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SpaceX recovers fairing intact for the first time, Starlink communicating back to Earth
With the launch of PAZ and two of their own Starlink demo satellites, SpaceX has completed its fourth successful launch of 2018, and continued an aggressive series of reusability-focused flight-tests.
Amazingly, the company managed to successfully recover a fairing intact for the first time ever, an absolutely crucial step towards ramping the Falcon family’s launch cadence and reusability. According to CEO Elon Musk, SpaceX’s fairing recovery vessel Mr. Steven missed the fairing by a few hundred meters, meaning that the fairing gently landed in the Pacific Ocean, rather than Mr. Steven’s now-famous fairing recovery net. This is quite possibly the first time in aerospace history that an orbital rocket’s payload fairing has been recovered intact, and the fairing in question looks very much intact.
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- It may look unassuming, but that fairing half could swallow an entire school bus and by all means should not be in one piece. (Fairing from PAZ, photo by Elon Musk)
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- A closeup of the landed fairing. This particularly fairing is the first flight of Fairing 2.0, a recent upgrade. (Elon Musk)
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- Mr Steven is currently undergoing arm surgery (upgrades) at SpaceX’s future BFR factory lot, known as Berth 240. (Elon Musk)
As mentioned by Musk, that massive piece of hardware had to survive reentry into Earth’s atmosphere at no less than Mach 8, considerably more than two times faster than the famous SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. While the fairing’s parafoil appears to have sunk after being quickly detached, careful observers will note three vertical bars at its three corners, almost certainly the points where that parafoil attaches to them and allows it to gently float down to the ocean surface. While not nearly as consequential as SpaceX’s growing expertise with Falcon booster recovery and reuse, each fairing – made largely of carbon fiber composites – takes a huge amount of time and effort to complete, and cost upwards of $3 million each ($6m for both halves). In this sense, SpaceX has managed to recover a pallet of cash, as Musk humorously likened the effort fairing reuse to in 2017.
Given just how good the fairing’s condition appears to be, as well as the calm sea states, it’s very likely that SpaceX will try to pick up the landed fairing with a crane, although that would require a different vessel – Mr. Steven has no crane! Teslarati’s Pauline Acalin will undoubtedly be checking out the Port of San Pedro once Mr. Steven has returned to shore, in hopes of capturing the first-ever photos of a recovered orbital rocket fairing.
Remote camera has been retrieved, wet with morning dew…and WITH images! Awesome launch by SpaceX. @teslarati #SpaceX #Paz #Starlink pic.twitter.com/tDTXxZErN4
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) February 22, 2018
Falcon 9 roars into the dark California sky with PAZ and Starlink. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Similar to the Iridium-4 launch that had LA screaming “ALIENS!!!”, this launch gave an incredible show to California. (Pauline Acalin)
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- SpaceX intends to launch three Falcon 9s from all three of its pads in just seven days. Pictured here their VAFB pad in California. (Pauline Acalin)
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- SpaceX’s first Starlink prototypes launched in late February aboard a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Tragically, the pictured bird is not a falcon, but a vulture. (Pauline Acalin)
Starlink hopes tempered despite apparent success
While only mentioned a few times during the webcast, the Falcon 9 that launched earlier today was also carrying additional co-passengers – two SpaceX demonstration satellites, in this case. Confirmed to have successfully deployed and begun communicating with SpaceX ground control, this is another huge accomplishment for SpaceX and marks their first-ever steps into dedicated satellite manufacturing and operation. Despite the significance of this event, SpaceX was keen to lower expectations for the satellite internet network, named Starlink. The following statement was provided during the webcast:
“Even if these satellites work as planned, we still have considerable technical work ahead of us to design and deploy a low Earth orbit satellite constellation. If successful, [this system] would provide people in low to moderate population densities around the world with affordable, high-speed internet access, including many that have never had internet access before.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfgTyTzgYVm/
For all intents and purposes, this appears to be a significant departure from previous statements given about Starlink by the rocket company. The explicit mention of “low and moderate” population densities being the only focus of service contrasts heavily with a general sense that Starlink was intended from the outset to provide universal internet around the globe to anyone who could afford the service. This certainly serves as a confirmation that there are major technological hurdles that will need to be overcome for Starlink to become the universal internet many have come to hope for from SpaceX – it would appear that it will be quite difficult to serve high-density populations with SpaceX’s current choice of technologies for their constellation.
Still, the demand is undeniably there. Even readers of Teslarati expressed an immediate desire to ditch their cable companies and ISPs, both in the US and abroad. If SpaceX can make it happen, they will have hordes of eager ISP-hating internet users desperate for any alternatives, and your author is proudly among them. The badly served aside, it sounds like SpaceX may be pivoting towards Starlink as a method of connecting the underserved – mainly those in rural or undeveloped areas. Even in the US, this is a major problem for those that do not live near large cities, and US ISPs are exceptionally anti-consumer in these situations – often times charging obscene costs for cable installation or outright refusing to provide coverage. Starlink could be a boon for those individuals in the US and elsewhere, especially where a simple lack of infrastructure is the cause. Much of Africa suffers from this, although mobile networks have become a backbone for a relatively unique pattern of mobile phone usage.
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- .While SpaceX’s own visualizations are gorgeous and thrilling in their own rights, Romax’s interpretation adds an unparalleled level of shock and awe. (SpaceX)
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- SpaceX’s first two Starlink prototype satellites are pictured here before their inaugural Feb. 2018 launch, showing off a utilitarian design. (SpaceX)
Here’s to hoping that SpaceX manages to once again rise to an exceptional technological challenge. As with all R&D efforts, the company’s satellite effort would be helped immensely with additional funds, and thankfully Falcon 9 Block 5 is very nearly ready to fly its first missions. This highly reusable iteration of the rocket could enable SpaceX to fly dozens of missions with a single Falcon 9 booster, and would thus enable unprecedented profit margins for a launch company, at least in the interim. Eventually, SpaceX is bound to bring down its prices for the customer, but the first need to recoup their reusability and Falcon Heavy investments, while also ensuring a sound business plan to support the development of their BFR and BFS vehicles that may one day enable the colonization of space. Starlink may be another beneficiary of those profits, and could itself one day act as a source of reliable funding for SpaceX’s interplanetary endeavors.
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News
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
News
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
Tesla ended its Semi event with a Roadster teaser revealing a new front light bar.
Tesla closed out its Semi event in Nevada on Thursday night with a nod to its own history, dropping a short Roadster teaser that suggests the production car will look noticeably different from the prototype first shown in 2017.
“We can’t have a Semi event without the Roadster,” Tesla engineering executive Lars Moravy told the crowd before the clip played. The line was a deliberate callback. Tesla first revealed the next generation Roadster in November 2017 by driving it out of the back of a Semi trailer at the truck’s original unveiling in Hawthorne, California.
The new video opens on trailer doors swinging apart in the dark. A thin white light bar glows across what appears to be the nose of the car, Tesla and SpaceX logos flash over the frame, and the Roadster name appears before the clip ends on “See you next week.” Tesla posted the nine second clip on X after the livestream wrapped.
See you next week pic.twitter.com/BT52bGVxFu
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 25, 2026
The light bar is the most concrete design detail so far. The 2017 prototype used two separate curved headlamp pods, while a connected front light strip would bring the Roadster in line with the Cybertruck, Cybercab, Semi, and refreshed Model Y. Sawyer Merritt was among the first to point out what looked like part of a SpaceX logo in the video, something Tesla has not addressed.
That logo fits the buildup around the optional SpaceX Package, which Elon Musk has long said would use cold gas thrusters to improve acceleration and possibly allow the car to briefly leave the ground. Tesla’s “Go for launch” post on September 12 set the October 1 date, and invitations sent to reservation holders place the event in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Waco sits roughly 20 minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA has put a temporary flight restriction in place from September 18 through October 2, covering a 1.5 nautical mile radius from the surface up to 10,000 feet.
Tesla is also taking money ahead of the reveal. The company reopened Roadster reservations earlier this week with a $5,000 refundable card payment, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. That puts buyers at $50,000 committed before Tesla has published a price.
The original pitch set a high bar: 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds before any upgrades, 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and production in 2020. That timeline has slipped repeatedly, and Tesla has since pointed to production at Gigafactory Texas no earlier than 2027. The company has said next Thursday’s event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets, the three details original reservation holders have been waiting on for nearly nine years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s release in Europe is set to be delayed by at least a few months.
The European Union will not vote on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on October 6. The draft agenda for the 119th meeting of the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles lists only a 25-minute “continuation of discussions” on the Netherlands’ Article 39 request, not a decision. The next scheduled TCMV session is in December, which is now the earliest date a bloc-wide vote could occur.
Tesla Europe had pointed to October 6 as a possible EU-wide vote after the Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted the first European type approval on April 10.
That approval, under UN Regulation 171 plus an Article 39 exemption in EU Regulation 2018/858, is the legal file other member states have been recognizing one by one. The same committee has already discussed the request twice without voting.
Elon Musk’s reply to the delay was a single word: “Sigh.”
Sigh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2026
Seven EU countries have now cleared FSD Supervised on their own roads: the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia. Those seven states represent about 53 million people, or roughly 12 percent of the EU population. An EU-wide authorization still needs a qualified majority: at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population, about 292 million people.
Germany, France, Italy, and Spain remain the decisive markets. France has already rejected the current system; several other governments have flagged speed-limit compliance as the main sticking point.
The safety case Tesla is putting in front of those governments is now public. On September 1, Tesla Europe said FSD Supervised was in use by more than 70,000 customers, covering over 1 million kilometers a day, and was 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on EU public roads.
An earlier mid-year cut of the same fleet data, covering 65 million kilometers in five approved countries, put the collision advantage at 5.2 times, with zero highway collisions over 41.9 million kilometers. Tesla also reported far fewer automatic emergency braking events, harsh accelerations, and hard swerves than in comparable manual Tesla driving. Those figures are company-reported, not independently audited.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is taking over Europe: fourth country gets FSD approval
The public-health backdrop is harder to dispute. European countries recorded about 19,400 road deaths in 2025, or roughly 53 a day, most of them attributed to human error. FSD Supervised is not unsupervised autonomy; the driver remains legally responsible. But the software is already legal and in daily use across seven member states.
Until TCMV votes, the rest of the EU remains a patchwork: available in Prague and Amsterdam, locked behind review in Paris and Berlin. December is now the next chance to close that gap.
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
