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SpaceX stacks orbital Starship sections as Elon Musk teases June 20th event
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he will provide a public update on the development status of Starship and Super Heavy in an official presentation later this summer, possibly as soon as June 20th.
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s South Texas team have been busy at work on both Starhopper and a newer Starship, said by Musk to be the first orbit-capable prototype. In the last week, technicians have begun stacking several sections of the vehicle’s stainless steel hull, all fabricated and welded together side-by-side. On Thursday, May 9th, this progressed to the installation of the Starship’s first gently tapered nose section atop its cylindrical tank section. Likely the second- or third-to-last major stack before its aeroshell is assembled into one piece, the orbital prototype is starting to truly resemble a real Starship.
They grow up so fast…
CEO Elon Musk revealed SpaceX’s Mars colonization architecture back in September 2016 and has since provided design and development updates every 6-12 months. Between then now, Starship/Super Heavy (formerly BFR, fore-formerly ITS) has radically changed. Originally baselined with a diameter of 12 m (40 ft), an almost entirely carbon composite design, and a spaceship with bulky tripod fins/wings, SpaceX helped design, build, and test a full-scale liquid oxygen tank.
Six months after the tank was destroyed (likely intentionally) during testing, Musk announced in Sept. 2017 that ITS was now called BFR and would feature a leaner 9m (30 ft) diameter. He also revealed tentative plans to enlist BFR in a point-to-point Earth transportation scheme offering travelers access to almost anywhere on Earth in ~30 minutes. In September 2018, the design changed once more, gaining ~10m of height and three mobile tripod fins/wings/legs. Finally, just a few months after the 2018 update, Musk revealed that SpaceX was moving almost entirely away from carbon composites and would instead use stainless steel throughout BFR’s structure. BFR was also renamed to Starship/Super Heavy.
Episode 4: Revenge of the Steel
Given SpaceX’s breakneck pace of Starhopper and Starship development, it’s possible that Musk’s “probably June 20th” event is meant to correlate with a yet-unknown Starship or Starhopper milestone. Back in early January, Musk suggested that the first orbital Starship prototype could be “complete” as early as June. However, a few weeks later, Starhopper suffered a setback when its facade/nosecone toppled over and was irreparably destroyed.
Several months distant, it’s hard to actually say if that hardware loss has impacted SpaceX’s schedule much at all. Sans nose section, SpaceX instead conducted a number of wet dress rehearsals and successfully ignited Raptor and jumped the tethered Starhopper a few feet in early April, more or less right on schedule per a December 2018 Musk tweet.
At this point in time, it’s highly unlikely that the orbital Starship prototype will be truly complete just a month or two from now. Most notably, “completion” would require seven flight-ready Raptor engines, of which SpaceX is known to have only completed 3-4 in the last four months. Despite an apparent lack of Raptors for a June completion of the orbital prototype, it may actually be possible for SpaceX to complete (in a very rough sense) the main structure of the Starship.
Major progress has been made in the last few weeks and the orbital prototype is starting to look more and more like an actual Starship. Aside from finishing the vehicle’s propellant and header tanks and engine section/thrust structure, SpaceX still needs to install avionics, wiring, plumbing, cold-gas maneuvering thrusters, COPVs, access and umbilical ports and panels, an entire heat shield, its tripod wings/fins/legs, and more. At the same time, it’s unclear if SpaceX will attempt to send Starship to orbit on its own before the first Super Heavy booster prototype is complete, an even more massive undertaking ahead of the company.
For now, all we can do is wait and watch SpaceX’s gloriously bizarre steel Starship prototype continue to grow, while Starhoppper prepares for untethered hops a few thousand feet to the east. Things could be worse!
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Elon Musk
Google just picked SpaceX for its first step into orbital AI
Google will launch its first Project Suncatcher AI satellite on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare next week.
Google is about to put its own AI chips into orbit for the first time, and it is paying SpaceX to get them there.
The company said Thursday that the first in-orbit test of Project Suncatcher, its research effort to find out whether space can host large-scale AI computing, will fly next week on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission.
The satellite, called MVP, is about the size of a refrigerator and carries four of Google’s Tensor Processing Units, the same chips Google runs in its ground data centers. Google originally planned to launch two custom satellites in 2027, but chose to move faster by integrating its chips into a satellite.
MVP’s solar panels supply about one kilowatt of power, and Google will run Gemini models on the TPUs only in bursts of roughly 15 minutes before the chips shut down so the radiators can shed heat. In a blog post, Google said its Trillium TPUs survived vibration testing that mimicked sustained launch loads of up to 10g, with individual components seeing 50 to 100g, and handled a radiation dose greater than a five year mission would deliver.
SpaceX and Google mull massive partnership on Musk’s orbital data dream: report
Next week’s flight, slated for October 1, follows a relationship that became public in May, when Teslarati reported that Google was in talks with SpaceX for a launch deal tied to orbital data centers. Google also holds a stake of roughly 6% in SpaceX.
The two companies are chasing the same idea from very different starting points. SpaceX’s own orbital compute program is built around the AI1 satellite, a roughly 70 meter structure derived from Starlink V3 hardware that is designed for 150 kW of peak compute, about 150 times the power MVP will draw. Elon Musk has brushed off concerns about crowding orbit with those satellites, and SpaceX is building its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, to produce them, targeting an annualized rate of about 1 GW of space compute by the end of 2027.
Musk also posted on X on Thursday that “the amount of compute in space will obviously round up to 100% of all compute.”
Google has been more cautious in public. Its research estimates that launch prices need to fall below about $200 per kilogram before an orbital data center can compete with a ground facility on energy cost, a threshold the company believes could be reached around the mid 2030s. The Suncatcher team has said it expects the effort to remain a project rather than a product for years, which leaves the first real test of its hardware riding on a rocket from the company with the most aggressive timeline in the field.
Tesla has taken another concrete step toward owning its battery supply chain, and it’s doing so with what is perhaps the most important vehicle in its short-but-storied history.
On September 23, Tesla announced that it has officially built the first Cybercab with cathode material produced in-house at the company’s first cathode plant in the U.S., and the first in the U.S. overall.
First Cybercab made using our in-house cathode material – from the first cathode plant in the Americas pic.twitter.com/X95aVXsT9H
— Robotaxi (@robotaxi) September 23, 2026
Active cathode material is the most expensive piece of a lithium-ion battery cell, and it often accounts for more than a third of cell cost. For years, the industry sourced a majority of it from Asia, but Tesla’s decision to make it in the United States bodes well for the Cybercab project. This is the latest chapter in Tesla’s vertical integration strategy, which began in public at Battery Day in 2020.
At the Battery Day Event, Elon Musk said the company would build a North American cathode plant and overhaul the process to cut costs and waste, while also making some of the most powerful and long-lasting cells in the industry.
The Austin facility took years to appear. Tesla filed permits for “Project Cathode” in 2022 on land near Giga Texas. By mid-2022, the building frame was up and Tesla later invested hundreds of millions of dollars as part of a larger expansion of the Giga Texas plant. The company stated it was operating the first large-scale cathode production facility in North America to supplement 4680 cell production.
One month later, that material reached a finished Cybercab.
Made with nickel cathode manufactured locally at Gigafactory Texas! https://t.co/DqMm5fZV3n
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 24, 2026
The timing of this breakthrough is monumental for the Cybercab program. As Tesla officially launched the first Cybercab rides to the public earlier this month, production of the ride-hailing-geared vehicle is moving forward on the planned S-curve that CEO Elon Musk told everyone to expect.
Nevertheless, packs of Cybercab units have been spotted throughout the United States, in an effort to potentially activate the fleet as soon as the company gains regulatory approval in various geographic areas.
On top of that, Tesla owning the cathode step and pairing it with its own in-house lithium from the Gulf Coast refinery shortens the supply chain that once stretched thousands of miles and subjects every pack to fewer external price shocks and geopolitical risks.
Tesla is not yet independent of all of its foreign suppliers, as some precursor metals come from mines and chemical plants. But the first in-house cathode Cybercab shows the company is closing the most expensive and most concentrated gap in its battery production efforts. For a vehicle like Cybercab to operate at a high utilization within the Robotaxi network, that control over cost is so crucial.
It is arguably as important as the software that drives it.
Tesla is set to inaugurate its dedicated Semi factory in Sparks, Nevada, this evening, but drone footage has already started to show who is expected on the handover stage.
Zanegler, a drone operator who regularly documents Tesla Semi operations in Nevada, filmed a row of new-generation Semi units parked outside of the plant with customer branding applied. The liveries visible in the video include companies like PepsiCo, U.S. Foods, Einride, DHL, WattEV, and others that have committed to utilizing Tesla’s Class 8 electric truck in their fleets.
Tesla Semi Pre-Reveal Revealed!
Excited to share this segment of the drone flight one day prior to the Tesla Semi Reveal event.
They have added branding to several Tesla new generation semis.
Including:
Pepsico
US Foods
Einride
LTS
Nevoya
OK Produce
ABF Freight
DHL
WattEV… pic.twitter.com/KoFOg2FouR— Zanegler (@HinrichsZane) September 24, 2026
Several of those company names already sit within Tesla’s public ordering book, including PepsiCo, which has been the program’s primary anchor customer since the first Semi deliveries in December 2022. PepsiCo now runs dozens of Tesla Semi units in daily service, with drivers completing regional routes.
Einride placed a 500-unit order in August, which was, at the time, the largest single Semi commitment. First deployments of their Semi units are planned for this month and will eventually span across California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, and Georgia. Meanwhile, IMC Logistics announced a 50-truck California order this week.
Tesla Semi lands the biggest electric truck deal in U.S. history
Other names, like LTS, OK Produce, and HMD, have not been widely confirmed as firm buyers, but their presence on the lot is perhaps the clearest signal that Tesla intends to expand on that list this evening at the event.
Tesla first unveiled the Semi back in 2017 with a 2019 production target.
Limited pilot builds reached PepsiCo in late 2022, and high-volume production began at the new 1.7-million-square-foot plant that sits logically positioned next to Tesla’s Gigafactory Nevada. Tesla Semi program director Dan Priestley has said that Tesla expects to build “many thousands” of Semi units this year, but as with every Tesla release, there have been set expectations of an S-curve ramp.
Outside estimates still put 2026 deliveries in the 5,000-to-15,000 range, but it will ultimately depend on Tesla’s readiness to put those units out, as well as how smoothly production is moving internally.
Tesla’s Semi Rollout event is set to start tonight at the Sparks factory, and it will be livestreamed on X starting at 6 p.m. PDT / 9 p.m. ET.
Google just picked SpaceX for its first step into orbital AI
Tesla Cybercab gets initial tie-in to localized, in-house cathode plant
