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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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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 Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.
However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.
Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.
Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.
Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.
He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.
Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.
Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.
That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.
🚨 These are the first-ever FSD safety statistics out of the Netherlands, showing it was over 3.5x safer than human driving on Dutch roads.
The most recent numbers out of Tesla for North America show:
-Over 5.5 million miles between accidents for Teslas using FSD
-660k miles… https://t.co/XKlRzgSGEh pic.twitter.com/HX6kzh0ZKc— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.
“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.
Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days
SpaceX’s Elon Musk relieves worries about orbital data centers
