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SpaceX aces 12th launch of 2022, delivering dozens of satellites to orbit
SpaceX has aced its 12th launch of 2022 just a day over three months into the year, demonstrating a major leap in sustained launch cadence as the company strives to achieve ambitious goals set by CEO Elon Musk.
That 12th launch was Transporter-4, a dedicated rideshare mission managed by SpaceX itself. Falcon 9 lifted off on time on April 1st with fewer satellites than it had ever launched before on a Transporter mission – ‘just’ 40 payloads for about a dozen customers. The rocket performed as expected, reaching a parking orbit about nine minutes after liftoff. Booster B1061 – flying for the eighth time – safely landed on drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) about a minute prior, ensuring that it will be able to fly again. Over the course of more than 90 minutes, Falcon 9’s upper stage performed four separate burns to deploy all 40 payloads into several different orbits before finally deorbiting itself.
All told, Transporter-4 was SpaceX’s 121st consecutively successful launch, 37th consecutively successful landing, 112th landing overall, 89th reuse of a Falcon booster, and the 34th launch with a reused Falcon fairing. Falcon 9 is and continues to be the most reliable operational launch vehicle in the world. Just as importantly, it’s also the most prolific launch vehicle operational today.
In 2021, SpaceX successfully launched Falcon 9 31 times, falling a bit short of internal goals. Just before the year was over, though, SpaceX abruptly demonstrated the ability to complete five orbital launches in less than three weeks and six launches in less than four weeks – blowing its previous records out of the water and establishing the potential for huge increases in annual cadence. In 2022, SpaceX has thus far managed to sustain a similar cadence for a full quarter of the year.

Following Transporter-4, SpaceX has launched 12 Falcon 9 rockets in 90 days. If sustained for three more quarters, the company could launch 48 times this year – a 55% increase in annual launch cadence compared to a record 31 launches completed in 2021. A few weeks ago, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk established 52 launches – one per week – as the company’s overarching goal for 2022. More recently, Musk – in classic fashion – raised his already significant ambitions and boosted that goal to 60 launches, including at least a thousand more Starlink satellites.
52 launches may still be achievable with a few five or six-launch months. 60 launches, however, would require an average of 5.3 launches per month for the rest of 2022 – maybe not impossible but a huge challenge even before considering the fact that one of SpaceX’s three Falcon pads could be bogged down with as many as five Falcon Heavy and seven Dragon launches in the next nine months. Falcon Heavy, Falcon 9 Dragon, and Falcon 9 Fairing launches all require significant modifications to pad hardware, modifications that likely take at least a week or two to complete. Continuously swapping between setups to squeeze in the odd Starlink or satellite launch isn’t out of the question, but the added schedule risk would increase the odds of delays for several of SpaceX’s most delay-averse missions, including Crew Dragon, Cargo Dragon, and interplanetary spacecraft launches for NASA and two or three ‘national security’ missions for the US military.
Even if SpaceX falls short of Musk’s ambitious 60-launch target, it will take a minor disaster for 2022 to not be the company’s most spectacular year yet. This month alone, SpaceX is scheduled to launch the first all-private astronaut mission to the International Space Station no earlier than (NET) April 6th, followed by launches of Starlink 4-14 NET April 14th, NROL-85 NET April 15th, and a group of four NASA and ESA astronauts NET April 20th.
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SpaceX just launched its secret Starfall saucer again
SpaceX launched its Starfall capsule again on Bandwagon-5, this time listed openly beside rideshare customers.
SpaceX launched its Starfall reentry capsule for the second time on Tuesday morning, flying it as the payload of the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission. Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida at 7:04 a.m. ET with 32 payloads, and the first stage booster, on its 19th flight, landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas about nine minutes later.
Starfall was scheduled to separate last, 2 hours and 48 minutes after liftoff. The final customer satellite on SpaceX’s mission timeline comes off the upper stage about an hour and nine minutes in, which left a long gap before the capsule was due to be released alone. SpaceX later posted that the payload deployment sequence is complete. At liftoff, the company said Starfall “enables affordable, routine access to a microgravity environment, providing unique opportunities for on-orbit manufacturing, scientific research, and testing.”
Starfall enables affordable, routine access to a microgravity environment, providing unique opportunities for on-orbit manufacturing, scientific research, and testing https://t.co/y8kJg3QDor
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 20, 2026
As Teslarati reported before the first Starfall flight, SpaceX made no public announcement about the vehicle then, and nearly everything known came from FAA and FCC filings. This time Starfall is an item name on the official mission page, listed beside paying rideshare customers. SpaceX has still not said what, if anything, is aboard this Starfall, Spaceflight Now noted.
The FAA’s environmental assessment from May describes a disk about 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall that weighs roughly 4,600 pounds and can bring 2,200 pounds of payload back to Earth.
Interestingly, the same rocket also carries a competitor’s hardware. Varda Space Industries launched its W-Series 7 capsule on Bandwagon-5, a spacecraft about three times smaller than Starfall that will test whether microgravity can improve the solubility of a cancer drug called Protac. It is Varda’s ninth reentry capsule, and W-8 and W-9 launched earlier this month on Transporter-18. SpaceX has been Varda’s launch provider since the company’s first Falcon 9 rideshare contract in 2021.
SpaceX has not published where or how this Starfall will come down. The preview we ran in June described a recovery from the Pacific Ocean, and the company has not said whether this flight follows the same plan. The launch also arrives hours before SpaceX posts its third quarter results after the market closes, a report we previewed earlier this week.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”
The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.
The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”
The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.
Using TBC tunnels to transport freight.
The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20’ shipping container.
Fits like a glove! https://t.co/VV0phWK4fc
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) October 19, 2026
Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.
Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.
The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.
The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027
Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”
SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.
It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.
Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.
Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.