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SpaceX’s first flight-proven Falcon Heavy Block 5 rocket ready for static fire test
According to NASASpaceflight.com, SpaceX is just ~48 hours away from Falcon Heavy Flight 3’s critical static fire test, in which all 27 of the rocket’s Merlin 1D engines will be briefly ignited.
If the routine test goes as planned, SpaceX’s third completed Falcon Heavy will be ready to lift off as early as 11:30 pm ET (03:30 UTC), June 24th. Atop the massive rocket will be the US Air Force’s Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) mission, a collection of 24 small satellites from a variety of US government agencies and academic institutions. Practically speaking, STP is often more of an engineered excuse to launch, involving satellites and customers that are willing to accept higher risk than more valuable payloads, making it far easier for the US military to certify new technologies and new commercial launch vehicles.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, STP-2 is an extremely ambitious mission that aims to simultaneously certify or pave the way towards certification of critical capabilities. First and foremost, it will (barring serious anomalies) give the US military the data it needs to certify SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket for all national defense launches, giving ULA’s Delta IV Heavy its first real competition in a decade and a half.
Included under the umbrella of that catch-all certification is a sort of torture-test validation of the long-coast capabilities of SpaceX’s Falcon upper stage. To successfully complete STP-2, the upper stage will be subjected to “four separate upper-stage engine burns, three separate deployment orbits, a final propulsive passivation maneuver, and a total mission duration of over six hours.” It will likely be SpaceX’s most technically-challenging launch ever.
Finally, the US Air Force has decided that STP-2 presents an excellent opportunity to begin the process of certifying flight-proven SpaceX rockets for military launches. The STP-2-related work is more of a preliminary effort for the USAF to actually figure out how to certify flight-proven commercial rockets, but it will still be the first time the a dedicated US military mission has flown on a flight-proven launch vehicle. Down the road, the processes set in place thanks – in part – to STP-2 and Falcon Heavy may also apply to aspirational rockets like Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s “SMART” concept for Vulcan reuse.
Still, New Glenn is unlikely to be ready for flight-proven military launches until the mid-2020s, while ULA has no plans to even attempt to implement Vulcan’s “SMART” reuse until ~2026, meaning that military certification probably wont come until 2028-2030 at the earliest. SpaceX has thus earned roughly half a decade where it will be the only viable US launch provider that can offer certified flight-proven hardware with an established record of reliability. Although the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) had a lone smallsat aboard SpaceX’s February 2019 launch of PSN-6 and Spaceflight’s GTO-1 mission, STP-2 will be the first time a dedicated Department of Defense mission has flown on flight-proven launch vehicle hardware since 1992 (STS-53).
Aside from flight-proven Falcon Heavy side boosters B1052 and B1053, STP-2 is expected to use a new center core, B1057. SpaceX is in the late stages of vehicle integration and should be nearly complete by Monday, June 17th in order to support a June 18th static fire. The specific static fire window is not yet public but Falcon Heavy will likely roll out to Pad 39A no less than 12 hours before.
Teslarati photographers Tom Cross and Pauline Acalin will both be on site with a bevy of remote cameras to capture SpaceX’s third Falcon Heavy before, during, and after liftoff. STP-2 will be Falcon Heavy’s first attempted nighttime launch. Stay tuned for updates as we get closer to T-0!
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Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) closed at an all-time high on Tuesday, jumping over 3 percent during the day and finishing at $489.88.
The price beats the previous record close, which was $479.86.
Shares have had a crazy year, dipping more than 40 percent from the start of the year. The stock then started to recover once again around late April, when its price started to climb back up from the low $200 level.
This week, Tesla started to climb toward its highest levels ever, as it was revealed on Sunday that the company was testing driverless Robotaxis in Austin. The spike in value pushed the company’s valuation to $1.63 trillion.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
It is the seventh-most valuable company on the market currently, trailing Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
Shares closed up $14.57 today, up over 3 percent.
The stock has gone through a lot this year, as previously mentioned. Shares tumbled in Q1 due to CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which pulled his attention away from his companies and left a major overhang on their valuations.
However, things started to rebound halfway through the year, and as the government started to phase out the $7,500 tax credit, demand spiked as consumers tried to take advantage of it.
Q3 deliveries were the highest in company history, and Tesla responded to the loss of the tax credit with the launch of the Model 3 and Model Y Standard.
Additionally, analysts have announced high expectations this week for the company on Wall Street as Robotaxi continues to be the focus. With autonomy within Tesla’s sights, things are moving in the direction of Robotaxi being a major catalyst for growth on the Street in the coming year.
Elon Musk
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, Mark Delaney of Goldman Sachs says.
Tesla is in the process of rolling out its Robotaxi platform to areas outside of Austin and the California Bay Area. It has plans to launch in five additional cities, including Houston, Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
However, the company’s expansion is not what the focus needs to be, according to Delaney. It’s the speed of deployment.
The analyst said:
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Profitability will come as the Robotaxi fleet expands. Making that money will be dependent on when Tesla can initiate rides in more areas, giving more customers access to the program.
There are some additional things that the company needs to make happen ahead of the major Robotaxi expansion, one of those things is launching driverless rides in Austin, the first city in which it launched the program.
This week, Tesla started testing driverless Robotaxi rides in Austin, as two different Model Y units were spotted with no occupants, a huge step in the company’s plans for the ride-sharing platform.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
CEO Elon Musk has been hoping to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis in Austin for several months, first mentioning the plan to have them out by the end of 2025 in September. He confirmed on Sunday that Tesla had officially removed vehicle occupants and started testing truly unsupervised rides.
Although Safety Monitors in Austin have been sitting in the passenger’s seat, they have still had the ability to override things in case of an emergency. After all, the ultimate goal was safety and avoiding any accidents or injuries.
Goldman Sachs reiterated its ‘Neutral’ rating and its $400 price target. Delaney said, “Tesla is making progress with its autonomous technology,” and recent developments make it evident that this is true.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets bold Robotaxi prediction from Wall Street firm
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) received a bold Robotaxi prediction from Morgan Stanley, which anticipates a dramatic increase in the size of the company’s autonomous ride-hailing suite in the coming years.
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Percoco dug into the Robotaxi fleet and its expansion in the coming years in his latest note, released on Tuesday. The firm expects Tesla to increase the Robotaxi fleet size to 1,000 vehicles in 2026. However, that’s small-scale compared to what they expect from Tesla in a decade.
Tesla expands Robotaxi app access once again, this time on a global scale
By 2035, Morgan Stanley believes there will be one million Robotaxis on the road across multiple cities, a major jump and a considerable fleet size. We assume this means the fleet of vehicles Tesla will operate internally, and not including passenger-owned vehicles that could be added through software updates.
He also listed three specific catalysts that investors should pay attention to, as these will represent the company being on track to achieve its Robotaxi dreams:
- Opening Robotaxi to the public without a Safety Monitor. Timing is unclear, but it appears that Tesla is getting closer by the day.
- Improvement in safety metrics without the Safety Monitor. Tesla’s ability to improve its safety metrics as it scales miles driven without the Safety Monitor is imperative as it looks to scale in new states and cities in 2026.
- Cybercab start of production, targeted for April 2026. Tesla’s Cybercab is a purpose-built vehicle (no steering wheel or pedals, only two seats) that is expected to be produced through its state-of-the-art unboxed manufacturing process, offering further cost reductions and thus accelerating adoption over time.
Robotaxi stands to be one of Tesla’s most significant revenue contributors, especially as the company plans to continue expanding its ride-hailing service across the world in the coming years.
Its current deployment strategy is controlled and conservative to avoid any drastic and potentially program-ruining incidents.
So far, the program, which is active in Austin and the California Bay Area, has been widely successful.
Tesla stock closes at all-time high on heels of Robotaxi progress
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
