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SpaceX’s next West Coast launches line up with flight-proven Falcon 9 rockets

(SpaceX)

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Major SpaceX customer Iridium has set an official target date for its eighth and final Iridium NEXT launch, expected to fly on a flight-proven Falcon 9 Block 5 booster as early as December 30th.

With Iridium-8 now tentatively on SpaceX’s launch manifest, the company’s West Coast schedule appears to have stabilized with two more orbital missions before the end of 2018 – Spaceflight Industry’s SSO-A rideshare mission will aim for the second half of November while Iridium-8 will likely be the last global launch of 2018 if it sticks to its December 30 target.

Iridium CEO Matt Desch was happy to offer a few additional details after tweeting Iridium-8’s targeted launch date and confirmed that – despite original estimates to the contrary – the mission would launch on flight-proven Falcon 9 booster B1049.2. He also stated that the booster would attempt to land on SpaceX drone ship Just Read The Instructions after launch, passing up a Return-to-Launch-Site (RTLS) recovery at the freshly-coronated Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) due to the significant weight and suboptimal trajectory of Iridium’s payload.

Barring unexpectedly heavy payloads, high-energy orbits, or new launch contracts, it’s probable that Iridium-8 will be the company’s last drone ship rocket recovery on the West Coast for at least a year, if not longer. The only unknown is whether SpaceX needs to or is able to launch during harbor seal pupping season, lasting from March to June – if that environmental concern can be sidestepped or altogether avoided, there may be no reason for Just Read The Instructions to remain in California when the drone ship could instead move to Florida and immediately facilitate faster launch cadence or support Falcon Heavy missions that could benefit from multiple booster landings at sea.

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According to CEO Elon Musk and other executives, SpaceX is already building a third autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) for the same reasons, to be named A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG) upon completion. Earlier this summer, Musk stated that the new vessel could be completed as early as summer of 2019, although he has since also stated that the first full BFR launches may take place on a floating platform somewhere off the coast of the US, increasing the probability of SpaceX delaying ASOG’s construction to allow for future use as both a launch and landing platform.

Triple booster reuse on the horizon

Returning to SpaceX’s Q4 2018 Vandenberg launch manifest, its launch of Spaceflight Industry’s SSO-A rideshare mission is expected to occur sometime next month and will likely be SpaceX’s second-to-last launch before the year is out. Notably, SpaceX executive Hans Koenigsmann recently suggested that SSO-A may end up playing host to the company’s first attempt to launch the same Falcon 9 booster three times. All previous Falcon 9 reuses have been the rockets’ second launches and typically saw SpaceX expend the booster in the ocean rather than recover it and attempt refurbishment for a third launch.

Falcon 9 Block 5, however, included a huge number of upgrades to the rocket’s overall stamina and reusability, theoretically raising the number of potential flights per booster from 10-100. Examined generally, moving from two to three flights per booster may seem inconsequential. The reality, however, is that the first true confirmation of the success or failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Block 5 upgrade will be whether a Block 5 booster is able to safely complete three missions and do so with relative ease.

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Falcon 9 B1046 returned to Port Canaveral in mid-August after the first Block 5 booster reuse, hopefully the first of dozens or even hundreds to come. (Tom Cross)

As SpaceX technicians and engineers gradually gain confidence with the new rocket iteration, debuted less than six months ago, the focus will eventually move from cautiously methodical design validation to rapid booster turnaround, eventually culminating in something approximating the 24-hour first stage reuse Musk challenged his company to achieve before 2019 is out. Ultimately, the third launch of a single Falcon 9 Block 5 booster will be the biggest step yet towards SpaceX’s ultimate goal of rapidly and affordably reusable orbital-class rockets.


For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!

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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Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming

Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.

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Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.

In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”

The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”

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SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.

Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.

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The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.

It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”

The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.

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Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing

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(Credit: Starlink | X)

Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.

Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.

Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.

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The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.

A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.

Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.

Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.

Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.

The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.

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Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration

Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.

The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.

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SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record

Falcon Heavy launched its first NRO mission while SpaceX landed four boosters in one day.

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SpaceX's Falcon Heavy lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. ET on October 1, 2026, carrying the classified NROL-97 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. (Credit: SpaceX)
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. ET on October 1, 2026, carrying the classified NROL-97 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. (Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX closed out one of its busiest days ever with a midnight Falcon Heavy launch from Florida, and the rocket’s two side boosters came home to finish off a landing record the company had never set before.

Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. ET Thursday carrying NROL-97, a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. It was the first time the NRO has flown on Falcon Heavy after 22 missions on Falcon 9, and the first NRO mission bought through the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 contract awarded in 2025, according to Spaceflight Now.

Roughly eight minutes after liftoff, side boosters B1104 and B1072 touched down at Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, setting off double sonic booms across Brevard County. B1104 was flying for the second time and B1072 for the fourth. Both last flew on August 30 on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, making NROL-97 the quickest turnaround between Falcon Heavy missions to date. The brand new center core, B1106, was expended in the Atlantic so the payload could reach its high energy orbit, and SpaceX’s mission page noted the fairing had previously flown on the NROL-95 mission in July.

The two landings capped a record for SpaceX. Earlier Thursday, Falcon 9 booster B1101 returned to Landing Zone 40 after sending the Crew-13 astronauts to the International Space Station, and another Falcon 9 launched the Transporter-18 rideshare with 130 payloads from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Spaceflight Now reported it was the first time SpaceX has landed four boosters in a single day, wrapping up the triple header Teslarati previewed on Wednesday.

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The mission also brought Landing Zone 1 back for what may be its final landing. SpaceX first landed an orbital class booster there in December 2015, but its lease on the former Launch Complex 13 site ended in 2025 as the company moved Florida landings to new pads at its own launch complexes. With LZ-40 already holding the Crew-13 booster, SpaceX brought LZ-1 back into service for one more night. Launch tracker Next Spaceflight listed NROL-97 as the final expected landing at the site.

NROL-97 adds to a fast growing stack of national security work for SpaceX. The company has flown four Space Force missions from Vandenberg since mid August, several believed to carry Starshield satellites, pushing its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion. Elon Musk was also named this week to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.

The Florida doubleheader stood out for another reason. The Space Coast saw only one launch in all of September as SpaceX shifts more of its East Coast infrastructure toward Starship, which reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 just three days earlier.

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