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SpaceX to squeeze in Falcon 9 Starlink launch before NASA’s Moon rocket debut
SpaceX is preparing for at least one more Falcon 9 launch between now and the debut of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) Moon rocket, a milestone that could arrive as early as August 29th.
Depending on where the cards ultimately fall, Falcon 9 could launch up to three times between now and NASA’s last firm SLS launch window (September 5th). Multiple sources report that SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 launch – Starlink 4-23 – could occur as early as 10:22 pm EDT, Saturday, August 27th (02:22 UTC 28 August).
On August 23rd, SpaceX decided to transfer the mission from its NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) LC-39A pad to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s (CCASF) LC-40, likely in part because the latter pad is a few extra miles away from LC-39B, where NASA’s first SLS rocket is preparing for flight.
That late change may have been a simple consequence of one pad being more ready than the other was expected to be, but it could have also been driven by an abundance of caution on behalf of SpaceX, NASA, or both. At LC-40, a catastrophic Falcon 9 failure – however unlikely – would be less likely to harm the SLS rocket or Pad 39B than a similar failure at Pad 39A.
The odds of such a failure have arguably never been lower. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 workhorse recently completed its 143rd consecutively successful launch. By most reasonable measures, that string of successes likely makes Falcon 9 the most statistically reliable US rocket ever flown. SpaceX has also successfully launched 26 astronauts into orbit and returned them to Earth over the last two years. Nevertheless, given the almost $50 billion NASA will have spent on SLS and its Orion spacecraft and launch pad by the time the rocket finally lifts off, even the most extreme attempts to maximize caution could be considered reasonable.
If SLS manages to lift off during its first window, which stretches from 8:33 am to 10:33 am EDT (12:33-14:33 UTC) on August 29th, the Moon launch could find itself sandwiched between SpaceX ‘sStarlink 4-23 mission on August 27th and Starlink 3-4 on August 31st. In addition to Starlink 4-23 and 3-4, SpaceX is preparing to launch Starlink 4-20 and at least one rideshare payload no earlier than September 4th. If the first SLS launch somehow misses its first two windows on August 29th and September 2nd, the rocket’s next window of opportunity opens on September 5th.
Emphasizing the potential power of distributed launches once a high launch cadence is achieved, SpaceX’s much smaller Falcon 9 rockets have launched hundreds of tons over the last 12 months – several times more payload than the 95 tons (~210,000 lb) the multi-billion-dollar SLS is designed to launch to low Earth orbit (LEO) in one go. In fact, after Starlink 4-23, SpaceX’s fleet of partially reusable Falcon 9 rockets will have launched around 95 tons of Starlink satellites to LEO (and one South Korean spacecraft to the Moon) in less than six weeks.
Assuming it launches last, Starlink 4-20 (NET Sept 4) will be Falcon 9’s 146th consecutively successful launch and 52nd launch in 52.3 weeks, more or less achieving a 12-month running average of one Falcon 9 launch per week.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS –Â $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues –Â $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow –Â $1.444 billion
- Profit –Â $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
