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SpaceX’s first West Coast Falcon 9 launch in eight months now set for early 2020
After what is set to be a more than 8-month lull, SpaceX’s California launch facilities are scheduled to support a Falcon 9 launch no earlier than February 2020.
Speaking at 2019’s World Satellite Business Week, Raúl Kulichevsky – a director at the Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), Argentina’s national space agency – confirmed that the country’s SAOCOM-1B Earth observation satellite making great progress towards that launch target.
The launch was recently pushed into January and later March of 2020 after minor satellite production delays ended plans for a late-2019 launch. On a recent positive note, Deputy Executive and Technical Director of CONAE Raúl Kulichevsky indicated that SAOCOM-1B’s Falcon 9 launch was now planned a month or so earlier than previously expected and is on track for a February 2020 liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB).
This small but positive schedule bump comes just a week or so after CONAE engineers and technicians wrapped up a major SAOCOM-1B integration milestone, successfully attaching the satellite’s main imaging instrument – a large phased-array radar – to its bus (the primary structure). This work is ongoing in Bariloche, Argentina, a spectacular town surrounded by the Andes mountain range and glacier-fed lakes. Aside from the electrical and mechanical integration of SAOCOM-1B’s radar and bus, the CONAE team completed the installation of thermal insulator blankets. Up next will be the attachment of two solar arrays and associated deployment tests, followed by integrated center-of-gravity measurements and vibrational/acoustic load tests.
Assuming a successful launch early next year, SAOCOM-1B will join its SAOCOM-1A sister satellite in a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), completing the L-band Satélite Argentino de Observación Con Microondas Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) constellation. In an agreement called Sistema Italo Argentino de Satélites para la Gestión de Emergencias (SIASGE), the completed SAOCOM constellation will work in conjunction with Italy’s four-satellite COSMO-SkyMed constellation to provide accurate and persistent Earth observations and support disaster monitoring efforts around the world.
CONAE hopes to eventually expand its SAOCOM constellation with the future development and deployment of two SAOCOM-2 spacecraft.
The SAOCOM-1A satellite was launched in a spectacular fashion in October 2018, producing a nebula-like cloud of sun-lit Falcon 9 exhaust that was visible for hundreds of miles. The SAOCOM-1A marked the second launch of Falcon 9 booster B1048 and also featured SpaceX’s first successful West Coast Return-to-Launch-Site (RTLS) landing.
Highly Commended for Skyscapes is Brandon Yoshizawa’s ‘Flower Power’ #astrophoto2019 pic.twitter.com/L5EVGwEfDr— Royal Museums Greenwich (@RMGreenwich) September 12, 2019
Falcon 9’s SAOCOM-1B mission will come long after SpaceX’s most recent West Coast launch – the June 2019 launch of the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM). West coast observers and launch teams are sure to welcome the launch of the SAOCOM-1B mission after what is set to be more than eight months spent without a launch.
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Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.
The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.
On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.
It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something
There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
