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SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy begins to arrive at 39A as center core heads to TX
Approximately a week after a Falcon Heavy side booster – the first of two – arrived at SpaceX’s LC-39A launch complex, a sign of late-stage preparation for the massive rocket’s second and third launches, a Falcon Heavy center stage was spotted rolling through the Waco, Texas locale on its way to SpaceX’s McGregor testing facilities.
Signified by the outlines of unusual bumps under the Falcon booster’s protective shrink wrap, this probable Falcon Heavy center core’s Texas arrival indicates that SpaceX has most likely completed static fire testing of both side boosters, with the second booster now likely to depart McGregor and/or arrive at SpaceX’s Florida facilities in the coming weeks.
The first component of Falcon Heavy Block 5 has arrived at HLC-39A! https://t.co/38spGaCps9
— Thomas Burghardt (@TGMetsFan98) December 22, 2018
In February 2018, Falcon Heavy took flight for the first time ever, bringing to an end an almost mythical series of delays that pushed the rocket’s debut back more than five years. Aside from the unintentional demise of Falcon Heavy Flight 1’s center core, the inaugural launch was a spectacular and technologically valuable success, perfectly verifying the rocket’s ability to safely ignite, launch, separate, and recover two Falcon 9-class boosters simultaneously. SpaceX also took the opportunity – a payload with no practical value aside from inspiration – to perform a successful six-hour coast of the Falcon upper stage, demonstrating a capability critical for many potentially valuable launch contracts.
Now verified by planning schedules, SpaceX plans to attempt a truly impressive feat in the first half of 2019. Assuming all goes well during the center booster’s static fire and the subsequent integration and static fire of all three first stages, the company intends to launch the same Falcon Heavy hardware (all three boosters) twice in as little as two months, currently tentatively penciled in for February/March and April 2019.
Surprise sighting of a #SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster in my hometown headed a few minutes down the road to the McGregor, TX test site. First time in years seeing a booster in transit “in the wild” like this. 🚀 @elonmusk #falcon9 #falconheavy #STEM #bfr #space pic.twitter.com/daEz4NZPi5
— Abby Garrett (@abbygarrettart) January 1, 2019
Corroborated a few weeks ago by a NASA official involved in one of the payloads that will be present on that planned April launch, SpaceX plans to attempt recovery of both the side boosters and center core and rapidly refurbish them after their first launch in February or March, nominally placing the 6000 kg (~13,200 lb) Arabsat 6A satellite into a high-energy orbit. Perhaps as few as 4-8 weeks later, the rocket will be reintegrated, perform a second static fire at Pad 39A, and launch once again with a USAF rideshare known as Space Test Program (STP) 2, a program specifically designed to allow the Air Force to support low-risk test launches of unproven rockets.
Even more so than the fact that an ~8-week Falcon Heavy turnaround would simultaneously break SpaceX’s previous booster turnaround record in triplicate, the biggest reason to be skeptical of these plans is the fact that this schedule appears to require that the USAF fly a mission on not one but three flight-proven Falcon boosters. This stands at odds with the military branch’s unwillingness (by all appearances) to so much as allow a brand new Falcon 9 enough propellant margin (typically just a few percent) to land itself after the December 23rd launch of GPS III SV01, let alone allow their satellites to ride on a previously-flown rocket.
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- Falcon Heavy is composed of a Falcon 9 upper stage and three Falcon 9-class boosters. (SpaceX)
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- Falcon Heavy’s simultaneous side booster recovery. This will likely be repeated for both Arabsat 6A and STP-2. (SpaceX)
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- The communications satellite Arabsat-6A. (Lockheed Martin)
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- The USAF’s STP-2, a combination of a few dozen different satellites. (USAF)
The major wrench in the machine here is the fact that GPS III SV01 most likely cost the USAF upwards of $700M to procure and will ultimately become a critical part of a widespread infrastructural upgrade, whereas STP-2 features two dozen or so small satellites worth dramatically less than the single GPS satellite SpaceX launched last month. STP-2 also operates under a program that is in large part meant to offer opportunities for new or wholly unproven launch vehicles (like Falcon Heavy) to conduct experimental launches, carrying the assumption that certifying those rockets for national security space (NSS) missions would be in the best interests of the Air Force and DoD.
As such, the back-to-back Falcon Heavy launch schedule is by no means impossible despite the fact that it offers up many reasons to doubt its plausibility. Either way, the fact that the next Falcon Heavy’s center core has already left SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory – following in the footsteps of two new side boosters – is a nearly unequivocal sign that the rocket’s second launch rapidly approaching.
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
Tesla Full Self-Driving is now the centerpiece of the company’s newly revised Referral Program, which launched on October 29.
Instead of referring people to purchase vehicles and the referrer receiving $250 in Tesla Credit, the new program now incentivizes Full Self-Driving subscriptions.
If a Tesla owner is on an FSD trial and uses a referral code to subscribe to Full Self-Driving, the person whose Referral Link was used will receive one month of FSD (Supervised). Their code can be utilized 12 times per year, with January 1 marking the reset date.
Realistically, this means that if your Referral Code is used by 12 Tesla owners on an FSD trial, you will receive a full year of FSD for free.
🚨 Here is Tesla’s new Referral Program for Full Self-Driving (Supervised):
When someone subscribes to FSD using your link, you’ll get a month free. Up to a year of FSD is available to you for free!
If you’d like to use my link: https://t.co/g00IX9OCE3 https://t.co/GFBzEO2jjS
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The previous program made it pretty difficult to get referrals; buying a vehicle is obviously a much larger financial strain than subscribing to Full Self-Driving for a month.
Of course, the previous Referral Program also offered a tangible benefit: $250 in credits you could use on Service, Supercharging, or anything in the Tesla Shop. It truly could pay for someone’s travel for a year. It recently bought me a new backpack and a T-shirt.
However, this new program is much more attainable for those who do not have a massive online presence of a slew of friends in the Tesla community who will use the code and max out subscriptions for vehicle purchases.
Woke up to maxed out Referrals! Thank you guys, that’s awesome!
Share your referral link below so others can use it! https://t.co/kesbwTcoTV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The Full Self-Driving suite will now be the keystone of the Referral Program, which makes it more inclusive and more fun for everyone with an awesome benefit.
It also gives the impression that Tesla is truly focused on FSD subscriptions, something that saw a tremendous increase in volume in Q3, as 75 percent of deliveries for the quarter came with an FSD subscription attached.
Full Self-Driving data is so instrumental to the suite’s improvement that this kind of program benefits Tesla as much as it does the consumer.
Elon Musk
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
Tesla’s quiet mode reaches Model Y Robotaxis, blacking out the screen for riders wanting rest.
Tesla’s quiet mode, the setting that blacks out the screen for riders who want to rest, has moved beyond the Cybercab. A video posted Thursday by Spencer (@scotsrule08) shows the feature running in a Model Y Robotaxi on a night ride that appears to be in Dallas.
New quiet mode now on @Robotaxi https://t.co/2cM2eM9NeN — Spencer (@scotsrule08) October 29, 2026
The rider taps a small crescent moon icon in the bottom right corner of the map screen. The map, media player, app shortcuts and Grok prompt disappear, leaving a dark display with “Arriving soon,” the destination and a line reading “Tap display to exit quiet mode.” Controls a passenger may still need, including Pull Over, cabin temperature, volume and Support, stay visible. One tap anywhere brings the full map back.
Quiet mode first showed up in the Cybercab last week, which Teslarati reported alongside a new rear camera view. Tesla has been trimming cabin noise in other ways too. On October 25, Spencer reported that Robotaxi turn signals now chime for the first four blinks and then go silent. Tesla has not published release notes for either change.
Elon Musk has been pitching this use for more than a decade. In October 2014, he said that “maybe five or six years from now I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination,”
By 2017 he was setting a higher bar. Speaking at TED, Musk said the hard part was not making self-driving work 99.9 percent of the time, “because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn’t be, certainly.”
Owners asked for something similar in their own cars. In December 2019, a Tesla owner requested a Nap Mode that would keep the climate running and wake the occupant with an alarm, and Musk answered “Ok,” as Teslarati covered at the time.
The line returned when the Cybercab was unveiled at the We, Robot event in October 2024. “We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving, where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said. On Tesla’s first quarter earnings call in April 2025, he called it the deciding measure: “The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I’m confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year,”
Tesla has run driverless Model Y rides in Dallas and Houston since April, so a passenger dozing off on the way home is now a realistic use of the button. Tesla is also offering new riders a free first trip in both cities, according to an in-app screen shared by tracker Ethan McKanna, and said on its third quarter call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas next month.
News
FCC green lights SpaceX’s move to a showdown with Verizon and AT&T
The FCC advanced plans opening 482 MHz to satellite phone service, boosting SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile.
The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to move forward with a proposal that would open an additional 482 MHz of spectrum to satellite service beamed directly to ordinary phones, a step that could widen the road for SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile to compete with the country’s largest wireless carriers.
The commission adopted the notice of proposed rulemaking at its October open meeting in Washington, Reuters reported. The proposal would raise the number of bands eligible for Supplemental Coverage from Space from five to 13, according to the FCC fact sheet. Commissioners also advanced a companion item proposing an auction of 25 MHz in the 1675 to 1695 MHz and 2020 to 2025 MHz bands, which could be used for terrestrial service, direct to device service or both.
Thursday’s vote does not hand any spectrum to SpaceX. It opens a public comment period, and final rules will come later. Under the draft, comments would be due 60 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register. The FCC had not released the adopted text at the time of writing, so it is not yet clear whether any bands were changed before the vote.
That question is where the fight now moves. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, through industry group CTIA, asked the FCC to drop the 2.5 GHz and 3.45 GHz bands, which make up 290 MHz of the 482 MHz on the table, as Teslarati reported ahead of the vote. T-Mobile argued satellite interference could wipe out up to 96% of a cell site’s uplink coverage area. SpaceX asked the commission to go the other way and add the 902 to 928 MHz band.
The rule change that matters most to SpaceX may be a structural one. Today, a satellite operator must lease spectrum from every carrier holding co-channel licenses across an entire region such as the contiguous United States. The proposal would replace that with a certification that the operator has coexistence agreements covering only the areas it plans to serve, or that it holds the terrestrial licenses itself.
SpaceX has spent this year building that second path. It bought EchoStar’s AWS-4 and H-block licenses in a deal worth roughly $17 billion, and earlier this month agreed to acquire Grain Management’s nationwide 800 MHz portfolio, which the company said would pave the way for Starlink to become a major US mobile carrier. The FCC approved SpaceX’s purchase of three unused AWS-3 licenses from Tristar on October 21, and cleared its plan for 15,000 next generation direct to cell satellites on October 6.
The regulator has not always sided with SpaceX. In April, the FCC dismissed a SpaceX petition seeking access to Mobile Satellite Service spectrum held by incumbents, and it rejected 2.5 GHz for satellite coverage when it first adopted the framework in 2024.
The carriers are also building their own defenses. In May, the three companies agreed in principle to form a joint venture pooling spectrum for satellite service, and T-Mobile remains SpaceX’s US launch partner for Starlink Mobile even as it leads the push to keep satellites out of 2.5 GHz. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has said service on SpaceX’s own airwaves is targeted for early 2028.
Tesla Full Self-Driving becomes main pillar of new Referral Program
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
