Connect with us

News

SpaceX drone ship heads to The Bahamas for Falcon 9’s next polar launch

Drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) is headed south towards the Bahamas for SpaceX's second East Coast polar launch ever. (Pauline Acalin)

Published

on

SpaceX is in the midst of preparing for back-to-back Falcon 9 launches from its two Florida pads, a feat that will also require two drone ships for each rocket booster to land on.

Drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) is already on station off the coast of North Carolina for SpaceX’s first Starlink launch of 2021 and is accompanied by crew support ship GO Quest, as well as twin fairing recovery ships GO Ms Tree and GO Ms Chief a bit further downrange. The setup is extremely familiar – practically identical to 5-10 prior Starlink missions completed in 2020.

Drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), however, departed Port Canaveral heading in almost the exact opposite direction as its sister ship – nearly straight south towards a region southwest of the main island of the Bahamas.

Known as Transporter-1, the mission OCISLY is tasked with supporting is significant for several reasons. Transporter-1 will be SpaceX’s first dedicated rideshare launch under its circa 2019 “Smallsat Rideshare Program” and will likely carry anywhere from 50 to 100+ spacecraft to orbit. More specifically, the mission is headed to a nearly polar sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), technically making it SpaceX and the United States’ second East Coast polar launch in roughly half a century.

In a last-second change, SpaceX also received shockingly rapid FCC approval to add ten of its own Starlink satellites to the commercial rideshare. If successful, Transporter-1 will thus also mark SpaceX’s first polar launch of operational Starlink satellites. Of the first phase of SpaceX’s ~4400-satellite Starlink constellation, some 520 are expected to be sent to strictly polar orbits

Advertisement

Notably, with drone ship OCISLY and support ship GO Searcher’s recent departure for Transporter-1, SpaceX is in the unique position of having deployed almost the entirety of its substantial rocket recovery fleet. Only GO Navigator (effectively the twin of GO Searcher) is currently in port and even that ship was out at sea supporting the first Cargo Dragon 2 recovery on January 17th. Altogether, six of SpaceX’s seven recovery ships are currently hard at work supporting two separate Falcon 9 launches – a rare but probably increasingly common sight as SpaceX works to complete as many as 48 launches in 2021.

Starlink-16 is scheduled to launch no earlier than 8:23 am EST (13:23 UTC), Tuesday, January 19th and will be broadcast live by SpaceX, as usual. Transporter-1 will follow as few as ~49 hours later, launching NET 9:24 am EST (14:24 UTC) on Thursday, January 21st.

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.

Advertisement
Comments

News

Tesla produces 100,000th new Model Y in Giga Berlin

The milestone was announced on X.

Published

on

Credit: Tesla Manufacturing/X

Tesla has produced its 100,000th new Model Y at Gigafactory Berlin. The milestone was announced by the electric vehicle maker through its official Tesla Manufacturing account on social media platform X. 

New Tesla Model Y milestone

The milestone was announced by Tesla on X, when the company wrote “Today, we built the 100,000th New Model Y at Giga Berlin!” The announcement was accompanied by an image of a new Model Y coming off the line.

The milestone was received warmly by members of the Tesla community, many of whom expressed excitement at the further progress of the new Model Y program at Giga Berlin. The facility, after all, only produces Model Y units, which would make it the perfect site to produce new variants like the Model Y Performance and possibly even the Model Y L, which was recently launched in China. 

New Model Y ramp

As noted in a previous report from electrive, the initial production of the new Model Y started in Giga Berlin around mid-January 2025. Since the new Model Y involved a changeover from the legacy Y to the new variant, the ramp of the new Model Y’s production at the Germany-based facility was likely a gradual process over the past months. 

It would then be no surprise if the next 100,000 new Model Y units would be produced in Giga Berlin in a shorter period. Giga Berlin could become an even bigger factor in Tesla’s global sales, after all, especially if it becomes the site that produces the Model Y Performance and the Model Y L for Europe and other territories. Giga Berlin, if any, seems to be quite busy recently, with aerial videos of the facility showing a fleet of mysteriously covered Model Y units being stored within the complex.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Tesla set to win big after IRS adjusts EV tax credit rules

“For purposes of sections 25E, 30D, and 45W, a vehicle is ‘acquired’ as of the date a written binding contract is entered into and a payment has been made. A payment includes a nominal down payment or a vehicle trade-in.”

Published

on

Credit: Tesla

Tesla is set to potentially come out as a big winner as the IRS has adjusted the rules of the $7,500 EV tax credit slightly.

The $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles is set to expire on September 30, but the IRS has made a slight adjustment to the terms of the credit that will give consumers a bit more time to buy an EV and receive the discount.

The original terms of the EV tax credit were that delivery of an EV must be completed by September 30. Even if you had made a reservation or put a down payment on an EV, if it did not arrive and take delivery by September 30, the credit would not apply to you.

Tesla is ready with a perfect counter to the end of US EV tax credits

This put some people in quite a tough situation. As wait times for some EVs, especially Tesla Model Y and Model 3 vehicles, continue to be pushed back due to an increase in demand as consumers are trying to take advantage of the credit, some car buyers ordered a car that was not the trim level, paint color, or interior color that they wanted.

However, the IRS has adjusted the terms of the tax credit to enable people to have a bit more time to get the vehicle they want.

Late last week, the agency said that the meaning of “acquired” has been changed, and now, if a consumer has entered a legally binding contract to take delivery of the vehicle, which includes a nominal down payment on the car, they can take delivery after the previous September 30 deadline and still qualify for the credit.

The IRS wrote:

“For purposes of sections 25E, 30D, and 45W, a vehicle is ‘acquired’ as of the date a written binding contract is entered into and a payment has been made. A payment includes a nominal down payment or a vehicle trade-in.”

Tesla could come out as a big winner here because of this. The company is experiencing a lot of demand for its cars because of the tax credit’s expiration, and now that the rule has been adjusted to include orders received by the 30th as long as they’re accompanied by a nominal down payment, some of these high-demand deliveries could leak into Q4.

Q3 is likely going to be a very strong quarter for Tesla, and questions remain about how the company will perform in subsequent quarters since the tax credit is going away. However, this slight adjustment is a big plus for Tesla and other EV makers.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla Semi factory receives giant production equipment

The massive machine was transported to the Semi factory using two diesel trucks and a triple trailer.

Published

on

Credit: @HinrichsZane/X

Tesla seems determined to kick off the production of the Tesla Semi sometime this year at its Nevada factory.

This was hinted at by the arrival of massive production equipment to the Semi’s manufacturing site near Giga Nevada.

New equipment

What appeared to be a massive stamping machine has been transported to the Giga Texas complex. Spotted by longtime drone operator and Tesla Semi advocate @HinrichsZane, the massive contraption is so large and heavy that a single semi truck and trailer were not enough to move it. Instead, the massive machine was shipped to the Semi factory using two diesel trucks and a triple trailer.

The machine was fully covered in the videos from Nevada, but based on its shape and size, it appears that it is a stamping press for the Class 8 all-electric truck. Tesla is a pioneer in the use of Megacasts in the automotive industry, so it makes sense for the company to use a Giga Press for the Semi’s production as well.

Ambitious goals

The Tesla Semi factory is expected to produce a whopping 50,000 units of the Class 8 all-electric truck annually when it is fully ramped. At that output, the facility would be one of the country’s highest-volume plants for semi trailers, electric or otherwise. In a video posted earlier this year, Dan Priestley, who leads the Semi program at Tesla, stated that the company is looking to achieve volume production over the coming quarters.

Advertisement

This should allow the Tesla Semi factory to mass produce the vehicle by 2026. Tesla CEO Elon Musk reiterated this timeframe recently, when he responded to a post on social media platform X about Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates being bearish about battery electric semi trucks.  “Tesla Semi will be in volume production next year,” Musk said in his post, which also included a laughing emoji. 

Check out the drone operator’s recent footage of the Tesla Semi factory in the video below.

Continue Reading

Trending