News
SpaceX firms up Falcon 9’s busy January launch plans
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has rolled out to Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A ahead of the company’s third Falcon 9 launch this month as plans for another two missions – for a total of five – have crystallized.
A Spaceflight Now webcam captured the unknown flight-proven Falcon 9 booster leaving Pad 39A’s main integration hangar with a new upper stage and payload fairing filled with 49 satellites on January 16th. Weighing around 14.5 tons (~32,000 lb), those 49 spacecraft make up SpaceX’s Starlink 4-6 mission, which will continue the deployment of “Group 4” – the second of two shells of 1584 satellites that make up two-thirds of the initial 4408-satellite constellation. SpaceX remains on track to launch Starlink 4-6 no earlier than (NET) 7:26 pm EST or 9:24 pm EST on Monday, January 17th (00:26/02:24 UTC 18 Jan).
Drone ship A Shortfall Of Gravitas (ASOG) departed Port Canaveral for the booster recovery portion of Starlink 4-6 in the middle of Falcon 9’s January 13th Transporter-3 launch and landing. Due to damage drone ship Just Read The Instructions’ (JRTI) “Octagrabber” booster recovery robot suffered late last year, SpaceX appears to be prioritizing ASOG’s use for the moment, making the company’s plans for five launches this month even harder to achieve.
In fact, there’s a good chance that if SpaceX does manage five launches this month, it will have only been possible because two of those launches allowed Falcon 9 to perform a return-to-launch-site (RTLS) landing, foregoing the need for the simultaneous operation of both East Coast drone ships. The first, Transporter-3, was completed without issue on January 13th. After Starlink 4-6, SpaceX is scheduled to launch the Italian Space Agency’s CSG-2 Earth observation satellite NET ~6pm EST (23:00 UTC), January 27th. The spacecraft is light enough and headed to a low enough orbit to enable another RTLS Falcon 9 booster landing.
Thanks to the rare presence of two RTLS launches in one month, SpaceX should be able to turn drone ship ASOG around after Starlink 4-6 and attempt to launch another batch of Starlink satellites – Starlink 4-7 – NET January 29th. Barring delays, that means that SpaceX has a good chance of completing five launches in January 2022. SpaceX launched five Falcon rockets in one month for the first time ever in December 2021, so repeating that feat the very next month would be an impressive achievement and good reason to believe that SpaceX might actually be able to launch 40, 50, or even 60 times in 2022.
News
Anti-Tesla union leader ditches X, urges use of Threads instead
Tesla Sweden and IF Metall have been engaged in a bitter dispute for over two years now.Â
Marie Nilsson, chair of Swedenâs IF Metall union and a prominent critic of Tesla, has left X and is urging audiences to follow the union on Metaâs Threads instead.
Tesla Sweden and IF Metall have been engaged in a bitter dispute for over two years now.
Anti-Tesla union leader exits X
In a comment to Dagens Arbete (DA), Nilsson noted that her exit from X is not formally tied to IF Metallâs long-running labor dispute with Tesla Sweden. Still, she stated that her departure is affected by changes to the platform under Elon Muskâs leadership.
âWe have stayed because many journalists pick up news there. But as more and more people have left X, we have felt that the standard has now been reached on that platform,â she said.
Jesper Pettersson, press officer at IF Metall, highlighted that the unionâs departure from X is only indirectly linked to Tesla Sweden and Elon Musk. âIndirectly it does, since there is a lot of evidence that his ownership has caused the change in the platform to be so significant.Â
âWe have nevertheless assessed that the platform had value for reaching journalists, politicians and other opinion leaders. But it is a microscopic proportion of the public and our members who are there, and now that value has decreased,â Petterson added.
IF Metall sees Threads as an X alternative
After leaving X, IF Metall has begun using Threads, Metaâs alternative to the social media platform. The union described the move as experimental, noting that it is still evaluating how effective the platform will be for outreach and visibility.
Pettersson acknowledged that Meta also does not operate under Swedenâs collective bargaining model, but said the union sees little alternative if it wants to remain visible online.
âIn a perfect world, all large international companies would be supporters of the Swedish model when they come here. But unfortunately, the reality is not like that. If we are to be visible at all in this social media world, we have to play by the rules of the game. The alternative would be to become completely invisible, and that would not benefit our members,â he said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk confirms SpaceX is not developing a phone
Despite many recent rumors and various reports, Elon Musk confirmed today that SpaceX is not developing a phone based on Starlink, not once, but twice.
Today’s report from Reuters cited people familiar with the matter and stated internal discussions have seen SpaceX executives mulling the idea of building a mobile device that would connect directly to the Starlink satellite constellation.
Musk did state in late January that SpaceX developing a phone was “not out of the question at some point.” However, He also said it would have to be a major difference from current phones, and would be optimized “purely for running max performance/watt neural nets.”
Not out of the question at some point. It would be a very different device than current phones. Optimized purely for running max performance/watt neural nets.
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 30, 2026
While Musk said it was not out of the question “at some point,” that does not mean it is currently a project SpaceX is working on. The CEO reaffirmed this point twice on X this afternoon.
Musk said, “Reuters lies relentlessly,” in one post. In the next, he explicitly stated, “We are not developing a phone.”
Reuters lies relentlessly
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026
We are not developing a phone
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026
Musk has basically always maintained that SpaceX has too many things going on, denying that a phone would be in the realm of upcoming projects. There are too many things in the works for Musk’s space exploration company, most notably the recent merger with xAI.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
A Starlink phone would be an excellent idea, especially considering that SpaceX operates 9,500 satellites, serving over 9 million users worldwide. 650 of those satellites are dedicated to the company’s direct-to-device initiative, which provides cellular coverage on a global scale.
Nevertheless, there is the potential that the Starlink phone eventually become a project SpaceX works on. However, it is not currently in the scope of what the company needs to develop, so things are more focused on that as of right now.
News
Tesla adds notable improvement to Dashcam feature
Tesla has added a notable improvement to its Dashcam feature after complaints from owners have pushed the company to make a drastic change.
Perhaps one of the biggest frustrations that Tesla owners have communicated regarding the Dashcam feature is the lack of ability to retain any more than 60 minutes of driving footage before it is overwritten.
It does not matter what size USB jump drive is plugged into the vehicle. 60 minutes is all it will hold until new footage takes over the old. This can cause some issues, especially if you were saving an impressive clip of Full Self-Driving or an incident on the road, which could be lost if new footage was recorded.
This has now been changed, as Tesla has shown in the Release Notes for an upcoming Software Update in China. It will likely expand to the U.S. market in the coming weeks, and was first noticed by NotaTeslaApp.
The release notes state:
“Dashcam Dynamic Recording Duration – The dashcam dynamically adjusts the recording duration based on the available storage capacity of the connected USB drive. For example, with a 128 GB USB drive, the maximum recording duration is approximately 3 hours; with a 1 TB or larger USB drive, it can reach up to 24 hours. This ensures that as much video as possible is retained for review before it gets overwritten.”
Tesla Adds Dynamic Recording
Instead of having a 60-minute cap, the new system will now go off the memory in the USB drive. This means with:
- 128 GB Jump Drive – Up to Three Hours of Rolling Footage
- 1TB Jump Drive – Up to 24 Hours of Rolling Footage
This is dependent on the amount of storage available on the jump drive, meaning that if there are other things saved on it, it will take away from the amount of footage that can be retained.
While the feature is just now making its way to employees in China, it will likely be at least several weeks before it makes its way to the U.S., but owners should definitely expect it in the coming months.
It will be a welcome feature, especially as there will now be more customization to the number of clips and their duration that can be stored.