News
SpaceX set for third Starlink launch in a row [webcast]
Update: SpaceX says that a Falcon 9 rocket is on track Starlink 4-11 from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) no earlier than (NET) 9:12 am PST (17:12 UTC) on Friday, February 25th. The mission will be the third of five back-to-back Starlink launches planned in February and March 2022.
In lieu of commercial missions that are ready to fly, SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets are currently scheduled to launch at least five batches of Starlink satellites in a row.
The streak won’t break the company’s record of seven back-to-back Starlink launches but it does highlight one beneficial side-effect of SpaceX’s relentless pursuit of vertical integration – the ability to create its own launch demand. Just shy of two full months into 2022, SpaceX has launched seven times – three for paying customers and four for Starlink. Before February is over, the company is scheduled to launch at least one more batch of Starlink satellites for a total of eight launches in the first two months of the year.
Up next, SpaceX is scheduled to launch Starlink 4-11 out of its California-based Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) SLC-4E facilities no earlier than (NET) 9:08 am PST (17:08 UTC), Friday, February 25th. Drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) departed the Port of Long Beach for the mission on February 22nd and is headed around 640 kilometers (~400 mi) southeast to a booster landing area just off the coast of Baja California. Falcon 9 booster B1063 is scheduled to support the mission – its fourth launch overall and first since it helped launch NASA’s DART asteroid redirection spacecraft into interplanetary space in November 2021.
Up next, another Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch Starlink 4-9 as early as “mid-morning” EST on Thursday, March 3rd from its Kennedy Space Center LC-39A pad. Booster B1060 is reportedly scheduled to support the mission and will become the third SpaceX first stage to singlehandedly support eleven orbital-class launches if it does. Starlink 4-9 could be the pad’s last mission for a few weeks to give SpaceX enough time to convert its rocket transporter/erector for the March 30th launch of Axiom-1, which will send four private astronauts to the International Space Station.
Finally, SpaceX plans to launch Starlink 4-10 NET Tuesday, March 8th from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) Launch Complex 40 (LC-40). It’s likely that SpaceX will launch at least one more Starlink mission next month but a firm date has yet to be settled on. All told, including Starlink 4-7 (February 3rd) and Starlink 4-8 (February 21st), SpaceX is on track to launch at least five Starlink missions in a row, hopefully placing around 240 satellites (~200 after losing most of Starlink 4-7 to a “geomagnetic storm”) in orbit in less than five weeks.


More a sign of a lack of commercial missions ready for flight than anything else, SpaceX’s record for uninterrupted Starlink missions – set from February to April 2021 – is seven launches. Technically, SpaceX actually managed 12 Starlink launches between February and March, with just one commercial mission – Crew-2 – separating the lot. Barring surprises, SpaceX is thankfully unlikely to be hit by a similar streak in 2022.
There’s a chance that SpaceX will launch a batch of three O3B mPower satellites for SES next month. At a minimum, SpaceX is scheduled to launch a trio of Dragon missions over the next two or so months, beginning with Ax-1 NET March 30th. Another Crew Dragon is scheduled to launch Crew-4 for NASA on April 15th, followed by Cargo Dragon 2’s CRS-25 space station resupply mission as early as May 1st. Excluding Starlink missions and on top of the three commercial launches SpaceX has already completed this year, there are as many as 38 more commercial Falcon launches tentatively scheduled before the end of 2022.
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
News
Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s Elon Musk relieves worries about orbital data centers
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently confronted worries about orbital data centers and launching satellites in mass quantities in space, as some voiced concerns about crowding.
Musk’s SpaceX plans to combat the issue of needing data centers by launching them into space instead of taking up valuable real estate on Earth. It has been a major point of SpaceX’s future, including its looming IPO, which could be the largest ever.
In a recent interview filmed at SpaceX’s Starlink terminal factory in Bastrop, Texas, Elon Musk directly addressed concerns that deploying large numbers of AI satellites for orbital data centers could crowd Earth’s orbit. His message was straightforward and reassuring: space is vast beyond human intuition.
“Space is really big,” Musk said. “It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the Earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” He emphasized that even zooming in makes a satellite appear large, but from a planetary perspective, they are minuscule specks.
Elon on concerns that AI satellites will crowd space:
“Space is really big. It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” https://t.co/Mvr7NpL25Q pic.twitter.com/5Fi629Rii7
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 8, 2026
Musk pointed to SpaceX’s real-world experience operating roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites as evidence that large constellations can be managed safely. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of how to operate just really large constellations and do it safely,” he noted. SpaceX remains the only operator with meaningful experience at this scale, giving the company unique insight into tight orbital packing without compromising safety
The discussion highlighted SpaceX’s plans for “AI1” satellites—essentially orbiting racks of AI compute powered by massive solar arrays and cooled via radiative panels in space’s vacuum.
These satellites leverage proven Starlink V3 technology, making them simpler to design than communications satellites. A first-generation unit targets around 150 kW peak power, with a 70-meter wingspan for solar panels and radiators. Laser links will connect them to each other and the Starlink network, delivering low-latency access (on the order of a few milliseconds from low-Earth orbit).
FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan
Musk framed orbital data centers as a practical solution to Earth’s constraints on AI growth. Ground-based facilities face power shortages, water demands for cooling, and grid limitations. In space, constant sunlight (no day-night cycle), vacuum radiative cooling, and abundant solar energy offer clear advantages.
Production will ramp up at an expanded “Gigasat” factory in Bastrop, with solar manufacturing already underway and full AI satellite output expected at reasonable volume by the end of 2027. Starship’s rapid, high-volume launch capability, aiming for multiple flights per hour, will make massive deployment feasible.
Critics sometimes raise risks like space debris or Kessler syndrome, but Musk’s response underscores scale: even a million satellites would represent an imperceptible fraction of available orbital volume when viewed against Earth’s size. SpaceX’s automated collision avoidance and deorbiting designs for Starlink further mitigate concerns.
This vision ties into broader ambitions. Musk sees orbital AI compute as a step toward harnessing more of the Sun’s energy, advancing humanity on the Kardashev scale from a Type 0 civilization toward Type 1 and eventually Type 2. By moving power-hungry data centers off-planet, SpaceX aims to unlock orders-of-magnitude more compute while preserving Earth’s resources.
Musk’s comments should ease public anxiety. With proven operational expertise, incremental engineering, and the immensity of space itself, orbital data centers represent not overcrowding, but smart expansion into the final frontier.