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SpaceX completed its first Starlink launch on May 23rd, flying B1049 for the third time. SpaceX's next Starlink launch will very likely mark the first time a booster has flown four orbital-class missions. (SpaceX) SpaceX completed its first Starlink launch on May 23rd, flying B1049 for the third time. SpaceX's next Starlink launch will very likely mark the first time a booster has flown four orbital-class missions. (SpaceX)

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SpaceX ready for 60-satellite Starlink launch debut: third time’s the charm?

SpaceX is just hours away from its third attempt at Starlink's dedicated launch debut. (SpaceX)

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SpaceX is approximately two hours away from its third Starlink v0.9 launch attempt, an ambitious batch of 60 satellites that will also be the company’s heaviest payload ever.

As hinted at by the name “Starlink v0.9”, these sixty satellites are not quite the final design. More a beta test at an unprecedented scale, several critical new technologies and strategies will be put to the test on this launch, ranging from a seriously unorthodox satellite deployment method to the near-final krypton-fueled electric thrusters. Same as SpaceX’s May 15th and 16th launch attempts, Starlink v0.9’s third try has a 90-minute window that opens at 10:30 pm EDT (02:30 UTC), this time on Thursday, May 23rd.

Third time’s the charm ?

May 23rd’s Starlink v0.9 launch attempt will be the mission’s third, preceded by May 15th – scrubbed by high-altitude wind shear – and May 16th, cancelled before fueling began in order to troubleshoot and update the software aboard the 60 Starlink satellites. After a week of concerted effort from SpaceX technicians and software developers, those issues have been more or less dealt with and the first batch of Starlink satellites are once again ready for orbit.

The second phase of Starlink testing – 60 advanced satellites – in a single fairing. (SpaceX)

According to SpaceX, the massive payload of 60 flat-packed Starlink satellites weighs approximately 18.5 tons (16,800-18,500 kg, unclear if short or metric tons). Either way, it will easily break SpaceX’s previous record – likely Crew Dragon’s DM-1 debut – and become the heaviest payload the company has ever attempted to launch. Despite the sheer size and mass of the payload, Falcon 9 booster B1049 – launching for the third time – will still be able to land aboard drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) some eight minutes after launch.

If the recovery goes well, B1049 will become the third SpaceX booster to successfully complete three orbital-class launches and landings, paving the way for a series of fourth flights (and beyond) later this year.

Cubesats, meet Flatsats

Aside from the mission’s impressive rocket performance requirements, Starlink v0.9 will also serve as a huge beta test of a dozen or more new technologies. The most visible of those has to be each satellite’s truly unique flat, rectangular form factor, as well as SpaceX’s use of flat-packing in place of a dedicated structure for holding and dispensing the satellites. It’s unclear if there is some additional reinforcement or if the satellites themselves provide all of the stack’s strength. If the latter is true, the satellites at the bottom must survive massive forces – ranging from ~7000 kg at rest to 35,000+ kg at the end of Falcon 9’s second stage burn.

Aside from their exotic structure, each Starlink satellite also carries a single-panel ~3 kW solar array using one of two experimental deployment mechanisms. Each satellite’s main propulsion comes from an unknown number of Hall Effect thrusters (i.e. electric/ion thrusters) fueled by krypton instead of the usual xenon. SpaceX’s internally-developed krypton thrusters are the only known examples to have been tested in orbit.

Aside from thrusters, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also believes that the company’s space-based phased array antennas – also developed in-house – are more advanced than any operational competitor on Earth. Musk also revealed that SpaceX would attempt to use a bizarre and largely untested method of satellite deployment, spinning Falcon 9’s upper stage and releasing the satellites with inertia instead of traditional springs or pushrods.

Regardless of whether everything works as planned, the launch is going to be a spectacular one and the webcast may even include views of the bizarre satellite deployment. Catch SpaceX’s live coverage of the mission – likely to include new details about the Starlink constellation – at the link below. Coverage will begin ~15 minutes prior to liftoff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfbIMknNWks

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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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The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it

Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.

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Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.

The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.

The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville

The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.

For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.

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Elon Musk

Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video

Elon Musk shared a new Terafab video showing Optimus, Robovans, and a stunningly futuristic campus.

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SpaceX Terafab rendering

Elon Musk posted a new video of Terafab on X Thursday morning, and the most eye-catching details in it were not the building itself, but two products still awaiting production: Optimus and the Robovan.

The concept render, credited to SpaceX, shows Optimus robots working the grounds of the roughly 2.5-mile-long facility planned for the Gibbons Creek site in Grimes County, while a Robovan glides along an elevated roadway cutting through the building itself, sharing the frame with a Tesla Semi and a Cybercab.

Robovan is the boxy, driverless people and cargo mover Musk unveiled alongside Cybercab at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. He pitched it as a way to move up to 20 passengers at once, or handle freight instead, at a target cost he claimed could fall under a dollar a mile, with no steering wheel or pedals, the same layout as Cybercab. Nearly two years later, Robovan still has no confirmed production timeline and has not shown up in any factory footage, which makes Thursday’s render one of the only recent looks at the vehicle in any form.

Optimus has moved further along. Tesla began converting Fremont’s old Model S and Model X assembly line into a Gen 3 Optimus production line earlier this year, and Musk visited the site on July 1 to mark the changeover. A second, larger Optimus plant is under construction at Giga Texas, targeting volume production in summer 2027 and eventual capacity of 10 million units a year. Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this month the robot has “big shoes to fill” in replacing the S and X line, while Musk has repeatedly called Optimus the company’s biggest product of any kind, with a long-term price he has pegged between $20,000 and $30,000.


“Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Musk wrote alongside the clip. “And it will be stunningly beautiful.”

One quote post summed up the reaction: “Futuristic scene with RoboVan + Cybercab + Tesla Semi + Optimus.”

Beyond the vehicles, the architecture wrapped around them stands out too. The building’s facade is canted at sharp angles, with illuminated horizontal bands running through what appears to be a multi level interior visible from outside. Below the elevated roadway, pedestrians walk along a plaza next to a reflecting pool, and the skyline behind the campus is dotted with angular spires that read more like sculpture than infrastructure, a departure from the strictly utilitarian look of Gigafactory Texas or Starbase.

The timing tracks with what Terafab representative Riley Trennell told Grimes County residents on Wednesday, when he said renderings of the facility would be released “within days.” Musk’s post followed less than 24 hours later, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office sent out its own release Thursday confirming the project. As Teslarati reported this morning, Terafab’s tax abatement agreements with Grimes County are now signed and active, and SpaceX has sent the county its first $10 million payment under that deal. The dollar figure tied to this phase of construction, per Reuters, is $16.8 billion, one of the first hard capital expenditure numbers attached to Terafab since Musk unveiled the joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI venture in March.Reaction on X ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical. “God Bless Texas! Everything is bigger and better in Texas!” one reply read. Another was more measured: “Terafab in a decade…..”

Whether the finished building matches the render is a separate question from whether Musk wanted people talking about the render itself. Less than a day after posting, the video had already crossed 5.5 million views.

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Cybertruck

Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight

Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.

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Tesla Cybertruck production resumes after supplier dispute: Credit: Joe Tegtmeyer | X
Tesla Cybertruck production resumes after supplier dispute: Credit: Joe Tegtmeyer | Youtube

Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.

Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.

Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.

Tesla quietly made the Cybertruck even stronger

The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.

Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.

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