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SpaceX Falcon 9 booster to launch for the 10th time on Wednesday

Falcon 9 B1058 is ready for its 10th launch. (Richard Angle)

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Update: SpaceX has confirmed reports that Falcon 9 B1058 will launch for the 10th time on Transporter-3, a rideshare mission carrying 100+ small satellites. Transporter-3’s 29-minute launch window opens at 10:25 am EST (15:25 UTC) on Wednesday, January 13th.

Barring delays, it will be both SpaceX and the world’s second orbital launch of the year – indicative of the company’s exceptionally busy 2022 launch manifest, which includes five Falcon launches in January alone.

(SpaceX)
(Richard Angle)

After a minor issue forced startup Virgin Orbit to delay an upcoming mission by 24 hours, SpaceX is now on track to conduct both the first and second orbital launches of 2022.

Earlier this week, Virgin Orbit was on track to attempt its fourth LauncherOne mission no earlier than (NET) Wednesday, January 12th – the world’s second orbital launch attempt of the year after SpaceX kicked off 2022 with a Starlink mission on January 6th. However, Virgin announced plans to take an extra day to ensure launch readiness, pushing the air-launched rocket’s next flight to the afternoon of Thursday, January 13th. It’s possible that SpaceX’s next launch will also be delayed, causing another schedule flip-flop, but the company’s third dedicated rideshare mission remains on track to lift off NET 10:25 am EST (15:25 UTC) on January 13th as of Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/VirginOrbit/status/1481043526221803532

According to the military branch responsible for operating the Cape Canaveral launch range, weather conditions for Falcon 9’s Transporter-3 launch were predicted to be 70% favorable on Thursday and 90% favorable for a backup window on Friday as of January 11th, boding well for the mission. Transporter-3 will be SpaceX’s first truly polar launch from Florida since Falcon 9 launched Transporter-2 on an almost identical trajectory in June 2021.

As a result, the rocket will hug the Florida coast for several minutes after liftoff, with the morning sun almost directly behind it to the east. Several minutes later, Falcon 9’s upper stage will overfly central Cuba – hopefully not hitting any beloved cows with rocket debris. Falcon 9’s payload fairing will splash down as few as ~50 miles off the coast of the island, where SpaceX ship Bob will fish both halves out of the ocean for reuse.

B1058 last launched on November 13th. Transporter-3 will be its second launch in two months. (Richard Angle)

According to SpaceExplored, booster B1058 will support the mission, making it the third Falcon 9 first stage to fly for the tenth time. The pool of competitors may be tiny but it’s still noteworthy that Falcon 9 B1058 will handily beat B1049 and B1051 when it launches for the tenth time in ~19 months. By comparison, B1049 and B1051 passed the same milestone 36 months and 26 months after their respective debuts.

Thanks to Transporter-3’s relatively light payload of approximately 80-100 small satellites, Falcon 9 B1058 will have the propellant margins needed to boost back to the Florida coast for a convenient landing at one of SpaceX’s Landing Zone pads, which sit less than six miles south of Launch Complex 40.

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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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Tesla is ending Cybertruck production

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Credit: diagnosticdennis/Instagram and @smile__no via Tesla Owners of Santa Clarita Valley/X

Tesla is ending Cybertruck production sometime in mid-2027, according to CEO Elon Musk.

Musk made the announcement on X last night, which came as a shock to many. He said that the Cybertruck will end production “to make room for increased Cybercab production” at Gigafactory Texas.

It is a huge blow to the fans of Tesla who have come to love the Cybertruck and identify with it as a symbol of their fandom. It has been the best-selling electric pickup, but it has had an underwhelming sales performance in terms of what was expected. This is mostly due to Tesla not meeting the prices it planned to offer the Cybertruck, as its unveiling and actual release were four years apart.

Overall, the responses were mixed. Some fans understood the move toward Cybercab production, especially as Tesla is truly pushing the autonomous future through its Robotaxi platform. However, others did not understand it.

“Damn, how many Cybercabs do you guys need?” one response read. Another said it was “Sad but understandable.”Even analyst Gary Black had responded to the news, stating he hoped Tesla planned to replace it with a traditional pickup design.

It doesn’t seem like that will be the case.

Tesla is so hell-bent on delivering autonomy and eventually providing a driverless service that owning a car seems like an arbitrary idea, according to their thesis. Instead, Cybercabs will be available to pick you up and drop you off on demand, safely, without any human help.

As a result, Tesla has thinned its lineup considerably, and one can only ask where the vehicle lineup goes from here. Eventually, it seems like Cybercab could be the only vehicle that Tesla will sell.

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SpaceX’s next Starship flight set to make history on Friday the 13th

SpaceX is targeting Friday, November 13 for Starship Flight 15 and its first ship catch.

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SpaceX is targeting Friday, November 13 for Starship Flight 15, the mission the company plans to use for its first attempt at catching the ship itself with the launch tower.

SpaceX Vice President of Launch Kiko Dontchev shared the date on stage at the UP.Summit on Thursday, according to Ars Technica’s Eric Berger, who was in attendance. It is the first launch target to come directly from a SpaceX executive. Until now, the public schedule had relied on FAA air traffic planning slides, which listed Flight 15 for no earlier than November 8 and later November 12. SpaceX has not posted an official mission page yet, and no launch time has been shared.

The date lands inside the window Elon Musk sketched out last month. Speaking at Giga Texas on October 10, Musk said the flight would “probably launch a little bit before Thanksgiving,” as Teslarati reported. On SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call ten days later, he confirmed that Flight 15 would try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the ship, and put the odds of a successful ship catch at “more likely than not.” SpaceX also aired an animation of the maneuver during that webcast, showing the ship swinging vertical over Starbase before dropping into the tower’s chopsticks.

The hardware is ready. Booster 22 fired all 33 of its Raptor engines for a full duration static fire at Pad 2 on October 25. Ship 42 followed with a single engine burn simulating a deorbit maneuver on October 26 and a 60 second firing of all six engines the next day, according to NASASpaceflight. Ship 42 had already rehearsed the catch in September, when the Pad 2 arms lifted it into position and crews connected the quick disconnect arm while the vehicle hung from the tower.

The remaining hurdle is regulatory. The FAA’s Starship page does not yet list a Flight 15 license. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in October that, after “significant constructive engagement with the FAA,” she expects the license to cover a return to the launch site and a tower catch for both stages. Bringing the ship home means a reentry path that heads toward land, rather than ending over open ocean as every Starship flight so far has.

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SpaceX has caught Super Heavy three times, on Flights 5, 7 and 8, but the ship comes back from orbital velocity and has never been caught. Flight 14 on September 28 was the first Starship to reach orbit, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites before splashing down despite an early engine shutdown that Musk blamed on engine computer software.

Musk has called a successful ship catch “the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket,” and he has already named the step after it: a Flight 16 where both the booster and the ship fly again. NASASpaceflight reports that Ship 43, the next vehicle in line, is set for static fire testing in December.

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EVgo taps Tesla Superchargers for mass charging expansion

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Credit: EVgo

EVgo has tapped Tesla Superchargers for its most recent efforts to expand its charging presence in the United States, a move that seems logical based on the effectiveness of the automaker’s own infrastructure.

EVgo opened its first Supercharger site in Illinois, a 12-stall station near downtown Chicago at 3145 South Ashland Avenue in the Riverside Square & River’s Edge center, right beside a grocery store. This marks the start of the company’s plan to deploy hundreds of Supercharger stalls across the United States, primarily at grocery-anchored Regency Centers properties where drivers can shop, eat, or run errands while they charge.

The new location uses Tesla’s Magic Dock technology so both NACS and CCS vehicles can plug in natively without drivers needing to carry their own adapters. Peak power reaches 325 kW at this site, with pricing set between $0.25 and $0.35 per kWh depending on the hour—the same rate for Tesla and non-Tesla drivers.

The stalls also appear in Tesla’s in-car navigation and Trip Planner, making them easy for Tesla owners to find and route to. Illinois has seen EV registrations rise nearly 60 percent over the past two years, and EVgo’s broader network has experienced more than 700 percent growth in charging demand over three years, so the timing fits the market’s trajectory.

Choosing Tesla hardware through the Supercharger for Business program turns out to have been a smart, practical move.

Tesla’s V4 stalls and cabinets deliver high, reliable power with a proven track record of strong uptime, while Magic Dock delivers true dual-standard compatibility in one package. Because the sites show up in Tesla’s navigation tools, EVgo instantly gains visibility among millions of existing Tesla drivers, which should raise utilization and help the company double its addressable market as more vehicles adopt NACS. EVgo still owns the stations and sets pricing, yet benefits from Tesla’s established hardware, longer cables, and operational support.

The result is faster, lower-risk infrastructure expansion that serves every EV driver—Tesla or otherwise—with convenient, high-power charging at everyday retail locations. For drivers, that means fewer adapters, more predictable stops, and a denser network just as electric vehicles become everyday transportation.

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