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
Space finally faced the people living next to its next Terafab mega-project
SpaceX confirmed Terafab’s Grimes County site is locked in, with construction starting within months.
SpaceX and Terafab representatives sat across from Grimes County residents for the first time on Wednesday, telling a packed Commissioners Court room that the $55 billion chip manufacturing project is now a done deal at the Gibbons Creek Reservoir site.
The meeting followed a $10 million check SpaceX sent the county earlier this week, satisfying a payment deadline built into the tax abatement agreement both sides signed in June. Elon Musk shared a post on X confirming the payment, and County Judge Joe Fauth told the San Antonio Express-News his office deposited the check after it beat its deadline.
Wednesday’s session, first reported by KBTX, moved the project from paperwork to construction. Terafab representative Riley Trennell told residents the JETI tax break agreements with Iola ISD and Anderson-Shiro CISD are signed and active, and that civil work and foundation prep are starting almost immediately. Renderings of the facility could be released within days, he said, with construction beginning within months.
The foundations for an exciting future are being built in Texas. Next up: Terafab → https://t.co/jGg52Zhn5I pic.twitter.com/SNfSXNr2tb
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 6, 2026
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
Musk first announced Terafab in March as a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI aimed at producing over a terawatt of AI compute annually, an amount that dwarfs the roughly 20 gigawatts the entire global chip industry produces today. Intel joined as a manufacturing partner in April. Musk has said the project needed its own day in the spotlight rather than being squeezed into an earnings call, and for months the Grimes County site remained unconfirmed even as reporting pointed there.
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SpaceX attorney Buck Brannon used Wednesday’s meeting to note that the company’s abatement is roughly 78 percent, not the 100 percent some earlier reports suggested. In exchange, SpaceX will pay Grimes County a fixed $20 million a year for 35 years, a total of $710 million, which Brannon said exceeds the $14 million Tesla paid Travis County in 2025.
SpaceX also addressed environmental concerns that have followed the project since Musk’s Terafab partnership with Intel was announced. Representatives said Terafab will not raise electric bills for other ratepayers, will not deplete local water supplies and will not draw down the Navasota River. SpaceX confirmed it owns the Navasota River pumping station, which it plans to use to divert stormwater into the Gibbons Creek Reservoir, and said it will build its own natural gas plants to power the facility rather than pulling from the ERCOT grid.
Grimes County commissioners also approved an addendum letting county employees use ten approved AI chatbots for work, including Grok.
Elon Musk has declared that SpaceX has effectively solved one of Starship’s most persistent engineering challenges: the reliability of its heat shield tiles.
During the company’s first-ever Earnings Call, the SpaceX CEO stated:
“I don’t want to jinx it or anything, but I think I would call the heat shield problem solved at this point. All indications from data and visual inspection is we have solved it. That doesn’t mean we won’t make improvements, but we do not see any technical obstacles to achieving rapid reusability at this point.”
Starship’s heat shield consists of roughly 18,000 hexagonal ceramic tiles covering the windward side of the upper stage. These tiles form the thermal protection system that shields the vehicle’s stainless-steel structure from the extreme heat of atmospheric reentry.
Elon says he believes the heat shield problem with Starship is currently solved.
He called it “arguably the single biggest problem” pic.twitter.com/eEE9vM5zlz
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 4, 2026
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During descent, atmospheric friction generates temperatures exceeding several thousand degrees Celsius and creates plasma flows capable of melting unprotected metal. The tiles absorb, radiate, and insulate against this energy, allowing the vehicle to survive and potentially fly again. Without a durable heat shield, full and rapid reusability, the cornerstone of Starship’s design for frequent launches, satellite deployments, and deep-space missions, would remain impossible.
The tiles have long been a source of difficulty. On earlier test flights, a significant number of tiles detached during ascent due to vibration, aerodynamic loads, and imperfect attachment methods using pins and adhesives. Gaps between tiles allowed hot plasma to infiltrate, causing secondary damage and hot spots on the underlying structure.
These issues echoed challenges faced by NASA’s Space Shuttle, whose ceramic tiles required extensive, labor-intensive inspections and replacements between missions, preventing rapid turnaround. SpaceX has iteratively improved materials, standardized tile shapes, refined attachment techniques, added secondary ablative layers, and tested sealing methods such as “crunch wrap” felt to close gaps.
Progress was visible across Flights 10–12, with steadily better tile retention, yet questions remained about whether the system could support the minimal-refurbishment goal of rapid reuse.
Flight 13 on July 24 provided the decisive evidence. Ship 40 flew a deliberately more demanding profile with higher dynamic pressure to stress the heat shield beyond typical operational loads. It successfully deployed 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites, the first such payload on a Starship mission, performed an in-space Raptor engine relight, and executed a controlled reentry.
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
Cameras on six of the satellites and onboard sensors captured extensive imagery and data of the shield throughout the flight. The ship then achieved its softest splashdown to date in the Indian Ocean, remaining intact and floating rather than breaking apart or exploding as on prior missions. This allowed drone inspections and continuous telemetry of the heat shield in near-real time.
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Post-flight analysis showed the majority of tiles remaining attached with only minor damage and limited plasma streaking at seams. Musk noted that the mission delivered “all the heat shield data we needed and then some.” Combined with visual inspections, these results underpinned his subsequent assessment that the core technical barriers to rapid reusability have been cleared. While refinements will continue, Flight 13 marked a pivotal step toward Starship’s operational future.
SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell outlined ambitious plans for Starlink Mobile during the company’s August 4 Earnings call, signaling a direct challenge to U.S. wireless giants like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
Shotwell noted that the three companies generate roughly $600 billion in combined annual revenue. “I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better,” she said. “We will eliminate dead zones leveraging the satellites in orbit. It will be better during any natural disaster… I’m quite excited about Starlink Mobile.”
SpaceX President & COO Gwynne Shotwell on @Starlink Mobile and its impact on Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile:
“Roughly, between them, $600 billion a year. I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers. Our service will be better. We will eliminate dead zones… pic.twitter.com/UYZUkrGc0L
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 4, 2026
SpaceX intends to combine its satellite constellation with terrestrial infrastructure. The company has acquired about 65 MHz of spectrum from EchoStar and plans to deploy next-generation Starlink Mobile satellites in 2027, with upgraded service targeted for the end of that year.
Shotwell described the enhanced network, leveraging more satellites and spectrum, as potentially “100 times better” than the current direct-to-cell offering, which already supports basic texting and app-based voice/video in coverage gaps through partnerships. She also indicated plans for low-cost cellular base stations that could integrate with existing Starlink dishes, creating a hybrid system for broader capacity in urban, suburban, and rural areas.
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For the general public, Starlink Mobile promises significant advantages. Satellite connectivity can fill gaps where traditional cell towers fail, delivering service in remote locations, mountains, or during outages caused by storms, wildfires, or infrastructure damage—conditions in which ground networks often collapse.
Users could enjoy more consistent coverage without relying solely on dense tower builds, potentially at competitive prices as SpaceX scales. The hybrid approach aims to support full mobile services, including higher-speed data, while working with unmodified smartphones over time.
These developments revive long-standing but unfounded rumors of a Musk-developed “Tesla phone.” Speculative claims of a “Pi Phone” or similar device with built-in Starlink connectivity have circulated for years on social media, often featuring fabricated images and details. Elon Musk has repeatedly denied any such plans, stating Tesla has no intention of entering the smartphone market unless forced by extreme circumstances with app stores.
No official product, filings, or development announcements have ever materialized; the rumors remain hoaxes.
The announcement quickly pressured telecom stocks. Shares of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile fell between roughly 2 and 4 percent in after-hours and premarket trading as investors weighed the competitive threat from a hybrid satellite-terrestrial network.
While execution challenges remain—spectrum deployment, infrastructure rollout, and regulatory hurdles—Shotwell’s remarks mark SpaceX’s clearest signal yet of entering the consumer mobile market as a full competitor.
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Space finally faced the people living next to its next Terafab mega-project
SpaceX has solved Starship’s biggest challenge, Elon Musk says
