SpaceX
SpaceX plans Falcon 9 satellite launch from Pad 39A prior to Crew Dragon, Falcon Heavy
SpaceX plans to launch one final commercial Falcon 9 mission from Pad 39A before much of the historic facility’s availability is taken over Crew Dragon and Falcon Heavy launch needs, perhaps as soon as December 2018.
The reason for the decision to launch a routine Falcon 9 mission from 39A – while Launch Complex-40 (LC-40) is (presumably) perfectly available – is unknown, but it can likely be pinned down to launch schedule assurance and pad shakedowns ahead of the flight debut of Crew Dragon, NET January 2019.
SpaceX Falcon 9 launch with Es’hail-2 has turned up on the Eastern Range as NET November 14. This launch will take place from 39A. Cool photo from Nathan Barker (@NASA_Nerd) from this week below:
Range shows this is an ASDS landing for the booster.
As always, subject to change. pic.twitter.com/yydKuOVXrP
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) October 17, 2018
Dragons’ rule
Ultimately, the decision to move the launch of commercial communications satellite Es’Hail-2 to Pad 39A likely boils down to a desire to preserve the delay-sensitive CRS-16 Cargo Dragon launch (NET November 27) while also acting as a sort of ad-hoc shakedown for the pad. 39A has undergone a large number of Crew Dragon-related modifications – some visible but most not – and will have been dormant (at least launch-wise) since Falcon 9 Block 5’s debut six months prior.
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Whether or not it’s truly needed, another Falcon 9 launch from the pad will presumably allow SpaceX to work out any new kinks in 39A’s updated ground support infrastructure and perhaps refamiliarize the company’s East Coast launch crew after half a year focused on LC-40 operations. Es’Hail-2 is a ~3000 kg (~6600 lb) geostationary communications satellite to be operated by Qatari company Es’hailSat once it arrives at its final operational orbit.
Despite a recent presentation from SpaceX VP of Reliability Hans Koenigsmann stating that Falcon 9 is capable of returning to launch site (RTLS; i.e. a Landing Zone recovery) while still placing 3500 kg into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), SpaceX has filed this launch as an ASDS (autonomous spaceport drone ship) recovery, meaning that it will land aboard Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) shortly after launch. Delayed from August 2018, SpaceX may be trying to partially make up for that slip by placing Es’Hail-2 sat in as high of a transfer orbit as possible, potentially cutting weeks or even months off of the time required for the satellite to climb uphill to its operational orbit.
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- A welcome update to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Heavy performance with and without booster recovery. (SpaceX)
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- SpaceX’s most recent Florida launch was in early September. (Tom Cross)
An East Coast lull
Unusual for SpaceX in an otherwise meteoric year filled with numerous major ‘firsts’ and the company’s most productive launch cadence yet, there will be a two-month lull in launches from the East Coast between Telstar 18V (September 10) and Es’Hail-2 (NET November 14), interrupted only by the spectacular October 7 launch of SAOCOM 1A in California. Barring any additional issues, SpaceX will likely crest its 2017 launch record (18 missions) by 3 or 4 missions, not quite the 25-30 launches much of the company’s leadership was probably hoping for, but still an extremely impressive number.
Despite the fact that launch delays are never pleasant (much like if Christmas were pushed back weeks or months to wait for sleigh and present availability), the willingness to significantly delay launches or fall short of targets (assuming payload availability has not been the long pole) is actually a very good thing. Within reason, inconvenient delays tend to serve as evidence that SpaceX is not succumbing to quite the same level of “Go fever” and manager/engineer/technician disconnection that has arguably been responsible for a huge number of launch failures, particularly for NASA’s Space Shuttle.
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- SpaceX has already launched 17 successful missions in 2018, one shy of 2017’s record.
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- Plenty of landings, too…
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- The second Block 5 booster, B1047, debuted at LC-40 on July 21. (Tom Cross)
Best described as the point at which non-technical pressures to launch (cost-saving, internal and external politics, general face-saving) far outweigh the voices of the engineers and technicians responsible for reliably designing, building, and launching rockets, “Go fever” is demonstrably one of the worst things that can occur in spaceflight-oriented organizations, where the consequences of even the tiniest failures can often be amplified into total mission and vehicle failures and even the death of employees or astronauts. It may be unpleasant as an unaffiliated follower or fan and is likely far less pleasant still as an employee or manager, but it is undeniably preferable to succeed after weeks or months of delays than to fail catastrophically while staying on schedule.
Speaking of schedules, Es’Hail-2 (39A) is NET Nov. 14, followed by SSO-A (SLC-4E, Vandenberg) NET Nov. 19 and SpaceX’s 16th operational ISS resupply mission – CRS-16 – on Nov. 27th from Pad 40. Heading into the last month of 2018, SpaceX will launch the first of a fleet of new GPS III satellites for the USAF (NET Dec. 15) and finish off the year with a Vandenberg buzzer-beater, the eighth and final Iridium NEXT launch, NET Dec. 30.
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Elon Musk’s massive Terafab project, which will be the first true conglomeration between each of his major entities, is set to get its final location soon, the CEO said on Tesla’s recent earnings call.
“The Terafab, we expect to announce a location soon, and provide more details about our plans in that regard. We’ll leave that to the product, the launch announcement rather than try to squeeze it into an earnings call,” Musk said last Wednesday.
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Terafab was announced by Musk back in March and was essentially a massive, vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing project that would provide all the chips the three companies needed for their AI initiatives without needing third-party companies.
The plant will produce over 1 terawatt of AI compute each year, and will help back up projects like Optimus, Full Self-Driving, and other AI-based projects that Musk’s companies are working on.
In April, less than a month after the project was launched, Intel announced it would join the project, contributing manufacturing expertise and consulting to Terafab as a whole. Intel is one of three chip manufacturers that produce sub-5 nanometer chips at scale. TSMC and Samsung are the other two.
However, there was no true indication of where Terafab would end up, but most believe it will likely be somewhere in Texas. Business Insider has reported that SpaceX plans to build out Terafab in Grimes County, Texas, but this is unconfirmed.
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Musk confirmed recently that it would not be on Giga Texas property, as it is simply too large.
The sheer scale of TERAFAB is going to be insane.
Elon said it wouldn’t be suitable for anywhere on Giga Texas property because it’s too big:
“We couldn’t possibly fit the Terafab on the GigaTexas campus. It will be far bigger than everything else combined there.
Several… pic.twitter.com/79GbhNNuf4
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 23, 2026
Terafab holds much of Musk’s grand ambitions for the future within its construct. It holds so much responsibility for the future and the biggest projects that Musk’s companies can imagine.
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“I think this is a very big announcement and it deserves to have its own day in the spotlight and not be squeezed into an earnings call,” he said. “I do think Terafab is going to be an amazing initiative and a necessary one, and one without which we will be constrained in our ability to scale Optimus production, because we simply won’t have enough AI chips.”
He continued by stating that Terafab is necessary for scaling Optimus, which Musk said could be the biggest product of any kind of all time. “It’s crucial to solve that, and we’ll have to solve memory, logic, and packaging in order to scale Optimus.”
SpaceX performed a secret test on a specific portion of Starship with its recent 13th test flight last week, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
Starship’s 13th test flight took place last Friday, and in many aspects, it was one of the most overwhelmingly successful launches in the project’s history.
All of the mission objectives were met without incident, both the Super Heavy Booster and Ship managed to perform safe splashdowns in the Gulf of America and the Indian Ocean, respectively, and the deployment of Starlink satellites came and went without any complications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
However, there was more on the agenda for SpaceX with Flight 13. Musk revealed an internal test of the ship’s heat shield tiles, as the space exploration company wanted to push them to the limits after previous issues.
Many noticed that Starship’s initial launch seemed to be more accelerated than normal, and that was not a mistake. Musk revealed that SpaceX decided to give Flight 13 an intentionally aggressive acceleration rate in an effort to test how well the tiles would remain attached to the ship:
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This flight intentionally had much higher acceleration to test how well the heat shield tiles would remain attached at high dynamic pressure.
Test was successful.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
SpaceX had issues with some of the heat shield tiles remaining attached early on in the Starship program. The first six test flights presented some kind of anomaly with them, so the company’s big focus with them was to figure out a way to keep them intact through the duration of the flight.
Things truly improved as Flight 10 showed that ceramic tiles generally stayed attached to the ship far better due to refined attachment, as SpaceX utilized pins instead of adhesives. Flights 10 through 13 truly showed some clear progress with the heat shield tiles, and this latest test seems to be where some real progress was noticed, especially by Musk.
The 13th Starship launch last Friday was the second with Starship V3, SpaceX’s latest and greatest iteration of the spacecraft. Goals and ambitions are getting even grander as the project continues to progress. Musk has already hinted that SpaceX will likely try to catch Starship with Flight 14.
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Just hours after Starship Flight 13 achieved a successful soft splashdown of its upper stage in the Indian Ocean on July 24, Elon Musk announced an ambitious next step for the company’s next launch of the rocket.
“Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on [the] next flight,” the SpaceX CEO posted on X on Friday.
That “next flight” is expected to be Flight 14. The plan involves returning the Starship upper stage, commonly called the “ship,” to the Starbase launch tower in Texas and catching it mid-air using the same mechanical “chopsticks” arms that have already proven themselves with the Super Heavy booster.
Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
A successful catch would mark the first time an orbital-class upper stage has been recovered this way, advancing SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability for the entire vehicle.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower-catch technique multiple times with Super Heavy. The first successful catch came on Flight 5 in October 2024, when Booster 12 was plucked from the sky by the Mechazilla arms. Subsequent flights, including those involving Boosters 14 and 15, repeated the feat. Several of those recovered boosters were later inspected, refurbished, and flown again, proving the system’s viability for quick turnaround.
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Traditional reusable rockets, such as SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 or Blue Origin’s New Shepard, land on legs either on land or droneships. Rocket Lab has recovered its small Electron first stages by helicopter, but those are far lighter vehicles.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), completed a catch of its booster on July 10. They are the only entity besides SpaceX to attempt and complete the feat.
Flight 13 provided encouraging data. The ship executed a controlled reentry, flipped, and soft-landed intact in the ocean after deploying Starlink satellites, offering the first clear post-splashdown views of an undamaged heat shield. The Super Heavy booster, meanwhile, experienced a harder splashdown in the Gulf of America.
Musk has previously stressed that ship catches would only follow multiple successful soft ocean landings to minimize risk of debris over land.
If Flight 14 succeeds, SpaceX would take a major stride toward routine, rapid reuse of both stages—critical for lowering launch costs and supporting ambitious plans for lunar and Mars missions. For now, teams are reviewing the Flight 13 data. Should everything check out, the next Starship flight could deliver one of the most spectacular recoveries in aerospace history.
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