News
SpaceX assembles Falcon Heavy rocket for first launch in 40 months
SpaceX has assembled the fourth Falcon Heavy for the rocket’s first launch in 40 months.
A photo shared by SpaceX on October 23rd shows that it has mated Falcon Heavy’s three first stage boosters together while preparing for prelaunch testing. Simultaneously, workers have completed the equally important task of converting 39A’s transporter/erector (T/E), which has been configured for single-core Falcon 9 rockets for over three years.
The transporter/erectors SpaceX use for all Falcon launches are a bit like a mobile backbone and launch tower combined. Their first purpose is to transport horizontal Falcon rockets to and from their integration hangars and launch pads. They’re also tasked with raising Falcon rockets vertical and lowering them back down for transport or worker access. Most importantly, they connect to a pad’s ground systems and distribute propellant, gases, power, and communications to Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy through multiple umbilicals and quick-disconnect ports.
Falcon Heavy, which can only be launched out of LC-39A, has three times as many boosters as Falcon 9 and necessitates significant modifications to the pad’s T/E when switching between the two. The process is much harder when moving from F9 to FH, and waiting almost three and a half years between Falcon Heavy launches likely hasn’t made the conversion any easier. But on October 23rd, after numerous tests and weeks of work, the Pad 39A T/E picked up the ‘reaction frame’ that attaches to the bottom of Falcon rockets and was brought horizontal.
Thanks to the nature of Falcon Heavy and Pad 39A’s infrastructure, what happens next is more or less guaranteed. During normal Falcon 9 operations, 39A’s integration hangar is large enough for two or three unrelated Falcon boosters to remain while the T/E rolls inside to pick up a full Falcon 9. More importantly, Falcon 9’s booster and upper stage can technically be integrated off to the side and craned onto the T/E when ready. But with Falcon Heavy, which has a first stage akin to three Falcon 9 boosters sitting side by side, there isn’t enough room inside the hangar to integrate the rocket with the T/E inside.
For Falcon Heavy, the T/E can thus only roll back into the hangar once the rocket’s three boosters and upper stage have been fully assembled and are suspended in mid-air. SpaceX’s October 23rd photo shows that three of the four cranes required for that lift appear to already be in position, further confirming that T/E rollback is imminent. Once the T/E rolls back to the hangar and Falcon Heavy is attached, the rocket will eventually be transported to the pad and brought vertical for wet dress rehearsal (WDR) and static fire testing.
Update: SpaceX began rolling the T/E to Pad 39A’s integration hangar around 1 am EDT, October 24th.
The US Space Force’s USSF-44 payload – a mysterious pair of satellites that are more than two years behind schedule – will almost certainly not be installed on Falcon Heavy during prelaunch testing, so the rocket will need to roll back to the hangar at least one more time after testing to have its payload fairing attached.
Combined, that prelaunch process could easily take a week or more. Multiple sources report that Falcon Heavy is scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) 9:44 am EDT (13:44 UTC) on Halloween, October 31st. But even if the rocket rolls out today (Oct 24), the odds are stacked against Falcon Heavy sailing through its first integrated prelaunch tests in 40 months, and delays are likely.
For Falcon Heavy’s fourth launch, all three of the rocket’s boosters – B1064, B1065, and B1066 – are new, as are its upper stage and payload fairing. An FCC permit for the launch has confirmed that SpaceX will intentionally expend the rocket’s new center core while its twin side boosters will attempt a near-simultaneous landing back at Cape Canaveral. USSF-44 will be SpaceX’s first attempted launch directly to geostationary orbit (GEO), an exceptionally challenging mission that requires the rocket’s upper stage to coast in space for around 4-6 hours between two major burns.
If successful, Falcon Heavy will insert the USSF-44’s mystery satellites into a circular orbit ~35,600 kilometers (~22,150 mi) above Earth’s surface. At that altitude, orbital velocity matches Earth’s rotation and spacecraft can effectively hover – indefinitely – above their region of choice.
Falcon Heavy is the most powerful operational rocket in the world. At liftoff, it weighs around 1420 tons (~3.1M lb) and can produce more than 2300 tons (~5.1M lbf) of thrust. In a fully expendable configuration, Falcon Heavy can launch 26.7 tons (59,000 lb) to an elliptical geostationary transfer orbit and 63.8 tons (141,000 lb) to low Earth orbit. SpaceX doesn’t advertise its direct-to-GEO capabilities.
Elon Musk
SpaceX makes history, catching Starship from orbit for the first time
SpaceX caught Starship’s upper stage with its launch tower for the first time on Saturday.
SpaceX caught a Starship upper stage with its launch tower for the first time on Saturday, bringing Ship 42 back to Starbase after roughly 22 and a half hours in orbit on Flight 15. No company has ever returned the upper stage of an orbital rocket to its launch site and caught it.
Ship 42 lifted off Friday evening on top of Booster 22, reached orbit and deployed all 26 of its Starlink V3 satellites. Three of those satellites carried cameras to photograph the ship’s heat shield, and SpaceX said the imagery showed it was in good shape for reentry, allowing controllers to pass on a backup splashdown option overnight. By Saturday morning, SpaceX posted on X that “Pad and tower systems are go for catch.” After about 14 orbits, the ship fired its engines to leave orbit, came back through the atmosphere and was caught by the tower’s chopstick arms.
IT HAPPENED https://t.co/KHITqHUWOf — TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 14, 2026
The catch salvages a flight that started with a setback. Super Heavy did not make it back to the tower on Friday. “We were initially go for a catch, but in the later stages of the coast, the booster aborted itself for a GNC issue that it detected and that put it into its landing offshore,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said. The booster hovered over the Gulf of Mexico before its flight termination system triggered and it came down in the water.
Elon Musk said Saturday that the booster ran short on propellant because its engines slightly underperformed. The fix, he wrote, is better engine consistency with Raptor V3.2 and a flight software change to cut the engines “about one second earlier” so enough fuel is left for the return. “This booster loss does not change our timeline to reach high volume, fully reusable Starship flights,” Musk added.
The ship is the harder half of that goal, and the one SpaceX had never recovered. Super Heavy has now been caught three times, most recently in March 2025, while every previous ship ended in the ocean or was lost. Falcon 9 lands its boosters routinely but throws its upper stage away on every launch. Musk described a full Starship recovery on SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call as a “profound technology milestone,” and Saturday’s catch shows the hardest piece of it can work.
That piece matters for nearly everything SpaceX is planning. Reusable ships are what make the economics of launching Starlink V3 satellites at scale work, along with the Starmind orbital compute constellation. NASA’s Artemis lunar lander also depends on refilling Starships in orbit with repeated tanker flights, which requires vehicles that can fly again quickly. Musk has said he expects Starship to reach a weekly launch cadence in the first half of 2027.
Flight 15 also improved on the last Starship mission in September, which reached orbit but ended after about three hours with a Pacific splashdown when some engines shut down. Before this flight, SpaceX had shown an animation of the ship catch during its earnings webcast, and Musk put the odds of pulling it off on the first try at “more likely than not,” as Teslarati reported.
Tesla’s long-promised Cybercab is finally available for personal purchase, at least for a select few in the Austin area. But it’s far from a straightforward ownership experience.
The $29,990 price tag comes with a stack of restrictions that redefine what “owning” the vehicle actually means. The two-seat, steering-wheel-free Robotaxi, previously limited to Tesla’s own fleet, now carries contractual terms that limit where it can go, how it can be used, and whether it can even move without an active paid subscription.
Opening Night of Orders
Late on November 13, Tesla announced that select customers were being invited to order a Cybercab for personal use.
Tesla Cybercab goes on sale for $29,990, slated for December deliveries
The estimated purchase price is $29,990 before taxes, paired with a non-refundable $1,000 deposit and an estimated December 2026 delivery in Austin, Texas. The first month of the required :Autonomy Subscription,” priced at $299 per month is included.
After that, the vehicle needs an active subscription to operate at all. The announcement confirmed that customer sales had begun, albeit on an invite-only basis rather than a public order page.
The Fine Print for Buyers
BREAKING: Tesla’s Cybercab Autonomy Subscription terms are now live. A paid monthly subscription is required.
1/12 Tesla: “Your Cybercab will not operate without an active Autonomy Subscription. 🧵 https://t.co/umVk6DJE2x— Spencer (@scotsrule08) November 13, 2026
For those invited to order, the agreements (Cybercab Order Agreement, Terms of Use, and Autonomy Subscription Agreement) impose significant constraints. Major points include:
- A mandatory Autonomy Subscription (currently listed at $299 per month on the order screen, first month included) is required; without it, the Cybercab will not operate.
- Personal, non-commercial use only; ride-hailing, Robotaxi network participation, delivery, or rental requires separate written authorization or product enablement from Tesla.
- Operation restricted to Tesla-enabled Robotaxi geofences and supported service areas, which the company can expand, shrink, or alter; the vehicle may be technologically prevented from operating outside them.
- No unauthorized modifications (including wraps, window tint, or wheel changes) without Tesla or an authorized provider.
- Restricted resale and transfer: written permission required, with contractual damages of at least $50,000 (or full transaction value if higher) for unauthorized sales; Tesla also reserves repurchase rights at a company-determined fair market value, with the owner covering return costs.
- Safety or improper-use “strikeouts” (three or more) can trigger a one-week suspension of autonomous features without prorated refund.
- Owners remain responsible for insurance, registration, charging, parking, and general cleaning; the subscription covers certain maintenance items such as tires, windshields, filters, and camera cleaning, plus limited towing.
- Manual controls on the touchscreen allow only short-distance movement up to about 2 mph and require a valid driver’s license; they are not for public-road driving.
Why These Terms Might Exist
Tesla’s approach prioritizes control over a vehicle designed without traditional human controls and intended primarily as transport-as-a-service, something that Musk has hinted toward for some time now. Restricting commercial use and modifications could be as much of a software integrity, safety, and data collection effort as it is a safety effort.
Fleet consistency could also be in regulatory scrutiny early on in the Cybercab’s days of public operation.
The subscription model generates ongoing revenue beyond the low vehicle price and ensures the car remains connected and updatable, something that will keep the Cybercab as safe as possible as new updates roll out.
Buyback and resale limits reduce the risk of vehicles circulating outside Tesla’s operational and service ecosystem.
It apperas that personal ownership is secondary to the broader Robotaxi network strategy, as Musk has previously stated that the vast majority of Cybercabs would remain Tesla-owned.
Pickup Locations and Musk’s Pricing View
Initial deliveries are estimated for Austin, but personal vehicles are able to operate in any of Tesla’s Robotaxi geofences:
It’ll work unsupervised inside all the same geo locations as @robotaxi, just serving the owners’ needs.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) November 14, 2026
Those who have been invited to order can also have their personal Cybercab delivered to numerous locations in Texas, including:
- Austin
- Dallas
- Houston
- San Antonio
- Fort Worth
Interesting that you can choose a delivery city https://t.co/SknDz9rFzo
— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) November 14, 2026
As far as the monthly “Autonomy Subscription,” it appears Musk already wants it to be low. He acknowledged last night on X that the subscription price is too high. Along with detailing that the Cybercab will be available nationwide as regulatory approval is received, Musk said the monthly fee should match the cost of FSD and Premium Connectivity, which is about $115 per month.
The launch marks a milestone for unsupervised personal autonomous vehicles, but the fine print makes clear that buyers are purchasing a highly constrained asset whose usefulness is tightly bound to Tesla’s software, service network, and geographic approvals.
Tesla has officially put the Cybercab up for sale, revealing a bargain price and a $299 per month “Autonomy Subscription” that could hit customer hands as soon as December.
The offer requires a $299 monthly Autonomy Subscription, with the first month included in the purchase price, along with a $1,000 non-refundable order deposit. Tesla’s ordering interface shows deliveries targeted for Austin, Texas.
Tesla says that the Cybercab is making transportation more efficient, affordable and accessible than ever before, and that buyers can order their own Cybercab for personal use.
🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: Tesla Cybercab is officially on sale for $29,990 with a $299/mo “Autonomy Subscription”
Delivery slotted for December! HUGE!
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 13, 2026
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated robotaxi, a gold-finished, two-passenger vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals, designed from the outset for unsupervised autonomous operation. It has been in limited Robotaxi service in Austin since September 2026, operating alongside Tesla’s larger fleet of Model Y vehicles.
Production takes place at Gigafactory Texas, which launched earlier this year. Tesla has stated for some time that it planned to put Cybercabs on sale by the end of the year, and it looks like they will come through on that promise if everything goes according to plan.
The Autonomy Subscription is mandatory for the vehicle to operate because it is void of a steering wheel and pedals. Tesla notes that the subscription and regular vehicle maintenance are required, indicating that personal owners will depend on the company’s software and service infrastructure rather than traditional ownership models.
One month of the subscription is included with purchase and subsequent months are billed separately until canceled.
This limited personal-sales opening marks a shift from Tesla’s earlier emphasis on fleet and transport-as-a-service operations. During the Q3 2026 Earnings Call, executives indicated that the vast majority of Cybercabs would remain Tesla-owned and used for rideshare service, while still aiming to place some vehicles with customers by year-end.
Elon Musk has previously targeted a price below $30,000, which was a huge point of emphasis for the Cybercab being the central point of Tesla’s “transportation-as-a-service” model.
Availability remains restricted to invited customers rather than a public order page, and the initial deliveries are expected only in the Austin area where unsupervised Robotaxi operations are already active. Buyers will need to accept the geographic and operational constraints of current autonomous deployment, as the vehicle cannot be driven manually outside supported zones.
The move gives a small number of early buyers the chance to own Tesla’s dedicated autonomous vehicle at the long-discussed sub-$30,000 price point, while the bulk of production continues to support the company’s expanding Robotaxi network.
SpaceX makes history, catching Starship from orbit for the first time
Tesla Cybercab ownership will come with plenty of strings attached
