News
SpaceX Falcon 9 “Block 5” next-gen reusable rocket spied in Texas test site
SpaceX’s next and final generation of Falcon rockets is nearly ready to complete its biggest milestone yet, second only to operational launch. Known as Falcon 9 Block 5, the upgraded booster arrived at SpaceX’s McGregor, TX test facilities and went vertical on the static fire test stand.
Now vertical, that first integrated static fire is likely to occur within a handful of days at most. Once complete, assuming the data it produces do not betray any bugs or serious problems, the booster will be brought horizontal and transported to one of SpaceX’s three launch facilities for its first operational mission.
Why Block 5?
With nary a hint of hyperbole, it’s safe to say that Falcon 9 Block 5 will be the most significant piece of hardware ever developed and fielded by SpaceX. The reason lies in many of the changes and upgrades present in this newest iteration of the rocket. While Falcon 9 B5 and its similarly upgraded Merlin 1D engines include design changes intended to satisfy NASA requirements before SpaceX can be certified to launch humans, the brunt of the upgrades are laser-focused on ease and speed of reusability.
-
- SpaceX Block 5 Falcon9 at McGregor, Texas [Credit: Chris G – NSF via Twitter, Reprinted with permission from NASASpaceflight.com]
-
- SpaceX Block 5 Falcon9 at McGregor, Texas [Credit: Chris G – NSF via Twitter, Reprinted with permission from NASASpaceflight.com]
-
- SpaceX Block 5 Falcon9 at McGregor, Texas [Credit: Chris G – NSF via Twitter, Reprinted with permission from NASASpaceflight.com]
Photo courtesy of Chris G at nasaspaceflight.com via Twitter. Reprinted with permission.
The goal with those upgrades, as publicly stated by numerous SpaceX executives, is to enable as many as 10 flights with a bare minimum of refurbishment and 100 or more launches with intermittent maintenance. To achieve those titanic aspirations, SpaceX has gathered a flood of data and experience earned through the recovery of nearly 20 Falcon 9 and Heavy boosters, as well as the successful reflight and second recovery of several of those same boosters. With that data in hand, the company’s launch vehicle engineers optimized and upgraded the rocket’s design to combat the worst of the extreme forces each booster is subjected to while returning to land (or sea).
-
- Falcon Heavy side booster B1025 gives a sense of the sheer brutality of reentry conditions. (Tom Cross)
-
- Note the pieces of cork that have been torn off by the buffeting and heat on the lefthand side. (Tom Cross)
-
- An incredibly detail shot of the side of the octaweb. The large chunk of smooth metal in the center is actually one of the booster’s connection points to the Falcon Heavy center core. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)
-
- A beautiful capture of one of the booster’s nine Merlin engines, showing off the pipe used to cool the engine bell, as well as the ceramic blanket that protects its more sensitive plumbing. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)
As evidenced by photos taken by Gary Blair, one of NASASpaceflight.com‘s most renowned L2 forum contributors, many of the visible differences between Block 5 and previous versions of Falcon 9 are a result of drastically improved and expanded heat shielding of its most sensitive and crucial components. While Falcon 9 B5’s black sections by all appearances look like naked carbon fiber composite, they are likely to be coated with an incredibly heat-resistant material known a Pyron. Portions of the booster that suffer from incidental scorching and extreme heating (aside from the octaweb) appear to have been treated with this material, including a pathway down the side of the rocket known as a raceway. The raceway is a protective enclosure for a variety of cabling and piping, essentially the rocket’s nervous system as well as the home of several the cold gas thrusters it uses to orient itself outside of Earth’s atmosphere.
In the past, SpaceX has used high-quality cork as a quasi-ablative thermal protection system for those same components, including the payload fairing. A major downside of cork, however, is that it is very ablative and tends to come off rather haphazardly in large chunks, all of which must either be spot-fixed or replaced entirely before a booster reflight. By replacing that cork with Pyron or a similar internally-developed material, those sensitive Falcon components may be almost totally insulated from and resistant to temperatures as high as 2300 °F (1200 °C)
-
- Block 5 looks similar to this Falcon 9, but with a deep black interstage and a black enclosure instead of the white covering seen running down the left side of the booster. (SpaceX)
Titanium grid fins are another central feature of Block 5, acting as a near-indefinitely reusable replacement for the aluminum grid fins SpaceX has traditionally used. Put through a huge amount of heating during reentry; aluminum grid fins have famously appeared to partially melt during some of the hottest booster recovery attempts. Titanium, a metal with a much higher melting point, will have no such problems, does not need ablative white paint, and certainly appear all but untouched by reentry in the cases of both their June 2017 debut and second flight on Falcon Heavy’s side boosters.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, is the octaweb – the assembly at the base of Falcon 9 responsible for safely transmitting nearly two million pounds of thrust from its nine Merlin 1Ds to the rest of the rocket’s structure, while also taking the brunt of the heat of reentry. Before Block 5, the octaweb was protected from that heating with an ablative thermal protection system, likely around 80% cork and 20% PICA-X, the same material used on Cargo Dragon’s heat shield. Based on comments made privately by individuals familiar with SpaceX, that ablative shielding is to be replaced by a highly heat-resistant metal alloy known as inconel. By ridding Block 5 of ablative heat shielding, SpaceX will no longer have to carefully examine and replace those materials after each launch, removing one of the biggest refurbishment time-sinks.
Titanium grid fins complete the highly reusable changes to Block 5 of Falcon 9. (NASA)
Combined, these various upgrades are intended to enable Falcon 9’s first stage to be reused almost effortlessly compared to previous iterations. With this vehicle, including the reusable fairing debuted on the launch of PAZ, SpaceX may well be able to achieve Elon Musk’s famous goal of lowering the cost of launch by nearly an order of magnitude. While SpaceX will likely use that cost reduction to first recoup its considerable investments in reusability and Falcon Heavy, major price drops may reach customers soon after. This Falcon 9, in particular, is unlikely to launch for another month or so, but when it does, it is perhaps the biggest step SpaceX has yet taken on the path to routine, rapid, and affordable access to orbit.
Teslarati – Instagram – Twitter
Tom Cross – Twitter
Pauline Acalin – Twitter
Eric Ralph – Twitter
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
