon Heavy side boosters (B1052 and B1053) were transported to SpaceX’s Pad 39A hangar for refurbishment less than a week after their first launch and landing.
Of the above fleet, B1047, B1048, B1050, B1051, B1052, and B1053 are already known to be located at SpaceX’s Florida facilities, all of which launched from Cape Canaveral within the last five months. After successfully supporting Crew Dragon’s orbital launch debut in March, B1051 is currently assigned to SpaceX’s second West Coast launch of the year and will likely be shipped to California in the next few weeks. B1057, believed to be the next new Falcon Heavy center core, is likely already in Florida to prepare for its a launch as early as late June.
This leaves either two known flight-proven boosters or new Falcon boosters as the likely suspects captured in a duo of April core spottings, one on April 8th and another on April 17th. SpaceX has two flightworthy Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters – B1047 and B1048 – at its Florida facilities, so it’s not out of the question that both spotted cores are new. They could also be B1046 and B1049, both of which recently completed launches from SpaceX’s Vandenberg pad and have been undergoing refurbishment in California. SpaceX’s West Coast manifest could have just two launches for the rest of 2019, meaning that there is no practical reason to keep unassigned boosters nearby.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has plans to begin operational Starlink constellation launches as early as mid-May and likely has more than one planned for 2019. The launch-hungry venture will need as many Falcon 9 boosters as it can get – the more, the merrier. Heading into Q3 2019, SpaceX’s first crewed launch of Crew Dragon (DM-2) is in need of a new Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and is reportedly scheduled no earlier than (NET) October. One of the cores spotted in the last week or so could be that very rocket, arriving early due to the gravity of DM-2 and the need to double, triple, and quadruple-check the hardware to best ensure mission success.
At the end of the day, the most likely explanation is that one of the boosters spotted is new, while one is B1046 or B1049. This is supported by the fact that the second instance was coincidentally tracked throughout its journey, with fans in California, Tuscon, Louisiana, and Florida all catching glimpses between April 12th and April 17th. SpaceX static fires all unflown boosters in McGregor, Texas before they are delivered to a launch site, a procedure that typically takes no less than two weeks from arrival to departure. The booster spotted entering Florida on April 8th, however, does not seem to have been spotted by the same unofficial network of SpaceX fans.
Finally, there is a chance that one of these boosters is a new Falcon 9 assigned to SpaceX’s next Cargo Dragon mission to the International Space Station. CRS-17 is scheduled for launch on April 26th, cutting it extremely close for the booster to be arriving just two weeks before its static fire test.
Check out Teslarati’s Marketplace! We offer Tesla accessories, including for the Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Model 3.
SpaceX has achieved an incredible milestone by launching its 11,000th Starlink satellite into orbit.
This accomplishment occurred during the Starlink Group 17-50 mission, which lifted off on August 19 at 04:01 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Falcon 9 launches 24 @Starlink satellites from California pic.twitter.com/UscpmAxDls
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 19, 2026
A Falcon 9 rocket carried 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites on this flight, successfully deploying them into low Earth orbit approximately one hour after liftoff. The first stage booster, identified as B1097 on its twelfth flight, landed successfully on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
According to tracking data compiled around that date, this deployment brought the total number of Starlink satellites in orbit to just over 11,000.
The Starlink program began with test satellites known as Tintin A and B, launched on February 22, 2018. The first operational batch of 60 Starlink satellites followed on May 24, 2019, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Those initial satellites marked the start of a rapid expansion that has continued for more than seven years.
SpaceX has conducted hundreds of dedicated Starlink missions since then, routinely launching batches of 20 to 30 satellites at a time using reusable Falcon 9 rockets. By mid-2026, the company had already surpassed 12,000 total satellites launched across all versions, with continuous replacements for units that deorbit as designed to manage space debris.
Looking ahead, SpaceX continues to expand the Starlink constellation to enhance global broadband coverage, capacity, and speed. The network already serves millions of users across more than 160 countries and supports applications ranging from residential internet to maritime, aviation, and emergency services.
Future plans center on next-generation hardware, including larger V3 satellites capable of delivering substantially higher throughput, which require the increased payload capacity of the Starship vehicle currently under development and testing.
In July, SpaceX submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission seeking authority for a Gen3 constellation of up to 100,000 satellites. These spacecraft would operate in very low Earth orbit shells at altitudes near 325 kilometers and 475 kilometers. The filing requests use of existing Ku, Ka, V, and E band spectrum along with new greenfield W and D band frequencies between 92 and 275 GHz.
SpaceX states that the expanded system aims to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical broadband to consumers, enterprises, governments, and billions of AI-powered devices worldwide while handling a majority of global internet traffic. Approval and subsequent deployment would depend on regulatory review and the operational readiness of Starship for high-volume launches.
This ambitious scale reflects SpaceX’s ongoing commitment to providing ubiquitous high-speed connectivity from space.
News
SpaceX just launched a secret payload from California
SpaceX launched a classified Space Force mission from Vandenberg, revealing almost nothing about its payload.
SpaceX launched a classified Falcon 9 mission for the U.S. Space Force from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Saturday night, and the government released almost nothing about what was on board. The mission, designated USSF-366, lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E with a window that opened at 9:52 p.m. ET and ran into the early hours of Sunday, according to SpaceX’s own mission page, which described the payload only as classified. SpaceX confirmed the launch on its X account and pointed viewers to a livestream that began roughly ten minutes before liftoff.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-366 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/FFEzeYOds1
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 16, 2026
TESLARATI Premium Membership
$19.99 USD
The lack of detail did not stop analysts from filling in the blanks. Independent tracking of the rocket’s stage drop zones matched the pattern SpaceX has used on previous Starlink Group 15 missions, according to reporting from Outer Space Today, which pointed to Starshield as the likely payload rather than a one off government satellite. Starshield is SpaceX’s national security product, a version of the Starlink satellite bus built to Pentagon specifications for earth observation, communications and hosted payloads. Unlike consumer Starlink, government agencies do not have to disclose what Starshield satellites are actually doing once they reach orbit.
USSF-366 is the latest entry in a steady flow of classified and semi classified work between SpaceX and the Space Force. The company picked up a $178.5 million task order in April to launch missile tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency, as Teslarati reported at the time, and followed that in July with a $1.6 billion award covering 18 more Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027, also detailed by Teslarati. Add those contracts up and SpaceX’s Pentagon business for 2026 alone tops $8 billion.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
The Falcon 9 that flew Saturday landed back near the launch site, producing the sonic booms that have become routine for residents near Vandenberg. What is less routine is how little the public will likely ever learn about what the rocket carried. SpaceX and the Space Force have not confirmed the Starshield connection, and government satellite programs built on commercial buses rarely get identified beyond a mission number and a general orbit. For a company that live streams almost everything else it does, from Starship test flights to Optimus robot demos, USSF-366 is a reminder that some of SpaceX’s busiest work now happens entirely out of public view.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
Elon Musk told SpaceX staff AI revenue will soon dwarf rockets and Starlink combined entirely.
Elon Musk told SpaceX employees this week that artificial intelligence, not rockets, will soon carry the company’s revenue. In a roughly 29 minute internal address posted on SpaceX’s X account on Tuesday, Musk said AI revenue will pass every other line of business at SpaceX “probably in September” and pull further ahead by the fourth quarter.
The numbers he gave are specific. SpaceX currently runs 1.4 gigawatts of AI compute capacity. Musk wants that at 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, a jump he tied directly to revenue: “if we bring 10GW of AI online by the end of next year, it will be $300 billion to $500 billion a year in revenue.” He called those “big numbers,” which undersells a projection larger than what most countries produce in a year.
We made rockets reusable and are rebuilding the internet in space. The next challenge: making life multiplanetary and understanding the true nature of the universe
Watch @ElonMusk deliver a company update to @SpaceX employees pic.twitter.com/5c8rxoCQfu
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 11, 2026
Musk went further on where AI fits into SpaceX’s future. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX,” he told staff, adding that digital intelligence would eventually run “a trillion times” ahead of biological intelligence as computing scales. He tied that growth to the company’s founding mission, telling employees “we must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots,” with the payoff meant to help fund Starship and a Mars program that increasingly runs through Terafab, the joint Tesla, SpaceX and xAI chip plant.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
None of this is entirely new territory. SpaceX told investors much the same story during its first earnings call as a public company on August 4, where Musk moved the company’s $1 trillion revenue target up a year to 2030 and said Starlink could someday carry a majority of the world’s internet. What the all hands video adds is a hard deadline and a specific power figure Musk had not given publicly before, along with a franker pitch to his own workforce that AI, not launch cadence, is now the thing SpaceX is betting its future on.
The AI revenue itself is not coming from SpaceX training its own models. It is largely Starlink acting as the network layer for xAI’s workloads, plus SpaceX renting out compute capacity directly, the same approach behind the roughly $16 billion the company spent on AI infrastructure in a single quarter.
Musk closed the video with a pitch aimed at recruiting and retention rather than investors, telling employees that anyone who helps SpaceX win the AI race will eventually get the chance to go to the moon or Mars themselves. Whether SpaceX can turn 1.4 gigawatts into 10 in seventeen months is the more immediate question, and one that will show up in quarterly numbers well before anyone leaves Earth.
SpaceX achieves incredible milestone with Starlink program
Tesla is opening Cybercab rides to a select few
