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SpaceX set for back-to-back weekend launches: Crew Dragon abort test, 60 more Starlink satellites
Two SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets are currently on track to launch back-to-back missions just a handful of days from now, potentially supporting Crew Dragon’s second flight test ever and yet another Starlink satellite launch a little over two days from now.
Known as Crew Dragon’s In-Flight Abort (IFA) test, the first mission is scheduled to lift off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A (KSC LC-39A) no earlier than (NET) 8 am EST (13:00 UTC), January 18th and will almost certainly produce some spectacular fireworks (even more so than usual). During the test, SpaceX’s newest flightworthy Crew Dragon spacecraft will attempt to escape from a supersonic Falcon 9 rocket, exceptionally challenging conditions that will almost certainly result in the immediate (intentional) destruction of Falcon 9’s upper stage and booster.
A few miles to the north, SpaceX is preparing an entirely different Falcon 9 rocket for the third launch of 60 upgraded Starlink v1.0 satellites in barely two months, scheduled to lift off NET 12:20 pm EST (17:20 UTC), January 20th from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) Launch Complex 40 (LC-40). While the duo of launches will break no records for SpaceX, they will certainly set the tone the company is aiming to keep throughout the rest of 2020.
On January 11th, SpaceX successfully fired up Falcon 9 B1046 at Pad 39A, performing the booster’s fifth routine static fire test (if not more) in approximately two years. The first Block 5 booster built and flown by SpaceX, B1046 has performed three orbital-class launches since it debuted in May 2018 and even became the first Falcon 9 booster to launch three times in December 2018.
Since that milestone, B1046 spent several months at SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA factory undergoing inspections and refurbishment. At some point, SpaceX assigned the thrice-flown booster to support Crew Dragon’s In-Flight Abort (IFA) test – effectively a death sentence – and shipped the booster to Florida, where it publicly appeared for the first time in months on October 3rd, 2019. Given that four more Falcon 9 boosters have now successfully performed three (or even four) orbital-class launches each, B1046’s now-imminent demise is certainly disappointing but remains extremely pragmatic.
Sure, B1046 could have theoretically flown several more orbital-class launches before it might have otherwise been quietly retired, but it is still the first Falcon 9 Block 5 booster qualified for flight. Although SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk were explicit that Block 5 would be the last major design iteration for the Falcon family of launch vehicles, that definitely doesn’t rule out tweaks – minor to major – that have likely been implemented since the rocket’s flight debut. In the 20 months since that debut, Falcon 9 and Heavy Block 5 boosters have performed more than two dozen launches and landings and checked off several reusability milestones.
In simple terms, those dozens of flights and reuses all translate to lots and lots (and lots) of high-fidelity data. That data – and often the hardware it’s connected to – can be used to extensively cross-check and improve the Falcon 9 and Heavy engineering models SpaceX created while designing, producing, and ground testing the Block 5 upgrade prior to its flight debut. It can also be used to upgrade to the rocket where needed, especially useful when it comes to reusability.
Although Falcon Block 5 boosters already appear to be exceptionally reliable and reusable, having checked off multiple third-flight and fourth-flight milestones in the last year, there is always room for improvement – especially if Musk is still serious about his long-held goal of launching the same Falcon 9 booster twice in ~24 hours. Along those lines, it’s safe to assume that at least some of the boosters that come off the assembly line after B1046 feature design tweaks meant to optimize for reliability and reusability, among other things.
For the most part, it seems that SpaceX is no longer aggressively pursuing ~24-hour booster turnaround, although they very likely intend to continue cutting the work hours required for (and thus the cost of) each reuse. B1046’s demise may shrink SpaceX’s reusable rocket fleet by one but the company will continue to debut the occasional new booster throughout 2020, ultimately ensuring that the fleet grows over time. Ultimately, if SpaceX only needs to spend a week or two inspecting and refurbishing each Block 5 booster and has a fleet of 10-20 or more, 24-hour turnaround may not even be necessary to achieve the desired results it was meant to represent.
Finally, SpaceX aims to launch its fourth batch of 60 Starlink satellites overall as few as ~52 hours after Falcon 9’s Crew Dragon In-Flight Abort mission and nextspaceflight.com reports that Falcon 9 B1051 will support the Starlink V1 L3 mission – the booster’s third orbital-class launch in ~10 months. Thankfully, B1051 – formerly tasked with supporting Crew Dragon’s Demo-1 orbital launch debut in March 2019 and Canada’s Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) in June 2019 – will almost certainly be attempting its second drone ship landing and third recovery overall.
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Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently confronted worries about orbital data centers and launching satellites in mass quantities in space, as some voiced concerns about crowding.
Musk’s SpaceX plans to combat the issue of needing data centers by launching them into space instead of taking up valuable real estate on Earth. It has been a major point of SpaceX’s future, including its looming IPO, which could be the largest ever.
In a recent interview filmed at SpaceX’s Starlink terminal factory in Bastrop, Texas, Elon Musk directly addressed concerns that deploying large numbers of AI satellites for orbital data centers could crowd Earth’s orbit. His message was straightforward and reassuring: space is vast beyond human intuition.
“Space is really big,” Musk said. “It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the Earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” He emphasized that even zooming in makes a satellite appear large, but from a planetary perspective, they are minuscule specks.
Elon on concerns that AI satellites will crowd space:
“Space is really big. It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” https://t.co/Mvr7NpL25Q pic.twitter.com/5Fi629Rii7
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 8, 2026
Musk pointed to SpaceX’s real-world experience operating roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites as evidence that large constellations can be managed safely. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of how to operate just really large constellations and do it safely,” he noted. SpaceX remains the only operator with meaningful experience at this scale, giving the company unique insight into tight orbital packing without compromising safety
The discussion highlighted SpaceX’s plans for “AI1” satellites—essentially orbiting racks of AI compute powered by massive solar arrays and cooled via radiative panels in space’s vacuum.
These satellites leverage proven Starlink V3 technology, making them simpler to design than communications satellites. A first-generation unit targets around 150 kW peak power, with a 70-meter wingspan for solar panels and radiators. Laser links will connect them to each other and the Starlink network, delivering low-latency access (on the order of a few milliseconds from low-Earth orbit).
FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan
Musk framed orbital data centers as a practical solution to Earth’s constraints on AI growth. Ground-based facilities face power shortages, water demands for cooling, and grid limitations. In space, constant sunlight (no day-night cycle), vacuum radiative cooling, and abundant solar energy offer clear advantages.
Production will ramp up at an expanded “Gigasat” factory in Bastrop, with solar manufacturing already underway and full AI satellite output expected at reasonable volume by the end of 2027. Starship’s rapid, high-volume launch capability, aiming for multiple flights per hour, will make massive deployment feasible.
Critics sometimes raise risks like space debris or Kessler syndrome, but Musk’s response underscores scale: even a million satellites would represent an imperceptible fraction of available orbital volume when viewed against Earth’s size. SpaceX’s automated collision avoidance and deorbiting designs for Starlink further mitigate concerns.
This vision ties into broader ambitions. Musk sees orbital AI compute as a step toward harnessing more of the Sun’s energy, advancing humanity on the Kardashev scale from a Type 0 civilization toward Type 1 and eventually Type 2. By moving power-hungry data centers off-planet, SpaceX aims to unlock orders-of-magnitude more compute while preserving Earth’s resources.
Musk’s comments should ease public anxiety. With proven operational expertise, incremental engineering, and the immensity of space itself, orbital data centers represent not overcrowding, but smart expansion into the final frontier.
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days
