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Elon Musk shows off SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Block 5 ahead of launch and landing debut

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has published what appears to be the first official photo of the company’s newest Falcon 9 upgrade, known as Block 5. This particular booster is the first Falcon 9 Block 5 to be shipped to SpaceX’s launch facilities and is currently aiming for its first launch sometime next week after a May 4 static fire test, perhaps its first of anywhere from 10 to 100 operational missions.

Designed with reliability and reusability front and center, the booster upgrades have focused on additional thermal protection around the octaweb and interstage, reusable legs capable of retracting after recovery, titanium grid fins, and dramatic improvements to the heatshield at the base of the rocket. On the reliability side of upgrades, SpaceX has completed dozens of Merlin 1D static fires to qualify a turbopump redesign requested by NASA, as well as an upgraded COPV designed to guard against the type of anomaly that catastrophically destroyed Amos-6 and Falcon 9 in September 2016. A huge amount of work has also been done to improve and redesign aspects of Falcon 9 for easier (and cheaper) production and refurbishment, most notably replacing the welded octaweb structure with a bolted alternative likely to relieve many headaches and many days of octaweb weld checks.

Aside from the biggest and most obvious changes, Block 5 is host to dozens or hundreds of additional tweaks and updates, a reflection of SpaceX’s pursuit of continuous improvement. Per SpaceX’s Vice President of Manufacturing Andy Lambert, SpaceX has “never built any two vehicles identically”, and Block 5 continues that tradition. Many Block 5 features have, however, already been flight-tested and optimized on previous Block 4 launches, including the octaweb heatshield, titanium gridfins, and minor aerodynamic tweaks to the second stage.

Block 5 sitting on the pad – harsh late day lighting [6341x 2804]
by inSpaceXLounge

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The rocket is set to conduct its inaugural launch sometime next week – although the current schedule has SpaceX on May 7, Bangladeshi media have indicated that that date will slip a few days to the right after a handful of delays to the booster’s static fire. Tasked with lofting the country’s first geostationary communications satellite, Bangabandhu-1, B1046 will carry the 3500 kg spacecraft on its way to a high-energy geostationary transfer orbit before separating from the second stage and heading back to earth. The drone ship ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ and tugboat Rachel were spied departing from Port Canaveral at around the same time as Falcon 9 rolled out, and they will travel several hundred miles into the Atlantic to catch the pathfinder booster.

Teslarati photographer Tom Cross will be on hand to capture the historic rocket’s static fire and launch over the next week or so, as well as the first Block 5 recovery on OCISLY if all goes as planned. Failure is always a possibility when flight-testing significantly upgraded technological systems, rockets especially, but SpaceX likely has far less tolerance for failure in the case of Block 5 – any problems with the rocket will almost invariably mothball into NASA concerns and investigations as the company nears its first crewed launches. Fingers crossed for the successful inaugural launch and landing of Falcon 9 Booster 1046.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

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SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.

“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”

Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12

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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.

It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”

Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.

There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:

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“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”

SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.

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Tesla expands massive safety feature worldwide in latest update

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has expanded the footprint of a massive safety feature worldwide with a recent Software Update labeled as 2026.20.6. The expansion of the “Blind Spot Warning While Parked” feature represents the more widespread availability of the feature, which aims to prevent “dooring.”

Dooring is when a driver or passenger opens a car door into the path of an oncoming road user, usually a cyclist or motorcyclist. It is among the most common types of cycling accidents, the League of American Bicyclists says.

For this reason, Tesla created a feature that warns occupants not to open the door because an object is approaching. The feature will sound a chime, and it will also delay the opening of the door to prevent an incident.

The release notes state (via Not a Tesla App):

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“If you attempt to open a door while an approaching object is detected in your blind spot (for example, a bicyclist approaching from behind) a chime sounds, and your door will not open upon initial button press. Wait a short time and press the button a second time to override the warning.”

Tesla initially rolled out this feature back in 2024 with the Model 3 “Highland.” However, it remained with the Model 3 exclusively for over a year; that was until Tesla added it to the Cybertruck this past Spring.

Now, it is making its way to the new Model Y, 2021 and newer Model S, and 2021 or newer Model X.

The prevention of dooring incidents could eliminate many injuries to cyclists, especially in an urban setting. Dooring accounts for 10-20 percent of bike-related crashes in major cities, and over 17,000 dooring-related incidents were treated in the U.S. over the course of a decade. These usually involve fractures, contusions, and head trauma.

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Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla confirmed this morning that it has sent the first production units, manufactured with no steering wheel or pedals, to on-road testing in Austin, sharing video of the first rides with no human controls.

The lack of steering wheels and pedals in the Cybercab aligns with Tesla’s self-certification of Robotaxi as Level 4 SAE, a platform it plans to make widespread through internal vehicles and customer-owned cars that will operate and generate revenue for individuals.

The start of these engineering tests is a major signal for Tesla, which plans to bring driverless, wheel-less, and pedal-less Cybercabs to market in the coming months. With production already well underway at Gigafactory Texas, where the Cybercab is built, there is some inclination to believe the first public rides could happen sooner rather than later.

Tesla’s engineering tests will put the Cybercab in real-world scenarios, testing not only the hardware, but more importantly, the software that drives the car around Austin with nobody supervising it within the car.

This is perhaps the biggest part of the internal testing process, especially prior to allowing regular, everyday people to hail the Cybercab for an autonomous ride. These early rides serve as a true benchmark for Tesla: How many rides can it achieve safely? How many miles did it travel consecutively without needing an intervention? What scenarios challenge the Full Self-Driving suite the most?

The proper precautions have already been put into place as well, as Tesla released the First Responders Guide to Cybercab over the weekend, ensuring that emergency services have 24/7 access to Robotaxi Assistance, as well as other boundaries, such as Geofencing features that can be used to redirect autonomous vehicle traffic due to accidents, road closures, construction, or maintenance.

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Cybercab seems genuinely close to being added to the Robotaxi fleet in Austin, but Tesla has prioritized safety throughout this entire process. Therefore, we think it could be months before it truly starts giving rides to the public. People have been frustrated with this, but Robotaxi in Austin has a tremendous safety record so far, so the slow rollout has kept people safe and accidents to a minimum.

The most important thing is that Tesla continues to show consistent progress in the Cybercab’s ramp-up toward fleet addition. A few weeks back, we saw the EPA reward the Cybercab a Certificate of Conformity, allowing it to enter the stream of commerce. Then, we saw Tesla add decals, signaling that it was likely about to start testing it publicly. That has now happened.

The next big move will be the announcement of the first rides, so this Summer should be filled with anticipation.

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