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SpaceX’s Starship to grow in height as workers prepare to stack its top section

SpaceX technicians work to lift Starship Mk1 onto a mobile 'Roll-Lift" transport for easier movement around its production facilities. (Elon Musk)

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has teased new details and posted several new photos of Starship Mk1, taken on September 25th as employees worked to lift the spacecraft’s lower half onto a mobile transporter. Up next: stacking the rocket’s two halves to reach its final 50m (160 ft) height.

The company is currently working around the clock to complete Starship Mk1’s assembly and integration ahead of Elon Musk’s planned September 28th presentation, meant to provide a detailed update on the state of the next-generation rocket’s design and development. A huge amount of work clearly remains but SpaceX is making major, visible progress almost every single day along the path to Starship’s first flight tests.

Taken yesterday afternoon, Musk’s photos show scenes before and after technicians placed Starship Mk1’s lower half – its tank and propulsion section – on a ‘Roll-Lift’, a small transporter. It’s unclear why exactly this was done, but SpaceX moved the spacecraft prototype about 100m and then removed it from the transporter.

The most recent movement happened just a few hours ago – technicians used a crane delivered on September 24th to lift the half-Starship onto what looked like half a dozen steel blocks on the ground, all captured live on LabPadre’s 24/7 livestream. In order to install Starship Mk1’s separate landing legs, believed to attach somewhere inside the vehicle’s aft circumference, SpaceX likely needed to lift the aft section off the concrete mount that had been its home for the past several months.

Elon Musk also confirmed that Starship Mk1 will have six landing legs, another strong indicator that the ongoing Thursday morning work is focused on preparing Starship Mk1 for leg installation. According to Musk, Starship Mk1 will weigh as much as 200 metric tons (440,000 lb) empty, which is probably why the rocket prototype’s aft – and heaviest – half had to be loaded onto a Roll-Lift and could not simply be moved by the crane itself.

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Starship’s updated design remains a bit of a mystery just two days before Elon Musk is scheduled to present an update, likely including new renders from SpaceX itself. It remains to be seen if Starship’s six landing legs will be fixed (versus retractable) or if the legs on the windward side of the ship will jut out into the airstream. To ensure stability when landing on unprepared terrain, as Musk described, six legs are certainly better than three, but the actual span of those legs is a more relevant determinant of stability. Wide, Falcon 9-style legs would be optimal, indicating that the final ship will likely lean towards legs that can be retracted or at least angled behind Starship’s reentry ‘shadow’.

Still a prototype (and possibly meant solely for suborbital operation), Starship Mk1 (and Mk2) may feature simplified legs and mechanisms to speed things along, serving as more of a rough draft while Starhopper was akin to a Starship abstract or prospectus. At this rate, we won’t have to wait very long at all to find out.

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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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Cybertruck

Tesla drops latest hint that new Cybertruck trim is selling like hotcakes

According to Tesla’s Online Design Studio, the new All-Wheel-Drive Cybertruck will now be delivered in April 2027. Earlier orders are still slated for early this Summer, but orders from here on forward are now officially pushed into next year:

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla’s new Cybertruck offering has had its delivery date pushed back once again. This is now the second time, and deliveries for the newest orders are now pushed well into 2027.

According to Tesla’s Online Design Studio, the new All-Wheel-Drive Cybertruck will now be delivered in April 2027. Earlier orders are still slated for early this Summer, but orders from here on forward are now officially pushed into next year:

Just three days ago, the initial delivery date of June 2026 was pushed back to early Fall, and now, that date has officially moved to April 2027.

The fact that Tesla has had to push back deliveries once again proves one of two things: either Tesla has slow production plans for the new Cybertruck trim, or demand is off the charts.

Judging by how Tesla is already planning to raise the price based on demand in just a few days, it seems like the company knows it is giving a tremendous deal on this spec of Cybertruck, and units are moving quickly.

That points more toward demand and not necessarily to slower production plans, but it is not confirmed.

Tesla Cybertruck’s newest trim will undergo massive change in ten days, Musk says

Tesla is set to hike the price on March 1, so tomorrow will be the final day to grab the new Cybertruck trim for just $59,990.

It features:

  • Dual Motor AWD w/ est. 325 mi of range
  • Powered tonneau cover
  • Bed outlets (2x 120V + 1x 240V) & Powershare capability
  • Coil springs w/ adaptive damping
  • Heated first-row seats w/ textile material that is easy to clean
  • Steer-by-wire & Four Wheel Steering
  • 6’ x 4’ composite bed
  • Towing capacity of up to 7,500 lbs
  • Powered frunk

Interestingly, the price offering is fairly close to what Tesla unveiled back in late 2019.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk outlines plan for first Starship tower catch attempt

Musk confirmed that Starship V3 Ship 1 (SN1) is headed for ground tests and expressed strong confidence in the updated vehicle design.

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Credit: SpaceX/X

Elon Musk has clarified when SpaceX will first attempt to catch Starship’s upper stage with its launch tower. The CEO’s update provides the clearest teaser yet for the spacecraft’s recovery roadmap.

Musk shared the details in recent posts on X. In his initial post, Musk confirmed that Starship V3 Ship 1 (SN1) is headed for ground tests and expressed strong confidence in the updated vehicle design.

“Starship V3 SN1 headed for ground tests. I am highly confident that the V3 design will achieve full reusability,” Musk wrote.

In a follow-up post, Musk addressed when SpaceX would attempt to catch the upper stage using the launch tower’s robotic arms. 

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“Should note that SpaceX will only try to catch the ship with the tower after two perfect soft landings in the ocean. The risk of the ship breaking up over land needs to be very low,” Musk clarified. 

His remarks suggest that SpaceX is deliberately reducing risk before attempting a tower catch of Starship’s upper stage. Such a milestone would mark a major step towards the full reuse of the Starship system.

SpaceX is currently targeting the first Starship V3 flight of 2026 this coming March. The spacecraft’s V3 iteration is widely viewed as a key milestone in SpaceX’s long-term strategy to make Starship fully reusable. 

Starship V3 features a number of key upgrades over its previous iterations. The vehicle is equipped with SpaceX’s Raptor V3 engines, which are designed to deliver significantly higher thrust than earlier versions while reducing cost and weight. 

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The V3 design is also expected to be optimized for manufacturability, a critical step if SpaceX intends to scale the spacecraft’s production toward frequent launches for Starlink, lunar missions, and eventually Mars. 

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Tesla FSD (Supervised) could be approved in the Netherlands next month: Musk

Musk shared the update during a recent interview at Giga Berlin.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared that Full Self-Driving (FSD) could receive regulatory approval in the Netherlands as soon as March 20, potentially marking a major step forward for Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance rollout in Europe.

Musk shared the update during a recent interview at Giga Berlin, noting that the date was provided by local authorities.

“Tesla has the most advanced real-world AI, and hopefully, it will be approved soon in Europe. We’re told by the authorities that March 20th, it’ll be approved in the Netherlands,’ what I was told,” Musk stated. 

“Hopefully, that date remains the same. But I think people in Europe are going to be pretty blown away by how good the Tesla car AI is in being able to drive.”

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Tesla’s FSD system relies on vision-based neural networks trained on real-world driving data, allowing vehicles to navigate using cameras and AI rather than traditional sensor-heavy solutions. 

The performance of FSD Supervised has so far been impressive. As per Tesla’s safety report, Full Self-Driving Supervised has already traveled 8.3 billion miles. So far, vehicles operating with FSD Supervised engaged recorded one major collision every 5,300,676 miles. 

In comparison, Teslas driven manually with Active Safety systems recorded one major collision every 2,175,763 miles, while Teslas driven manually without Active Safety recorded one major collision every 855,132 miles. The U.S. average during the same period was one major collision every 660,164 miles.

If approval is granted on March 20, the Netherlands could become the first European market to greenlight Tesla’s latest supervised FSD (Supervised) software under updated regulatory frameworks. Tesla has been working to secure expanded FSD access across Europe, where regulatory standards differ significantly from those in the United States. Approval in the Netherlands would likely serve as a foundation for broader EU adoption, though additional country-level clearances may still be required.

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