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SpaceX Falcon 9’s next major US Air Force launch slips into early 2020 ahead of busy Q4

Falcon 9 B1054 prepares the SpaceX's first major USAF launch and Block 5's first expendable mission. The next mission is now NET January 2020. (SpaceX/USAF)

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According to an August 20th update from the US Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), SpaceX’s next dedicated USAF launch – the third completed GPS III spacecraft – has slipped one month and is now scheduled no earlier than (NET) January 2020.

Known as GPS III Space Vehicle 03 (SV03), SpaceX’s next US military launch will follow just a few months after United Launch Alliance (ULA) is set to launch GPS III SV02, scheduled to lift off at 9am EDT, August 22nd. SpaceX kicked off the lengthy GPS III launch campaign in December 2018, successfully placing the ~3900 kg (8600 lb) communications and geolocation spacecraft into a transfer orbit. The mission also marked SpaceX’s first intentionally expendable Falcon 9 Block 5 launch, a trend that may or may not continue with the company’s next GPS launch.

Known as GPS Block IIIA, SV01-03 are the first three of a batch of 10 spacecraft total, produced by Lockheed Martin for an anticipated cost of roughly $600M apiece. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) expects [PDF] little to no cost savings per unit for Block IIIA’s follow-up, Block IIIF, in which 22 additional GPS III spacecraft will be built to fully upgrade the military’s GPS constellation. GAO estimates that those 22 satellites – likely to also be built by Lockheed Martin – will cost an incredible $12B, or ~$550M apiece.

On the scale of the US military’s woefully inefficient space procurement apparatus, ~$600M per satellite is sadly a pretty good deal. Two equally modern USAF satellite acquisition programs – the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) and Space-Based Infrared System constellations – have both surpassed their initial cost estimates by more than a factor of two. Over the entire program, GAO estimates that six AEHF satellites no less than $3 billion each, while SBIRS is in even worse shape with six new satellites expected to cost $3.2 billion apiece.

Lockheed Martin’s GPS Block IIIA assembly line. (USAF)

Meanwhile, the Raytheon-built ‘OCX’ ground systems needed to take advantage of the ~$19B GPS III satellite upgrades has been just as much of an acquisition boondoggle, nearly doubling in cost over the last few years, bringing its final cost to no less than $6.2B after years of delays. All told, completing the upgraded GPS III constellation can be expected to cost a bare minimum of $25B. This cost doesn’t even include launches, but the cost of launching all the spacecraft is – in a rare instance – going to be a small fraction of the overall acquisition, perhaps $3-4B for all 32 satellites.

Regardless of the nightmarish costs and general inefficiency, Lockheed Martin and the USAF continue to slowly march towards initial GPS III operability. August 22nd’s ULA launch and January 2020’s SpaceX launch will take significant steps towards that capability, and will – with any luck – be followed by an additional two Falcon 9 GPS III launches in 2020. Six of ten IIIA satellites have already had launch contracts awarded, five of six of which were awarded to SpaceX.

Falcon 9 B1054 lifts off on SpaceX’s first major USAF launch in December 2018. (Tom Cross)

End-of-year fireworks

GPS III SV03’s slip from December 2019 to January 2020 comes as plans for an ambitious final quarter have begun to take shape for SpaceX. Oddly, SpaceX is currently going through more than two months of downtime between its most recent launch (AMOS-17, August 6th) and its next mission (Starlink 1, NET late October). This will be the longest SpaceX has gone without launching since a catastrophic Falcon 9 failure grounded the company’s launch operations from September 2016 to January 2017.

By all appearances, customers’ payloads just aren’t ready, while SpaceX’s own Starlink constellation team is hard at work updating the satellite design and preparing for two back-to-back launches as early as October and November, potentially placing 120 high-performance satellites in orbit.

A general overview of Starlink’s bus, payload stacking, and solar arrays. (SpaceX)
60 Starlink satellites were successfully launched in May 2019 in an incredibly ambitious beta test for the SpaceX constellation. 50 satellites have successfully reached their final orbits, two are intentionally being deorbited, and the remaining 8 are still climbing the gravity well. (SpaceX)

Aside from two Starlink launches scheduled in late-October and November, SpaceX has at least six other missions that could potentially launch in Q4 2019.


LaunchDate (No Earlier Than)
Starlink 1October 17th
Starlink 2November 4th
Crew Dragon – In-Flight AbortNovember 11th
ANASIS-II – South KoreaNovember – TBD
JCSat-18/Kacific-1November – TBD
Cargo Dragon CRS-19December 4th
Sirius XM-7 (SXM-7)Q4 2019 – TBD
Crew Dragon – Demo-2December – TBD

A lack of updates from Sirius XM and the fact that Crew Dragon’s Demo-2 launch will rely entirely upon the successful completion of its prior In-Flight Abort (IFA) mean that both will very likely slip into 2020. The remaining six launches, however, have a very decent chance of launching in 2019, assuming everything goes perfectly during satellite, Falcon 9, and launch pad pre-flight preparations.

SpaceX has successfully completed six launches in three months several times before, so six launches in Q4 2019 is entirely achievable, even if a pragmatist would do well to expect additional delays into 2020.

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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’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade

Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.

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Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)
Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)

Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.

The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”

The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.

It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.

The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.

For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.

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Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next

Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.

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Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.

Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.

RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.

Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk roasts India’s billionaire Mukesh Ambani as Starlink fight heats up

Elon Musk sarcastically calls Mukesh Ambani ‘Prime Minister’ as the Starlink India standoff escalates again.

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Elon Musk escalated his public fight over Starlink’s launch in India on Friday, addressing Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani” in a sarcastic post on X. “Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India,” Musk wrote, before accusing Ambani of “monopolistic exploitation” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete.” In follow up posts, he said Starlink has proven essential during natural disasters and would help parts of India with no internet access.

The post came two days into a fight that Musk sparked up on Wednesday, when he said Starlink was “being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people.” He called it “a crime against the people of India” and left the names out, adding only, “You can guess who they are.” Jio and Airtel together hold more than 80% of India’s telecom market. On Thursday, Musk asked whether Ambani is “the real boss of India” and said Starlink has spent five years complying with “every single law and requirement” of the Indian government.

India’s government has pushed back each time. The Ministry of Communications called the suggestion that its framework is unfair or discriminatory “baseless and misconceived.” Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Friday that three companies hold satcom licenses: Starlink, Jio Satellite Communications, and Bharti backed Eutelsat OneWeb. Amazon’s Kuiper, now Amazon Leo, is still going through the process. None can launch until regulators finalize satellite spectrum pricing and the Home Ministry signs off on each company’s security compliance. Scindia said the telecom regulator and the Department of Telecommunications are close to a decision on pricing, The Hindu reported. Bharti chairman Sunil Mittal also said OneWeb is still waiting on approvals.

Starlink received its operator license in 2025 after a three year wait, and the space regulator IN-SPACe granted what industry executives called the last approval needed in July. The holdup since then centers on security, particularly concern that foreign operators could bypass Indian gateways.

Musk and Ambani have been on opposite sides of this before. In late 2024, Ambani argued for auctioning satellite spectrum, which Musk criticized as out of step with the rest of the world, and India chose administrative allocation instead. By March 2025, the two sides had signed a deal to sell Starlink devices in Reliance stores, and Starlink secured its telecom license that June. That partner is now also a competitor. Jio is reportedly weighing a constellation of 1,600 to 1,650 satellites costing an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion, while Akash Ambani has told shareholders Jio plans to lease capacity from global providers to move quickly.

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