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SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket tests engines for first launch and landing of the new decade
SpaceX has successfully fired up a Falcon 9 rocket for the first time in 2020, setting the company up for the first of potentially dozens of Starlink launches over the next 12 months.
On the afternoon of January 4th, SpaceX loaded Falcon 9 with hundreds of tons of liquid oxygen, refined kerosene (RP-1), nitrogen, and helium and ultimately ignited all nine of the booster’s Merlin 1D engines, briefly producing some 7600 kN (1.7 million lbf) of thrust in a routine test known as a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) and static fire. As is tradition, SpaceX confirmed that the test looked successful just a handful of minutes after it was completed and verified that the rocket is now scheduled to launch 60 new Starlink satellites as early as 9:19 pm ET, January 6th (02:19 UTC, Jan 7).
Set to lift off from its LC-40 Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) launch pad, SpaceX’s first launch of the new year and decade hints at what is expected to follow over the course of 2020. In simple terms, the company’s ambitions have never been higher and anywhere from 36 to 38 orbital launches are scheduled between now and 2021 – some 65% of which will likely be internal Starlink missions.
If SpaceX manages to launch even half as many Starlink missions as it says it wants to this year, the company will be heading into 2021 with an operational internet satellite constellation nearly a thousand spacecraft strong – almost enough to ensure uninterrupted global coverage. Already, if SpaceX’s January 6th launch – known as Starlink V1 L2 (the second launch of v1.0 satellites) – goes as planned, the company will almost certainly become the owner of the world’s largest commercial satellite constellation less than eight months after it began launching its unique flat-packed spacecraft.
In a classic SpaceX move, the company’s Starlink satellite bus is a radical departure from all other commercial spacecraft, opting for a table-like rectangular shape that is extremely flat. While the rectangular shape – likely chosen for the extreme ease of manufacturing it should allow – significantly decreases packing efficiency, Starlink’s flat design and unique deployment mechanism means that SpaceX can fit an unprecedented 60 satellites (each weighing more than 250 kg or 550 lb) into a single lightly-modified Falcon 9 payload fairing.
Ultimately, SpaceX also design its Starlink satellites to be dramatically more robust than any comparable commercial spacecraft, meaning that they are meant to tolerate the violent acoustic launch environment without foam sound suppression panels that otherwise take up space inside Falcon 9’s fairing. Additionally, they are meant to survive the odd collision during their bizarre deployment, in which Falcon 9’s upper stage spins itself like a fan and releases the entire 60-satellite stack at once. Further, this means that Starlink satellites can be transported from their Washington state factory to Cape Canaveral, Florida far more easily and cheaply than almost any other spacecraft of a similar size and weight.
Falcon 9’s second fourth flight
It’s a mouthful, but SpaceX’s Starlink-2 mission will technically mark Falcon 9’s second fourth flight, meaning that it will be the second time a single Falcon 9 booster launches (and optimally lands) for the fourth time. Thrice-flown Falcon 9 booster B1049 has been assigned to support the launch.
The fourth completed Falcon 9 Block 5 booster, B1049 debuted on September 10th, 2018 on the Telstar 18V satellite launch, followed by a second flight (Iridium-8) in January 2019 and its third and most recent launch in May 2019. B1049’s most recent mission happened to be the very first dedicated Starlink launch, placing 60 Starlink v0.9 spacecraft in orbit in a sort of massive beta test of SpaceX’s cutting-edge satellite technology and design.
In support of Starlink V1 L1, the first launch of finalized Starlink v1.0 satellites, Falcon 9 booster B1048 became the first SpaceX rocket to successfully launch and land four times in November 2019, safely returning to shore aboard drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) a few days later. With (hopefully) two (and soon three) recovered boosters with four flights each under their belts, SpaceX will have a relative wealth of data it can then use to plot the way forward to fifth flights of boosters and beyond – halfway to the minimum Block 5 design goal of 10 launches apiece.
Teslarati photographer Richard Angle (@RDanglePhoto) will be on-site to capture SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 launch and booster recovery of the 2020s. Stay tuned for more details and photos as the launch nears!
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Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
