SpaceX
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Block 5 ready for first Return-To-Launch-Site booster landing
Falcon 9 B1048.2 is vertical at SpaceX’s Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 4 (SLC-4) facilities ahead of the rocket’s second launch, targeted at 07:21 PM PDT, Oct. 7 (02:21 UTC, Oct. 8). A bit less than ten minutes after liftoff, B1048 will attempt a Return-To-Launch-Site (RTLS) landing just ~1400 feet from the launch pad.
Meanwhile, Mr. Steven is ready to depart Port of San Pedro in support of Falcon fairing recovery operations soon after liftoff, the vessel’s fifth attempted catch in ~12 months of active service with SpaceX.
Falcon 9 B1048 and SAOCOM-1A as of 10:50 PM PDT. Photo courtesy of @_TomCross_ ?? pic.twitter.com/vlaB1fkk5p
— Eric Ralph (@13ericralph31) October 7, 2018
A few hours after the vessel’s four arms and net were fully installed (the first time in more than six weeks), SpaceX technicians performed a series of last-minute tests with a Falcon fairing half placed on his net to verify that its mechanised rigging was working as intended, while also double-checking data connectivity between the fairing and its target (the net). Pre-launch checkouts largely completed, Mr. Steven now has to travel a short 200 miles to reach the region where SpaceX expects Falcon 9’s fairings to be recovered.
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- On September 4th, SpaceX performed a mechanical test of a fairing’s separation mechanism, in this case used to hold a (detachable) lifting harness. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Note the taut, yellow ropes connected to the fairing at its original serparation connector ports. (Pauline Acalin)
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- After an audible “3..2..1”, a sharp noise much like compressed gas being released was followed by a clang as the harness dropped. (Pauline Acalin)
Of Falcons and fairings
It may feel quite different watching in real time, but SpaceX has made a huge amount of progress towards successful and routine fairing recoveries over the course of the last year and a half. Before the company became truly famous (and popular), more than two years (2013-2015) and a dozen distinct attempts were spent patiently learning how to recover Falcon 9 boosters, ranging from the first launch of Falcon 9 V1.1 (CASSIOPE, late 2013) to multiple instances where boosters exploded in spectacular fashions on drone ships Just Read The Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You after SpaceX began true landing attempts.
In fact, the first intact recovery didn’t even take place on a drone ship after years of extensive testing at sea – in December 2015, after separating from its Orbcomm-2 satellite constellation payload, Falcon 9 B1019 became the first booster recovered by SpaceX in one piece, landing almost flawlessly at the company’s just-finished Cape Canaveral landing zone, known as LZ-1. Several months later, SpaceX successfully recovered its first Falcon 9 at sea, landing a booster on OCISLY shortly after launching the CRS-8 Cargo Dragon mission, although several more failures or near-failures followed as recovery technicians and engineers worked through a diverse and unpredictable series of challenges as they arose.
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Rocket recovery: it’s not easy
Even in 2018, SpaceX unintentionally expended Falcon Heavy’s center core, demonstrating that even three dozen successful Falcon 9 and Heavy booster recoveries are not necessarily enough to shine light on or predict all possible modes of failure. Around 7:21 PM (PDT) today, barring a scrubbed launch attempt, the already-flown Falcon 9 booster B1048 – refurbished from landing to launch in just ~74 days – will likely launch and land once more, and most of the world wont even blink and eye. In the eyes of those that don’t or haven’t followed SpaceX obsessively, rocket booster recovery and reuse is to some extent already perceived as routine, logical, and inevitable less than three years after the technology’s first true Kitty Hawk moment.
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- One half of SpaceX’s Iridium-6/GRACE-FO just moments before touchdown on the Pacific Ocean. (SpaceX)
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- Close. (SpaceX)
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- Hans Koenigsmann was extremely excited about the condition of this particular fairing half, and included this photo in his IAC 2018 keynote. (SpaceX)
The point of this brief SpaceX history lesson is to emphasize that fairing recovery is an extremely young technology, even for SpaceX. Before Mr. Steven swooped into existence, SpaceX had begun attempting to softly land payload fairings in the ocean around the start of 2017, and Mr. Steven famously returned to Port of San Pedro with an intact (but unreusable) fairing half in March 2018 after successfully launching Earth-imaging satellite PAZ. Comparing historical apples to present-day oranges, it may be safe to assume that fairing recovery’s Orbcomm-2 moment – Mr. Steven’s first successful catch – is already on the horizon.
In the meantime, it never hurts to remind oneself that – vicarious frustrations aside – observers are likely watching history unfold in real-time once again. SpaceX’s SAOCOM-1A launch webcast will begin around 7PM PDT – 15 or 20 minutes prior to launch – and can be found at the link below.
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
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Elon Musk’s massive Terafab project, which will be the first true conglomeration between each of his major entities, is set to get its final location soon, the CEO said on Tesla’s recent earnings call.
“The Terafab, we expect to announce a location soon, and provide more details about our plans in that regard. We’ll leave that to the product, the launch announcement rather than try to squeeze it into an earnings call,” Musk said last Wednesday.
Tesla Terafab set for launch: Inside the $20B AI chip factory that will reshape the auto industry
Terafab was announced by Musk back in March and was essentially a massive, vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing project that would provide all the chips the three companies needed for their AI initiatives without needing third-party companies.
The plant will produce over 1 terawatt of AI compute each year, and will help back up projects like Optimus, Full Self-Driving, and other AI-based projects that Musk’s companies are working on.
In April, less than a month after the project was launched, Intel announced it would join the project, contributing manufacturing expertise and consulting to Terafab as a whole. Intel is one of three chip manufacturers that produce sub-5 nanometer chips at scale. TSMC and Samsung are the other two.
However, there was no true indication of where Terafab would end up, but most believe it will likely be somewhere in Texas. Business Insider has reported that SpaceX plans to build out Terafab in Grimes County, Texas, but this is unconfirmed.
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Musk confirmed recently that it would not be on Giga Texas property, as it is simply too large.
The sheer scale of TERAFAB is going to be insane.
Elon said it wouldn’t be suitable for anywhere on Giga Texas property because it’s too big:
“We couldn’t possibly fit the Terafab on the GigaTexas campus. It will be far bigger than everything else combined there.
Several… pic.twitter.com/79GbhNNuf4
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 23, 2026
Terafab holds much of Musk’s grand ambitions for the future within its construct. It holds so much responsibility for the future and the biggest projects that Musk’s companies can imagine.
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“I think this is a very big announcement and it deserves to have its own day in the spotlight and not be squeezed into an earnings call,” he said. “I do think Terafab is going to be an amazing initiative and a necessary one, and one without which we will be constrained in our ability to scale Optimus production, because we simply won’t have enough AI chips.”
He continued by stating that Terafab is necessary for scaling Optimus, which Musk said could be the biggest product of any kind of all time. “It’s crucial to solve that, and we’ll have to solve memory, logic, and packaging in order to scale Optimus.”
SpaceX performed a secret test on a specific portion of Starship with its recent 13th test flight last week, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
Starship’s 13th test flight took place last Friday, and in many aspects, it was one of the most overwhelmingly successful launches in the project’s history.
All of the mission objectives were met without incident, both the Super Heavy Booster and Ship managed to perform safe splashdowns in the Gulf of America and the Indian Ocean, respectively, and the deployment of Starlink satellites came and went without any complications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
However, there was more on the agenda for SpaceX with Flight 13. Musk revealed an internal test of the ship’s heat shield tiles, as the space exploration company wanted to push them to the limits after previous issues.
Many noticed that Starship’s initial launch seemed to be more accelerated than normal, and that was not a mistake. Musk revealed that SpaceX decided to give Flight 13 an intentionally aggressive acceleration rate in an effort to test how well the tiles would remain attached to the ship:
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This flight intentionally had much higher acceleration to test how well the heat shield tiles would remain attached at high dynamic pressure.
Test was successful.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
SpaceX had issues with some of the heat shield tiles remaining attached early on in the Starship program. The first six test flights presented some kind of anomaly with them, so the company’s big focus with them was to figure out a way to keep them intact through the duration of the flight.
Things truly improved as Flight 10 showed that ceramic tiles generally stayed attached to the ship far better due to refined attachment, as SpaceX utilized pins instead of adhesives. Flights 10 through 13 truly showed some clear progress with the heat shield tiles, and this latest test seems to be where some real progress was noticed, especially by Musk.
The 13th Starship launch last Friday was the second with Starship V3, SpaceX’s latest and greatest iteration of the spacecraft. Goals and ambitions are getting even grander as the project continues to progress. Musk has already hinted that SpaceX will likely try to catch Starship with Flight 14.
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Just hours after Starship Flight 13 achieved a successful soft splashdown of its upper stage in the Indian Ocean on July 24, Elon Musk announced an ambitious next step for the company’s next launch of the rocket.
“Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on [the] next flight,” the SpaceX CEO posted on X on Friday.
That “next flight” is expected to be Flight 14. The plan involves returning the Starship upper stage, commonly called the “ship,” to the Starbase launch tower in Texas and catching it mid-air using the same mechanical “chopsticks” arms that have already proven themselves with the Super Heavy booster.
Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
A successful catch would mark the first time an orbital-class upper stage has been recovered this way, advancing SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability for the entire vehicle.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower-catch technique multiple times with Super Heavy. The first successful catch came on Flight 5 in October 2024, when Booster 12 was plucked from the sky by the Mechazilla arms. Subsequent flights, including those involving Boosters 14 and 15, repeated the feat. Several of those recovered boosters were later inspected, refurbished, and flown again, proving the system’s viability for quick turnaround.
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Traditional reusable rockets, such as SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 or Blue Origin’s New Shepard, land on legs either on land or droneships. Rocket Lab has recovered its small Electron first stages by helicopter, but those are far lighter vehicles.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), completed a catch of its booster on July 10. They are the only entity besides SpaceX to attempt and complete the feat.
Flight 13 provided encouraging data. The ship executed a controlled reentry, flipped, and soft-landed intact in the ocean after deploying Starlink satellites, offering the first clear post-splashdown views of an undamaged heat shield. The Super Heavy booster, meanwhile, experienced a harder splashdown in the Gulf of America.
Musk has previously stressed that ship catches would only follow multiple successful soft ocean landings to minimize risk of debris over land.
If Flight 14 succeeds, SpaceX would take a major stride toward routine, rapid reuse of both stages—critical for lowering launch costs and supporting ambitious plans for lunar and Mars missions. For now, teams are reviewing the Flight 13 data. Should everything check out, the next Starship flight could deliver one of the most spectacular recoveries in aerospace history.
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Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.6 review: a rare regression, but some bright spots
Musk’s massive Terafab project will get final location soon
