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SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 ready to launch second largest communications satellite

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Falcon 9’s liftoff is scheduled tonight, 11:38 PM EDT/03:38 UTC

After a long slip and slide from mid-August to September 9th, SpaceX and customer Telesat Canada are ready to launch the second largest communications satellite to a geostationary transfer orbit, Telstar 18V, following in the footsteps of a July 2018 launch of the slightly heavier (~15 kg) Telstar 19V satellite.

 

https://twitter.com/_TomCross_/status/1038953464250986497

Originally expected to occur as little as a month after Telstar 19V (launched July 22nd), Telstar 18V experienced a number of somewhat mysterious slips, moving from the third week of August to the end of August, then slipping again from September 8th to September 9th, today. Publicly, it’s entirely unclear what caused that unusual three-week delay, but the obvious answers revolve around some combination of multiple problems with the launch pad (LC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station), rocket (B1049, a new Falcon 9 Block 5 vehicle), payload (a vast, 7060-kilogram spacecraft), and more.

Ultimately, there is simply a lot that can go wrong with the rocket itself and the vast swath of infrastructure that must work near-flawlessly, in concert, if a launch is to even be attempted, let alone be completed successfully. It may be rather frustrating as a follower (or raving addict) of rocket launches and SpaceX in particular, but it never hurts to remember that being able to watch an official livestream at all is an absolute privilege and not something that SpaceX or any other rocket company is required to provide. The purpose of SpaceX’s present-day business is business, after all, and successfully placing customer payloads (be that customer NASA, the USAF, or a commercial entity like Telesat) is the name of that game – quite literally everything after that comes in a firm second place.

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Like it’s 7076 kg Telstar 19V customer, launched in late July atop another SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Telstar 18V is nearly identical, although the satellite will wind up being placed in a different orbit to serve entirely different markets – 19V is focused on the Western Hemisphere while 18V is primarily dedicated to the Eastern Hemisphere, particularly Southern Asia.

Falcon 9 B1049 and a Falcon 9 upper stage – both fresh off the assembly line and Texas acceptance testing – will launch the satellite, likely to a relatively low geostationary transfer orbit like Telstar 19V. That lower elliptical orbit will require the satellite to bring along and use more of its own propellant to reach its final orbit, but the lower energy required from Falcon 9 means that the rocket preserves the propellant margins necessary to attempt a landing aboard drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, currently stationed several hundred miles off the coast of Florida.

The launch will be streamed live as per SpaceX tradition, and the link to that webcast can be found below.

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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!

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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These Tesla, X, and xAI engineers were just poached by OpenAI

The news is the latest in an ongoing feud between Elon Musk and the Sam Altman-run firm OpenAI.

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Credit: OpenAI | YouTube

OpenAI, the xAI competitor for which Elon Musk previously served as a boardmember and helped to co-found, has reportedly poached high-level engineers from Tesla, along with others from xAI, X, and still others.

On Tuesday, Wired reported that OpenAI hired four high-level engineers from Tesla, xAI, and X, as seen in an internal Slack message sent by co-founder Greg Brockman. The engineers include Tesla Vice President of Software Engineering David Lau, X and xAI’s head of infrastructure engineering Uday Ruddarraju, and fellow xAI infrastructure engineer Mike Dalton. The hiring spree also included Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta.

“We’re excited to welcome these new members to our scaling team,” said Hannah Wong, an OpenAI spokesperson. “Our approach is to continue building and bringing together world-class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission and deliver the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions of people.”

Lau has been in his position as Tesla’s VP of Software Engineering since 2017, after previously working for the company’s firmware, platforms, and system integration divisions.

“It has become incredibly clear to me that accelerating progress towards safe, well-aligned artificial general intelligence is the most rewarding mission I could imagine for the next chapter of my career,” Lau said in a statement to Wired.

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READ MORE ON OPENAI: Elon Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit clears hurdle as trial looms

At xAI, Ruddarraju and Dalton both played a large role in developing the Colossus supercomputer, which is comprised of over 200,000 GPUs. One of the major ongoing projects at OpenAI is the company’s Stargate program,

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“Infrastructure is where research meets reality, and OpenAI has already demonstrated this successfully,” Ruddarraju told Wired in another statement. “Stargate, in particular, is an infrastructure moonshot that perfectly matches the ambitious, systems-level challenges I love taking on.”

Elon Musk is currently in the process of suing OpenAI for shifting toward a for-profit model, as well as for accepting an investment of billions of dollars from Microsoft. OpenAI retaliated with a counterlawsuit, in which it alleges that Musk is interfering with the company’s business and engaging in unfair competition practices.

Elon Musk confirms Grok 4 launch on July 9 with livestream event

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SpaceX share sale expected to back $400 billion valuation

The new SpaceX valuation would represent yet another record-high as far as privately-held companies in the U.S. go.

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A new report this week suggests that Elon Musk-led rocket company SpaceX is considering an insider share sale that would value the company at $400 billion.

SpaceX is set to launch a primary fundraising round and sell a small number of new shares to investors, according to the report from Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous due to the information not yet being public. Additionally, the company would sell shares from employees and early investors in a follow-up round, while the primary round would determine the price for the secondary round.

The valuation would represent the largest in history from a privately-owned company in the U.S., surpassing SpaceX’s previous record of $350 billion after a share buyback in December. Rivaling company valuations include ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as well as OpenAI.

Bloomberg went on to say that a SpaceX representative didn’t respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing. The publication also notes that the details of such a deal could still change, especially depending on interest from the insider sellers and share buyers.

READ MORE ON SPACEX: SpaceX to decommission Dragon spacecraft in response to Pres. Trump war of words with Elon Musk

SpaceX’s valuation comes from a few different key factors, especially including the continued expansion of the company’s Starlink satellite internet company. According to the report, Starlink accounts for over half of the company’s yearly revenue. Meanwhile, the company produced its 10 millionth Starlink kit last month.

The company also continues to develop its Starship reusable rocket program, despite the company experiencing an explosion of the rocket on the test stand in Texas last month.

The company has also launched payloads for a number of companies and government contracts. In recent weeks, SpaceX launched Axiom’s Ax-4 mission, sending four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for a 14-day stay to work on around 60 scientific experiments. The mission was launched using the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a new Crew Dragon capsule, while the research is expected to span a range of fields including biology, material and physical sciences, and demonstrations of specialized technology.

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SpaceX secures FAA approval for 25 annual Starship launches

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Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings

Tesla sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab components around the Giga Texas complex.

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Credit: @JoeTegtmeyer/X

Tesla may be extremely tight-lipped about the new affordable models that it was expected to start producing in the first half of the year, but the company sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab castings around the Giga Texas complex. This is, at least, as per recent images taken of the facility. 

Cybercab castings galore

As per longtime drone operator Joe Tegtmeyer, who has been chronicling the developments around the Giga Texas complex for several years now, the electric vehicle maker seems to be gathering hundreds of Cybercab castings around the factory. 

Based on observations from industry watchers, the drone operator appears to have captured images of about 180 front and 180 rear Cybercab castings in his recent photos.

Considering the number of castings that were spotted around Giga Texas, it would appear that Tesla may indeed be preparing for the vehicle’s start of trial production sometime later this year. Interestingly enough, large numbers of Cybercab castings have been spotted around the Giga Texas complex in the past few months.

Cybercab production

The Cybercab is expected to be Tesla’s first vehicle that will adopt the company’s “unboxed” process. As per Tesla’s previous update letters, volume production of the Cybercab should start in 2026. So far, prototypes of the Cybercab have been spotted testing around Giga Texas, and expectations are high that the vehicle’s initial trial production should start this year. 

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With the start of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi service around Austin, it might only be a matter of time before the Cybercab starts being tested on public roads as well. When this happens, it would be very difficult to deny the fact that Tesla really does have a safe, working autonomous driving system, and it has the perfect vehicle for it, too.

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