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SpaceX delays Starlink launch to Sunday for “constellation optimization”

Starlink 2-4 will reportedly debut a new Falcon 9 booster. (SpaceX)

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SpaceX has revealed a new and mysterious reason to delay its own rocket launch: something called “constellation optimization.”

Known as Starlink 2-4, the mission is now scheduled to launch a batch of 51 Starlink V1.5 satellites to a semi-polar Earth orbit no earlier than (NET) 8:15 am PST (16:15 UTC) on Sunday, January 15th. That represents a big shift in launch timing, as more recent attempts were aiming to lift off around 7-8 pm. A significant time change often implies that a launch is targeting a completely different destination, but data provided by SpaceX suggests that that’s not the case, raising more questions.

Starlink 2-4 is not new to launch delays. Originally scheduled to launch in November 2022, unspecified issues with the rocket caused SpaceX to indefinitely delay the mission. Launches for NASA and an Israeli company then took precedence, pushing Starlink 2-4 into early 2023. SpaceX announced a target of January 9th, but that attempt was called off by poor weather in the Pacific Ocean, where the mission’s Falcon 9 booster is scheduled to land.

SpaceX then delayed the mission from January 10th to the 11th “to take a closer look at data from second stage.” On January 11th, SpaceX delayed the mission to January 14th “to allow additional time for pre-launch checkouts.” Less than four hours later, SpaceX delayed the mission again, settling on the current January 15th target and debuting “constellation optimization” as a rare new cause of launch delays.

Starlink’s five Gen1 shells.

Logical speculation suggested that constellation optimization – combined with the major timing change – could have referred to a decision to launch Starlink 2-4 to a different orbital shell. SpaceX’s Starlink Gen1 constellation has five distinct shells, and the company’s Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB), California pad can theoretically launch to all of them. SpaceX’s Starlink V1.5 satellites are also theoretically identical, meaning that any satellite can launch to any shell and do its job without issue.

However, updated orbit data (Two Line Elements or TLEs) disseminated by SpaceX shows that Falcon 9 is still scheduled to launch Starlink 2-4 to a nearly identical orbit and thus the same Group 2 shell as before. “Constellation optimization” could instead refer to changing which planes the same Group 2 satellites end up at, tweaking where and when their added coverage will be felt most by Starlink internet users.

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Next Spaceflight reports that Starlink 2-4 will use Falcon 9 booster B1075, marking the second time the company has debuted a new Falcon booster on an internal mission. Up until very recently, new Falcon boosters were almost always reserved for NASA or the US military, SpaceX’s most conservative customers. But SpaceX’s program of Falcon booster reuse has become so successful and so routine that even NASA and the military appear to be ambivalent about taking advantage of the first launch of a new Falcon 9.

B1075 will attempt to land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) around 662 kilometers (411 mi) southwest of California, off of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. SpaceX will broadcast the launch and landing live, beginning around 8:13 am PST (16:13 UTC) on Sunday if the mission can avoid further delays.

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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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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang commends Tesla’s Elon Musk for early belief

“And when I announced DGX-1, nobody in the world wanted it. I had no purchase orders, not one. Nobody wanted to buy it. Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon.”

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December 3, 2025

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Credit: NVIDIA

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Wednesday and commended Tesla CEO Elon Musk for his early belief in what is now the most valuable company in the world.

Huang and Musk are widely regarded as two of the greatest tech entrepreneurs of the modern era, with the two working in conjunction as NVIDIA’s chips are present in Tesla vehicles, particularly utilized for self-driving technology and data collection.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang regrets not investing more in Elon Musk’s xAI

Both CEOs defied all odds and created companies from virtually nothing. Musk joined Tesla in the early 2000s before the company had even established any plans to build a vehicle. Jensen created NVIDIA in the booth of a Denny’s restaurant, which has been memorialized with a plaque.

On the JRE episode, Rogan asked about Jensen’s relationship with Elon, to which the NVIDIA CEO said that Musk was there when nobody else was:

“I was lucky because I had known Elon Musk, and I helped him build the first computer for Model 3, the Model S, and when he wanted to start working on an autonomous vehicle. I helped him build the computer that went into the Model S AV system, his full self-driving system. We were basically the FSD computer version 1, and so we were already working together.

And when I announced DGX-1, nobody in the world wanted it. I had no purchase orders, not one. Nobody wanted to buy it. Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon.

He goes ‘You know what, I have a company that could really use this.’ I said, Wow, my first customer. And he goes, it’s an AI company, and it’s a nonprofit and and we could really use one of these supercomputers. I boxed one up, I drove it up to San Francisco, and I delivered it to the Elon in 2016.”

The first DGX-1 AI supercomputer was delivered personally to Musk when he was with OpenAI, which provided crucial early compute power for AI research, accelerating breakthroughs in machine learning that underpin modern tools like ChatGPT.

Tesla’s Nvidia purchases could reach $4 billion this year: Musk

The long-term alliance between NVIDIA and Tesla has driven over $2 trillion in the company’s market value since 2016.

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GM CEO Mary Barra says she told Biden to give Tesla and Musk EV credit

“He was crediting me, and I said, ‘Actually, I think a lot of that credit goes to Elon and Tesla…You know me, Andrew. I don’t want to take credit for things.”

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December 3, 2025

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General Motors CEO Mary Barra said in a new interview on Wednesday that she told President Joe Biden to credit Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, for the widespread electric vehicle transition.

She said she told Biden this after the former President credited her and GM for leading EV efforts in the United States.

During an interview at the New York Times Dealbook Summit with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Barra said she told Biden that crediting her was essentially a mistake, and that Musk and Tesla should have been explicitly mentioned (via Business Insider):

“He was crediting me, and I said, ‘Actually, I think a lot of that credit goes to Elon and Tesla…You know me, Andrew. I don’t want to take credit for things.”

Back in 2021, President Biden visited GM’s “Factory Zero” plant in Detroit, which was the centerpiece of the company’s massive transition to EVs. The former President went on to discuss the EV industry, and claimed that GM and Barra were the true leaders who caused the change:

“In the auto industry, Detroit is leading the world in electric vehicles. You know how critical it is? Mary, I remember talking to you way back in January about the need for America to lead in electric vehicles. I can remember your dramatic announcement that by 2035, GM would be 100% electric. You changed the whole story, Mary. You did, Mary. You electrified the entire automotive industry. I’m serious. You led, and it matters.”

People were baffled by the President’s decision to highlight GM and Barra, and not Tesla and Musk, who truly started the transition to EVs. GM, Ford, and many other companies only followed in the footsteps of Tesla after it started to take market share from them.

Elon Musk and Tesla try to save legacy automakers from Déjà vu

Musk would eventually go on to talk about Biden’s words later on:

“They have so much power over the White House that they can exclude Tesla from an EV Summit. And, in case the first thing, in case that wasn’t enough, then you have President Biden with Mary Barra at a subsequent event, congratulating Mary for having led the EV revolution.”

In Q4 2021, which was shortly after Biden’s comments, Tesla delivered 300,000 EVs. GM delivered just 26.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving shows confident navigation in heavy snow

So far, from what we’ve seen, snow has not been a huge issue for the most recent Full Self-Driving release. It seems to be acting confidently and handling even snow-covered roads with relative ease.

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17 hours ago

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December 3, 2025

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Credit: Grok

Tesla Full Self-Driving is getting its first taste of Winter weather for late 2025, as snow is starting to fall all across the United States.

The suite has been vastly improved after Tesla released v14 to many owners with capable hardware, and driving performance, along with overall behavior, has really been something to admire. This is by far the best version of FSD Tesla has ever released, and although there are a handful of regressions with each subsequent release, they are usually cleared up within a week or two.

Tesla is releasing a modified version of FSD v14 for Hardware 3 owners: here’s when

However, adverse weather conditions are something that Tesla will have to confront, as heavy rain, snow, and other interesting situations are bound to occur. In order for the vehicles to be fully autonomous, they will have to go through these scenarios safely and accurately.

One big issue I’ve had, especially in heavy rain, is that the camera vision might be obstructed, which will display messages that certain features’ performance might be degraded.

So far, from what we’ve seen, snow has not been a huge issue for the most recent Full Self-Driving release. It seems to be acting confidently and handling even snow-covered roads with relative ease:

Moving into the winter months, it will be very interesting to see how FSD handles even more concerning conditions, especially with black ice, freezing rain and snow mix, and other things that happen during colder conditions.

We are excited to test it ourselves, but I am waiting for heavy snowfall to make it to Pennsylvania so I can truly push it to the limit.

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