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SpaceX’s Elon Musk set for Starlink launch, Tesla earnings double-header
SpaceX has delayed its latest Starlink launch once more after high winds forced the company to recycle an attempt originally planned for January 27th, setting up SpaceX’s Elon Musk for a Starlink launch and Tesla earnings report on the same day.
Flight-proven Falcon 9 booster B1051 is currently vertical at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) Launch Complex 40 (LC-40) and has been for more than a week. Perched atop an expendable upper stage attached to the top of the booster, SpaceX’s third batch of 60 upgraded Starlink v1.0 satellites are loaded inside the rocket’s airtight payload fairing, patiently awaiting a launch that’s now been delayed a full 9 days by winter weather both in Cape Canaveral and off the Florida coast.
Most recently, bad sea conditions in the Atlantic Ocean forced SpaceX to delay Starlink V1 L3 an extra 24 hours from a January 28th backup window and the batch of communications satellites are now scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) 9:09 am EST (14:09 UTC), January 29th. Set to unequivocally reaffirm SpaceX’s position as the owner of the world’s largest private satellite constellation, the mission – should it be a success – will mean that the company has launched its 240th flat-packed Starlink satellite. Additionally, Starlink L3 should feature a number of exciting Falcon 9 recovery events, potentially setting up more than 75% of the rocket’s value for reuse.
Earlier this morning, Teslarati’s own Simon Alvarez offered a glimpse of what to expect from Tesla’s Q4 2019 earnings report, scheduled for 3:30 PM PST (23:30 UTC), January 29th. In short, it looks like Tesla’s highly-anticipated Model Y crossover could find its way to customers much sooner than expected, while additional signs point to another strong quarterly performance that could send the company’s already meteoric stock even higher. As always, CEO Elon Musk is expected to be front and center on the teleconference, which is set to occur just nine hours after SpaceX’s latest 60-satellite Starlink launch.
For SpaceX, the new year has gotten off to a busy start, although Florida’s winter weather has done its best to hamper launch attempts. Beginning with the second launch of Starlink v1.0 satellites (Starlink V1 L2) on January 7th, that Falcon 9 mission was delayed from January 3rd by high seas in the Atlantic Ocean that would have made the booster’s planned drone ship landing extremely risky. In high seas, drone ship decks pitch and buck, creating major uncertainty as Falcon 9 is unable to account for the deck movement.

If the floating landing pad is at the peak or trough of large swells when Falcon 9 is scheduled to land, there is a good chance that the rocket could either hit the deck too hard or cut off its engines before landing, falling a distance equivalent to the height of the swell onto the drone ship. Either scenario would pose a serious risk of damaging or even outright destroying a landing Falcon booster, cutting short any future prospects of reuse.
Most recently, SpaceX performed Crew Dragon’s second-ever launch on a Falcon 9 rocket, intentionally triggering an in-flight abort (IFA) some 90 seconds after launch to test the spacecraft’s ability to keep astronauts safe in even a near-worst-case scenario. That particular launch was also delayed a number of days by high seas in the region the spacecraft was expected to splash down in, conditions that would have severely hampered critical recovery work.
Now a little over a week after Crew Dragon’s successful January 20th Falcon 9 launch, SpaceX’s third launch of the year has been delayed repeatedly by both weather in the recovery area and weather at the launch pad. Originally expected to launch as early as January 20th, a slight Crew Dragon launch delay pushed it to the 21st, where it was then delayed again by high seas to January 24th, and a third time to January 27th. On January 27th, SpaceX got just 40 minutes away from liftoff before it scrubbed the attempt due to high upper-level winds above the launch pad.


Finally, on January 28th, SpaceX announced that bad weather in the recovery area had forced it to skip a backup window scheduled later that day, slipping another 24 hours to 9:09 am EST on January 29th. With any luck, this will be the last in an unusually long series of weather-related delays for the Starlink mission. Aside from Falcon 9 B1051’s third launch and (hopefully) landing, Starlink V1 L3 will also mark the second time ever that twin Falcon fairing recovery ships Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief will attempt to simultaneously catch both halves of a payload fairing — more than worth the wait.
Tune in to SpaceX’s official webcast around 8:55 am EST (13:55 UTC) tomorrow (Wednesday, Jan 29) to watch the company’s third launch of 2020 live.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Grok Bot is picking up the phone now, and the first calls are wild
Elon Musk wants Grok Bot users making phone calls, and one Comcast call saved $500.
Elon Musk is pushing Grok Bot users toward a feature that, until this week, few of them could actually use. “Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls!” Musk wrote on X Tuesday afternoon, quoting a demo from Sawyer Merritt that included audio from a live call.
Musk first announced calling on October 25, writing that the agent could “call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation.” There were no release notes at the time, and the feature only appeared in preview builds. That changed on Tuesday, when creator Peter Yang said all Grok Bot users should now be able to call US businesses. Musk reposted his demo.
Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 3, 2026
Yang’s call shows how far the feature goes. In his video, his bot dialed Comcast, worked through the phone menu, deflected small talk about the weather by saying it does not “have eyes on the sky,” turned down three upsells and used a cheaper fiber offer from competitor Sonic as leverage. His bill dropped from $84 to $45 per month on a faster plan, a savings of nearly $500 a year. The call ran about 25 minutes, and the bot paused to get Yang’s approval before accepting the final terms.
Merritt described what the user sees: a live transcript runs during the call, and when the business asks for something the bot does not know, an answer box pops up in the chat. The user types a reply and Grok relays it to the person on the line. Other users posted results Tuesday, including a $100 gift card recovered from Verizon Fios after a 51 minute call and a same day pediatric appointment, which Musk also shared. Not every call worked. One user said a rep refused to cancel a subscription once it was clear an AI was on the phone.
Grok @Bot can now call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 25, 2026
The Grok Bot terms require every call to identify itself as a virtual assistant calling on the user’s behalf and warn that calls may be recorded. Marketing, mass calling and impersonation are prohibited, and calling currently works only with US numbers.
The timing stands out. Days ago, users began hitting their weekly limits early, and Musk said the cost of serving Grok Bot was “unsustainably high relative to revenue,” as Teslarati reported. A call that spends most of its 25 or 50 minutes on hold is the kind of long running task that eats into usage, and SpaceXSI has not said how calls count against the weekly pool. Grok Bot is included from the $30 Premium tier of The X Subscription upward.
For Tesla owners, the agent has been in their cars since September 22 and is enabled across every Cybercab and Model Y Robotaxi. Musk has already pitched it for phone chores like scrubbing your number from spam call lists. Neither Tesla nor SpaceXSI has confirmed whether a bot can place one of these calls on request from inside the vehicle.
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Tesla Full Self-Driving gets hit with some adjustments in Europe
Tesla Full Self-Driving, which is now referred to in Europe as “Tesla Assisted Driving” (TAD), is getting hit with a handful of new changes at the hands of the Netherlands’ vehicle authority, the RDW (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer).
On 3 November, the RDW announced that it has assessed and approved a set of changes to Tesla’s FSD Supervised driver-assistance system. The updates introduce the official European name TAD and impose stricter controls on the system’s speed behaviour.
The new name will appear on the in-car display, in the owner’s manual, and in all other driver-facing information. The change applies to Tesla models equipped with Tesla Assisted Driving and hardware version 4.0 (HW4) or later.
Importantly, the RDW stressed that the name change does not alter the system’s fundamental operation: it remains a supervised driver-assistance feature that supports the driver in performing driving tasks. The driver stays fully responsible for controlling the vehicle at all times.
Beyond the rebranding, the most significant functional adjustments concern speed settings. Drivers will still be able to set a speed margin, a percentage by which the system may exceed the applicable speed limit when necessary for safety or traffic flow. However, the maximum allowable margin has been reduced from +50% to a maximum of +10%.
In addition, every time the vehicle is started, the speed-margin setting will default to 0% deviation, and other speed-related functions will be disabled by default. These changes will be delivered through an over-the-air (OTA) software update from Tesla.
Tesla requested the RDW’s review of these “minor changes.” After evaluating how the modifications were implemented and how the system behaves, the authority found no adverse or unintended effects on the system’s operation or the vehicle’s driving behaviour. Consequently, the existing type approval remains valid under the same conditions and for the same use; no amendment or extension of the approval is required.
The RDW has informed the nine EU member states that have already accepted its type approval—Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia—about the updates. Broader EU-wide approval is still under discussion within the European Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV). Those proceedings remain confidential, and the RDW has declined to comment on them.
The approved changes align with earlier discussions involving German authorities, which had advocated both for clearer naming to avoid misleading drivers and for a tighter speed offset.
By formally incorporating these adjustments while leaving the core type approval intact, the RDW has cleared the way for Tesla to roll out the updated TAD software via OTA to eligible vehicles in the Netherlands and the other countries that recognise the Dutch approval. The system continues to function strictly as supervised driver assistance, with the human driver remaining the responsible party.
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Tesla shows off Roadster ‘kickflip’ over vehicle lineup in crazy new POV video
Tesla has released a fresh point-of-view video capturing the next-generation Roadster’s headline stunt from its October 15 unveiling, giving fans a visceral look at the car as it jumps and rotates over its siblings within the company’s vehicle lineup.
Tesla posted the video on X today with the caption “POV you’re a flying car,” and the roughly 30-second clip reveals never-before-seen angles directly attached to the Roadster. It’s really unbelievable:
The sequence reveals the uncrewed prototype firing its cold-gas thrusters, lifting off the ground, and barrel-rolling fully inverted while sailing over a staged lineup that includes a Model 3, Model Y, Cybercab, Cybertruck, and Tesla Semi.
Here’s an image of it that Tesla shared right after the unveiling event for a better perspective of what you’re looking at:

Credit: Tesla
There are also some other cool takeaways from the video, including the shift to the inverted-ramp demonstration. The Roadster uses its underbody suction-fan system to climb, then lock itself upside down on the ramp.
This generates multiple Gs of downforce, which then translates into the Roadster releasing these systems to enable a mid-air roll. The car then settles on its wheels gently as thruster vapor provides a perfect cushion.
All of the runs at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, test site, which is where the unveiling took place, were autonomous. Elon Musk stated this was a safety measure.
Tesla shows what Roadster drivers will see on screen before thruster activation
Tesla’s vehicle-engineering chief Lars Moravy dubbed the mid-air roll the “kickflip,” prompting Musk to quip that Tony Hawk would be proud and that the car could clear even more of the fleet. The thrusters, which use high-pressure compressed air and fast electric actuators, provide the precise, short-duration force needed for both the launch and the controlled rotation; the same hardware is intended for production versions of the higher-end Thrust and Rocket trims.
The second-generation Roadster, first teased in 2017, has been delayed repeatedly. Musk has indicated production is targeted for 2028.
While the company has yet to publish full pricing or independent performance verification, the combination of extreme acceleration, ground-effect suction, and limited flight capability has already positioned the car as one of the most theatrical EV reveals in years.
Musk has also said Tesla plans a dedicated Texas test track so future owners can experience the maneuvers themselves, far from public roads. The new POV clip simply lets everyone else feel a fraction of that experience from the car’s own cameras.