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European spacecraft converge on the US for rides on SpaceX rockets
Thanks in large part to delays suffered by Arianespace’s next-generation Ariane 6 rocket, a small fleet of European satellites are simultaneously converging on the United States to hitch rides into orbit with SpaceX.
SpaceX launching European payloads is nothing new. The company has occasionally launched spacecraft built in Europe for European space agencies or companies, but the combination is exceedingly rare. For several reasons, however, what was once alien is beginning to become commonplace, and that fact is about to be made even clearer over the remainder of 2022.
SpaceX kicked off a string of six or seven launches of spacecraft built by or for Europe on October 15th. Over the weekend, the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket – 70 meters (230 ft) tall, 3.7 meters (12 ft) wide, and capable of producing up to 770 tons (1.7M lbf) of thrust at liftoff – successfully launched the Hotbird 13F communications satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) for the French satcom company Eutelsat.
Hotbird 13F is the first of three Eutelsat satellites the company secretly agreed to launch on SpaceX rockets. Hours after its twin’s launch, Hotbird 13G arrived in Florida in a custom Airbus Beluga XL transport jet (its first visit to the US since 2009) and will soon begin preparing for its own ride on a SpaceX rocket as early as November 2022. Eutelsat 10B, also on track to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket sometime in November, likely left France for Florida on an oceangoing Arianespace ship on October 12th.
Normally, selecting the launch provider for communication satellites that cost eight or nine figures is accompanied by a press release and plenty of celebration. That the European Space Agency, Eutelsat, Airbus, and Thales Alenia said next to nothing until the last moment says a lot about how all parties involved really feel about transferring three of their satellites onto SpaceX rockets. Originally, all three were intended to launch on Arianespace’s rockets: Eutelsat 10B on one of the last Ariane 5s and Hotbird 13F and 13G on one of the first Ariane 6s.
It’s not entirely clear why Ariane 5 wasn’t able to launch Eutelsat 10B, but it’s unsurprising that partners ESA, Thales Alenia, Airbus, and Eutelsat decided to move Hotbird 13F and 13G to Falcon 9. The Ariane 6 rocket meant to launch both satellites simultaneously is years behind schedule, and its launch debut recently slipped even further from late 2022 to sometime in 2023. Originally scheduled to debut in mid-2020, it’s now possible – if not likely – that Ariane 6 won’t be ready to launch until the second half of next year (or even later).
Thanks to those delays, the new rocket will enter the scene with a very busy 2023 and 2024 manifest packed with high-value institutional and commercial payloads from all across Europe. In other words, a pair of semi-commercial communications satellites like Hotbird 13F/13G could have easily been forced to wait for a year or more to launch on Ariane 6. Adding insult to injury, Hotbird 13F and 13G are the first two satellites built under the joint European Space Agency and Airbus Eurostar Neo program, and will now be flying on an American rocket built by a company that is almost singlehandedly responsible for ending a golden era of competitive European launch services.
With confidence in Ariane 6’s debut timing lower than ever, a NASA official recently revealed that ESA is even studying the possibility of launching Euclid – a next-generation two-ton space telescope – on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Euclid was originally scheduled to launch on one of Arianespace’s Russian-built Soyuz 2.1 rockets (or Ariane 6) in mid-2022. That contract was signed in 2020, six years after Russian President Vladimir Putin reminded the world of his instability, recklessness, and brutality by illegally and unofficially invading Ukraine. In February 2022, after months of obvious buildup, Russia doubled down on its Ukraine offensive with an openly genocidal full-scale invasion. In the aftermath, it kidnapped a batch of European OneWeb satellites, requisitioned a Soyuz rocket the company had already paid for, kneecapped a joint European-Russian Mars mission, and (while mostly mutual) revoked its support of European Soyuz launches.
That has effectively removed Russia as a serious option for European launches or collarboration, leaving several European missions and companies in limbo. Britain’s OneWeb, for example, had an exclusive contract with Russia to launch its entire low Earth orbit (LEO) internet satellite constellation on up to 21 Soyuz rockets. After losing $230 million in the process, the company was forced to abruptly shift gears, and is now on track to launch its first batch of satellites since early 2022 on an Indian SLV-3 rocket. One of at least two SpaceX Falcon 9 missions could follow as early as December 2022. Unless Ariane 6 aces its launch debut in the near future, many more European payloads could find themselves in similar positions in 2023 and 2024.
Meanwhile, several other European-made payloads are preparing for Falcon 9 launches. While these payloads have been assigned to SpaceX rockets from the start, they still demonstrate just how big of a bite the US startup has taken out of the European launch industry. Most recently, the joint NASA-ESA-CSA Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) spacecraft was flown from France to California on October 17th. Falcon 9 will launch SWOT from the California coast as early as December 2022.
Soon, Japanese startup ispace’s first HAKUTO-R Moon lander – largely assembled, tested, and propellant by France’s ArianeGroup – will be transported from Germany to Florida for a November 2022 SpaceX launch. Germany’s second and third SARah radar satellites could head to the US shortly for a Falcon 9 launch tentatively scheduled as early as the final days of 2022 or early 2023. Finally, SpaceX could complete its first OneWeb launch around the same time.
SpaceX has selected Qualcomm Technologies to supply core infrastructure for Starlink Mobile’s planned nationwide terrestrial 5G network in the United States.
Announced on November 4, the multi-year agreement covers radios, baseband units, and commercial-grade Layer 1 software based on Qualcomm’s Dragonwing Cellular Infrastructure platforms, specifically the QRU100 and QDU100:
🚀 SpaceX has picked Qualcomm to supply radios, baseband units and Layer 1 software for Starlink Mobile’s nationwide terrestrial 5G network.
Deployment across tens of thousands of U.S. cell sites starts in 2027. Qualcomm calls it its biggest 5G deal yet. https://t.co/YKLRakuJjB
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 4, 2026
These will power Massive MIMO radio units featuring 64 transmit and 64 receive paths (64T64R), designed to boost coverage, capacity, and spectral efficiency at scale. Qualcomm has described the pact as its largest 5G deal to date, with deployment across tens of thousands of U.S. cell sites scheduled to begin in 2027.
The terrestrial build-out is meant to complement, not replace, Starlink’s satellite direct-to-cell capabilities. SpaceX has assembled substantial spectrum holdings for this purpose: roughly 65 MHz of mid-band frequencies acquired from EchoStar (including AWS-4 and related bands) and up to 14 MHz of low-band 800 MHz spectrum from Grain Management.
The low-band airwaves improve indoor penetration and range, while mid-band supports higher capacity. SpaceX executives, including President Gwynne Shotwell, have outlined a hybrid architecture in which satellites eliminate outdoor dead zones and terrestrial nodes add capacity where demand is highest.
Earlier comments suggested small cells or femtocells potentially co-located with existing Starlink user terminals on roofs, though later filings also reference more conventional antennas on towers and structures.
The big picture is SpaceX’s bid to become a full-fledged U.S. mobile carrier rather than a satellite partner or dead-zone filler. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile together generate hundreds of billions in annual wireless revenue; Shotwell has said SpaceX expects to win customers by offering superior coverage, including during disasters, through seamless satellite-terrestrial handoff.
Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are trying to shut Starlink out before FCC vote
Starlink already represents a major share of SpaceX’s revenue and profit following the company’s 2026 IPO. By vertically integrating spectrum, satellite manufacturing, launch capacity, and now ground radio equipment, SpaceX aims to control more of the connectivity stack.
Qualcomm’s involvement also positions the network for future evolution toward AI-native 6G infrastructure, with energy-efficient processing that could improve deployment economics.
Challenges remain: spectrum depth still lags the Big Three, capital costs for tens of thousands of sites will be substantial, and regulatory approvals continue, but the Qualcomm deal marks a concrete step from spectrum accumulation toward operational network build-out.
In short, the partnership accelerates Starlink Mobile’s shift from orbital broadband specialist to hybrid mobile competitor, testing whether a space-based company can reshape terrestrial wireless economics and coverage in the world’s largest market.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Grok Bot is picking up the phone now, and the first calls are wild
Elon Musk wants Grok Bot users making phone calls, and one Comcast call saved $500.
Elon Musk is pushing Grok Bot users toward a feature that, until this week, few of them could actually use. “Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls!” Musk wrote on X Tuesday afternoon, quoting a demo from Sawyer Merritt that included audio from a live call.
Musk first announced calling on October 25, writing that the agent could “call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation.” There were no release notes at the time, and the feature only appeared in preview builds. That changed on Tuesday, when creator Peter Yang said all Grok Bot users should now be able to call US businesses. Musk reposted his demo.
Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 3, 2026
Yang’s call shows how far the feature goes. In his video, his bot dialed Comcast, worked through the phone menu, deflected small talk about the weather by saying it does not “have eyes on the sky,” turned down three upsells and used a cheaper fiber offer from competitor Sonic as leverage. His bill dropped from $84 to $45 per month on a faster plan, a savings of nearly $500 a year. The call ran about 25 minutes, and the bot paused to get Yang’s approval before accepting the final terms.
Merritt described what the user sees: a live transcript runs during the call, and when the business asks for something the bot does not know, an answer box pops up in the chat. The user types a reply and Grok relays it to the person on the line. Other users posted results Tuesday, including a $100 gift card recovered from Verizon Fios after a 51 minute call and a same day pediatric appointment, which Musk also shared. Not every call worked. One user said a rep refused to cancel a subscription once it was clear an AI was on the phone.
Grok @Bot can now call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 25, 2026
The Grok Bot terms require every call to identify itself as a virtual assistant calling on the user’s behalf and warn that calls may be recorded. Marketing, mass calling and impersonation are prohibited, and calling currently works only with US numbers.
The timing stands out. Days ago, users began hitting their weekly limits early, and Musk said the cost of serving Grok Bot was “unsustainably high relative to revenue,” as Teslarati reported. A call that spends most of its 25 or 50 minutes on hold is the kind of long running task that eats into usage, and SpaceXSI has not said how calls count against the weekly pool. Grok Bot is included from the $30 Premium tier of The X Subscription upward.
For Tesla owners, the agent has been in their cars since September 22 and is enabled across every Cybercab and Model Y Robotaxi. Musk has already pitched it for phone chores like scrubbing your number from spam call lists. Neither Tesla nor SpaceXSI has confirmed whether a bot can place one of these calls on request from inside the vehicle.
Tesla Full Self-Driving, which is now referred to in Europe as “Tesla Assisted Driving” (TAD), is getting hit with a handful of new changes at the hands of the Netherlands’ vehicle authority, the RDW (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer).
On 3 November, the RDW announced that it has assessed and approved a set of changes to Tesla’s FSD Supervised driver-assistance system. The updates introduce the official European name TAD and impose stricter controls on the system’s speed behaviour.
The new name will appear on the in-car display, in the owner’s manual, and in all other driver-facing information. The change applies to Tesla models equipped with Tesla Assisted Driving and hardware version 4.0 (HW4) or later.
Importantly, the RDW stressed that the name change does not alter the system’s fundamental operation: it remains a supervised driver-assistance feature that supports the driver in performing driving tasks. The driver stays fully responsible for controlling the vehicle at all times.
Beyond the rebranding, the most significant functional adjustments concern speed settings. Drivers will still be able to set a speed margin, a percentage by which the system may exceed the applicable speed limit when necessary for safety or traffic flow. However, the maximum allowable margin has been reduced from +50% to a maximum of +10%.
In addition, every time the vehicle is started, the speed-margin setting will default to 0% deviation, and other speed-related functions will be disabled by default. These changes will be delivered through an over-the-air (OTA) software update from Tesla.
Tesla requested the RDW’s review of these “minor changes.” After evaluating how the modifications were implemented and how the system behaves, the authority found no adverse or unintended effects on the system’s operation or the vehicle’s driving behaviour. Consequently, the existing type approval remains valid under the same conditions and for the same use; no amendment or extension of the approval is required.
The RDW has informed the nine EU member states that have already accepted its type approval—Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia—about the updates. Broader EU-wide approval is still under discussion within the European Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV). Those proceedings remain confidential, and the RDW has declined to comment on them.
The approved changes align with earlier discussions involving German authorities, which had advocated both for clearer naming to avoid misleading drivers and for a tighter speed offset.
By formally incorporating these adjustments while leaving the core type approval intact, the RDW has cleared the way for Tesla to roll out the updated TAD software via OTA to eligible vehicles in the Netherlands and the other countries that recognise the Dutch approval. The system continues to function strictly as supervised driver assistance, with the human driver remaining the responsible party.
SpaceX moves to challenge AT&T, Verizon with Qualcomm-powered 5G
Elon Musk’s Grok Bot is picking up the phone now, and the first calls are wild
