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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk updates schedule for first orbital Starship launch
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has presented the first significant update on the company’s Starship program since September 2019, offering a couple of new details about the status of the first orbital launch attempt of the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.
Unfortunately, above all else, the promised update was primarily a rehash of the broad-strokes vision of SpaceX’s Starship and Mars programs, as well as some basic details – most already known – about the rocket, its Raptor engines, and how it will be operated. Nonetheless, a large portion of the event was dedicated to audience questions, some of which actually extracted some specific details from the SpaceX CEO. Perhaps the single most important news: a rough but updated schedule for Starship’s first orbital test flight.
To be clear, a great many questions remain unanswered. Months after Starbase’s first orbital tank farm reached some degree of completion, SpaceX has yet to fill four main liquid methane (LCH4) tanks with even an ounce of fuel. Over the same period, the farm’s five liquid oxygen and nitrogen (LOx/LN2) tanks have been filled with thousands of tons of propellant and coolant. Why is still entirely unclear, save for speculation that SpaceX ran afoul of rudimentary methane storage regulations and is ever so slowly rectifying those errors with modifications. Without so much as a partially operational tank farm, SpaceX will be unable to attempt an orbital Starship launch, let alone start the process of qualifying a Super Heavy booster for flight with wet dress rehearsals (WDRs) and static fire tests.
Musk also failed to confirm or offer an educated guess as to which Starship and Super Heavy booster will support the first orbital test flight (OTF), whether the first OTF will truly reach orbit (rather than ‘just’ orbital velocity), and what will happen to Ship 20 and Booster 4 if – as a great deal of speculation suggests – they’ve fallen out of favor. If they’re to be replaced, it’s also unclear why that is or how long it might take to qualify a new ship and booster given that Super Heavy B4, for example, has yet to attempt a single static fire test a full six months after it first reached its full height.
Nonetheless, largely thanks to questions asked by members of the media, Musk did offer some valuable insight into Starship’s first orbital-class test flight. The SpaceX CEO says that he believes the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) could complete an environmental assessment of Starbase as early as March. In the same presentation, Musk stated that SpaceX would “hopefully [complete environmental reviews] a couple months.” A lack of environmental approval has been the single most important bottleneck of orbital Starbase launch operations for months. The FAA originally anticipated that those reviews would be complete by the end of 2021 but recently delayed the estimated date of completion to the end of February 2022. Another delay from February to March (or later) has been expected for weeks.
It’s unclear how seamless the whole process will be but SpaceX will also need to receive an FAA license for orbital Starship launches after clearing environmental reviews. That could take days, weeks, months, or even a year or more. If SpaceX doesn’t receive a Finding Of No Significant Impact (FONSI) on its Starbase environmental assessment (EA) and instead has to complete a far more extensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), Starbase could be stuck in bureaucratic gridlock well into 2023 or even 2024.
Thankfully, Musk is extremely confident in SpaceX’s alternatives. In the event that Starbase becomes indefinitely unusable, SpaceX has already received full environmental approval to launch Starship out of Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A. The company has already begun the process of assembling a Starship launch and catch tower offsite and Musk believes that a Pad 39A Starship launch site could be brought online in just 6-8 months if SpaceX refocuses all of its Starship resources onto Florida.
The CEO also says that SpaceX’s goal is to have the hardware needed for Starship’s first orbital test flight ready to launch around the same as regulatory approval is secured – “hopefully a couple months for both,” in Musk’s words. If Starship S20 and Booster 4 are still assigned to mission, that schedule is not difficult to believe. Starship has already completed virtually all of the ground testing needed to qualify it for flight, while – from the outside – Super Heavy has never looked more ready for static fire testing.
If SpaceX intends to use a different ship and booster, though, the company will have to cut the amount of time needed for final assembly and qualification testing by a factor of two or three relative to B4/S20. If the next ship and booster pair takes a similar amount of time as B4/S20, the hardware needed for Starship’s first orbital launch attempt might not be ready until August or September 2022. SpaceX will also need to build, test, qualify, and ship around three-dozen Raptor 2 engines, the production of which could singlehandedly take at least six or seven weeks at the current pace of production.
Ultimately, no matter where the cards currently in the air end up falling, it looks like SpaceX has an extremely busy – and hopefully fruitful – year of Starship development and testing ahead of it
Tesla has its answer to grow its automotive sales over the next few years, TD Cowen analyst Itay Michaeli says, but it just has to bring it to the U.S.
On Thursday, Michaeli reiterated his $490 price target and the ‘Buy’ rating he already held on Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA). However, its automotive division has struggled to show sequential growth over the past few years, mostly due to its focus on AI and Full Self-Driving. Tesla already axed two of its lower-volume vehicles with the Model S and Model X earlier this year.
However, Tesla does not need to engineer an entire new vehicle to trigger an upward tick in sales; it just has to bring it from China to the U.S., Michaeli said.
He is talking about the Model Y L, a slightly larger version of the all-electric crossover that is already available in China. U.S. customers have been pleading with CEO Elon Musk to bring it to the country since its launch in Asia last year, but he’s not convinced of it because of the advent of self-driving and its importance in this particular market.
The problem is that Tesla owners have been requesting something larger that could fit a typical American family. The Model Y L is slightly larger than the standard Model Y, but some are concerned that it could still be too small to fit what most people might need.
Instead, they have asked for a full-size SUV from Tesla.
Tesla gives big hint that it will build Cyber SUV, smaller Cybertruck
Nevertheless, the Model Y L still presents a great opportunity for Tesla in the U.S., and Michaeli says that there is an additional sales opportunity of about 100,000 units, with demand potential falling somewhere between 60,000 and 135,000 units.
TD Cowen’s note to investors also analyzed that Tesla’s growth could come from a stock perspective as well, positively impacting the stock price, as it has been widely reliant on vehicle sales, even though Tesla has truly phased itself away from that being an important metric.
Tesla stands to gain greatly from the introduction of the Model Y L in the U.S., but only if Elon Musk sees it as a viable fit for the market. Families may need to see Tesla bring something larger to the U.S., or they might be forced to buy from another automaker that offers something that fits is needs for more interior space to haul around the kids.
Tesla Hardware 3 owners are set to get a new Full Self-Driving version this month as the company plans to release what it is referring to as v14 Lite.
The rollout is not yet confirmed for June, but Tesla executives have stated on several occasions that this more refined FSD iteration will work with their cars and increase its capabilities.
This comes after Tesla admitted during its last Earnings Call that these Hardware 3 vehicles would not be able to achieve Full Self-Driving, something that they did not know when they bought these cars. We regularly receive messages from Hardware 3 owners asking when v14 Lite will come out, what they should expect, and whether it is worth it to upgrade the self-driving computer or buy a new car altogether.
Following future rollout of FSD V14 Lite for HW3 vehicles in the US, we plan on expanding V14 Lite to additional international markets.
This update ensures that HW3 vehicle owners will continue to benefit from ongoing software updates.
Since international rollout is subject to…
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 29, 2026
It is hard not to feel for them; Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the company’s 2019 Autonomy Day that all vehicles produced at the time, including Hardware 3 cars, had “all the hardware necessary, compute and otherwise, for Full Self-Driving.”
Musk also said in March of that year that, “Anyone who purchased Full Self-Driving will get FSD computer upgrade for free.”
Anyone who purchased full self-driving will get FSD computer upgrade for free. This is the only change between Autopilot HW2.5 & HW3. Going forward “HW3” will just be called FSD Computer, which is accurate. No change to vehicle sensors or wire harness needed. This is v important. https://t.co/lICMpT7xnX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 29, 2019
However, during the Q1 2026 Earnings Call, Musk admitted that Hardware 3 vehicles would not be capable of FSD, as “It has only 1/8th the memory bandwidth of Hardware 4, and memory bandwidth is one of the key elements needed for unsupervised FSD.”
Tesla has made some effort to remedy these Hardware 3 owners by offering:
- Discounted trade-ins toward AI4 cars
- Hardware retrofits, which would replace the self-driving computer and upgrade all cameras
- Full Self-Driving v14 Lite
The issue is that many of these owners were led to believe their cars would be capable of unsupervised self-driving. Now, they’re left scrambling for options, and while there are several, they will all require more money out of their pockets.
Expectations for Tesla v14 Lite for Hardware 3 Owners
The big differences between the AI4 v14 and v14 Lite for Hardware 3 owners will stem primarily from hardware constraints. Tesla developed v14 Lite with an optimized frame of mind; the v14 neural nets are toned down to run on an HW3 computer.
Tesla v14 will use the same behavior, but its limits will be hardware-related, especially given that the cameras on HW3 vehicles are lower-resolution.
Tesla reveals its plans for Hardware 3 owners who are eager for updates
This will result in potentially more edge cases due to the lower quality perception and less long-range detection, but reaction time and overall confidence should be more refined.
There should also be a handful of additional features that are available on AI4 cars, such as:
- Starting Full Self-Driving from Park
- Auto Shift
- Streaks
- Speed Profiles
- Improved Dynamics, like Pulling Over for Emergency Vehicles
Tesla plans to release v14 Lite this month, but we are all familiar with how the company can be with timelines. Additionally, if v14 Lite has not proven to be ready for a wide release, Tesla will slam the brakes on the rollout.
We would anticipate that Tesla is testing v14 Lite internally, and likely has been for several months.
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.
Tesla has its answer to auto growth, it just has to bring it to the U.S.: analyst
Tesla Hardware 3 owners could be made whole this month
