News
SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket rolls to pad for Tuesday launch, dual booster landing
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket has rolled out to Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A for its first launch (and dual booster landing) in almost three and a half years.
Missing its payload fairing and the US Space Force’s classified USSF-44 payload, SpaceX’s fourth Falcon Heavy rocket rolled out to Pad 39A for the first time on October 25th. On the 27th, the rocket successfully fired up all 27 of its first-stage Merlin 1D engines, reasserting its status as the most powerful operational rocket in the world. On October 30th, SpaceX finally brought Falcon Heavy horizontal and rolled the rocket back to Pad 39A’s integration hangar, where the USSF-44 mission’s several payloads – safely stowed inside a payload fairing – were installed on the rocket.
24 hours later, Falcon Heavy – now fully assembled – departed the hangar again. According to the US Space Systems Command (SSC), despite the exceptionally late rollout on October 31st, SpaceX is on track to launch Falcon Heavy no earlier than (NET) 9:41 am EDT (13:41 UTC) on Tuesday, November 1st.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, USSF-44 will be SpaceX’s first attempt at a direct launch to a geostationary orbit (GEO) some ~36,000 kilometers (~22,400 mi) above Earth’s surface, where spacecraft can hover motionless over their region of choice. To accomplish that feat, Falcon Heavy’s upper stage will need to survive a roughly six-hour coast in the harsh vacuum of space, likely making USSF-44 one of the most challenging missions SpaceX has ever attempted.
“Long orbital coasts of six or so hours are necessary for some of the most challenging launch trajectories. Direct-to-geostationary launches are the most common mission requiring long coast capabilities and are often demanded by the US military. When Falcon’s upper stage gets too cold, its kerosene fuel – which freezes at a much higher temperature than Falcon’s liquid oxygen oxidizer – becomes viscous and slush-like before it becomes solid. If ingested in Falcon’s Merlin Vacuum engine, slushy fuel would likely prevent ignition or outright destroy it.“
Teslarati.com – October 10th, 2022
Simultaneously, while worrying about kerosene fuel getting too cold, SpaceX must also ensure that the Falcon upper stage’s cryogenic liquid oxygen (LOx) oxidizer doesn’t boil into gas. If too much LOx warms up and has to be vented out as it turns to gas, the Falcon upper stage could find itself without enough propellant to complete its geostationary orbit circularization burn.
LOx is far less stable, which makes it a bit ironic that the upper stage’s fuel tank bares the only visible sign of the tweaks needed to survive a long coast. To keep the RP1 fuel warmer in orbit, SpaceX has added a layer of grey paint to the RP1 tank, increasing the amount of heat that can be absorbed through unfiltered sunlight. The uninsulated LOx tank, meanwhile, benefits from the unintuitive fact that a cryogenic liquid can stay liquid for a surprisingly long time because some of it warms up and boils off as a gas, sacrificing a small quantity to keep the rest cool.
According to the US Space Force, USSF-44 will carry several “various payloads” attached to the second Northrop Grumman “Long Duration Propulsive EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) Secondary Payload Adapter” or LDPE-2 – essentially a long-duration kick stage. Cataloged on EverydayAstronaut.com, the payloads include two Lockheed Martin LINUSS-A cubesats that will demonstrate a handful of new technologies and capabilities; TETRA-1, a microsat built by Millenium Space Systems to test on-orbit maneuverability; and a communications satellite prototype called USUVL. Spaceflight Now reports that LPDE-2 will carry three hosted payloads and deploy three satellites.
Finally, a recent Space Systems Command press release [PDF] mentioned a mysterious “Shepard demonstration” – likely a second propulsive kick stage – for the first time, which almost nothing is known about. It’s unclear if there is a main classified satellite the mission revolves around or if USSF-44 is simply a collection of various rideshare payloads headed to GEO.
Regardless, to launch them directly into geostationary orbit, USSF-44 will mark the first time SpaceX intentionally expends a Falcon Heavy booster. Over three previous launches, SpaceX only managed to land a Falcon Heavy center core once, but that core then tipped over and was destroyed at sea. Two other attempts resulted in failed landings. USSF-44 will continue that trend. Falcon Heavy’s twin side boosters will attempt to continue a more positive trend of simultaneous side-by-side landings and boost back to Florida to touch down at SpaceX’s LZ-1 and LZ-2 pads. SpaceX will also attempt to recover both halves of Falcon Heavy’s payload fairing a record-breaking 1410 kilometers (876 mi) off the Florida coast.
SpaceX says weather is 90% favorable for Falcon Heavy’s November 1st launch attempt. Stay tuned for a link to the company’s official webcast.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
SpaceX targets September 22 for Starship Flight 14, its first attempt to reach real orbit.
SpaceX has set September 22 as the target date for Starship’s 14th test flight, and this one carries a different goal than any of the 13 that came before it. Every previous Starship mission has intentionally flown a suborbital arc, reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launched. Flight 14 is designed to send the craft into a genuine orbit around Earth for the first time.
The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central time at Starbase in South Texas and runs for 75 minutes, pending regulatory approval, according to SpaceX’s mission description published Tuesday. If the flight goes as planned, Starship will circle the planet roughly six times at an altitude near 275 kilometers over about ten hours before a deorbit burn sends it toward a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a departure from the Indian Ocean recoveries used on the last several flights.
The mission also marks the first attempt to put a working batch of Starlink V3 satellites into actual service. Flight 13 carried 20 of the new satellites in July, but because that mission never left a suborbital trajectory, the payload reentered along with the ship instead of separating into orbit.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Each V3 satellite is rated for roughly one terabit per second of downlink capacity, so a successful deployment on Flight 14 would be SpaceX’s largest single jump in network bandwidth since Starlink began flying on Falcon 9.
Flight 13 still did the heavier lifting on the technical side. That July mission flew a deliberately more stressful reentry profile to test Starship’s heat shield, and the ship survived its softest splashdown yet, intact enough for drone inspections shortly after landing. Elon Musk said the flight delivered “all the heat shield data we needed and then some,” a result Teslarati covered in detail when he later said SpaceX had solved the vehicle’s biggest reusability challenge. Flight 14 is where SpaceX starts spending that confidence on an actual orbital insertion rather than another controlled fall back to Earth.
One thing Flight 14 will not attempt is a tower catch of the ship. Musk floated the idea right after Flight 13, but walked the timeline back in August, saying a catch attempt was more likely “in a few months.” The Super Heavy booster will still aim for its own recovery, targeting an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America, the same approach used on recent flights.
September 22 is SpaceX’s own target, not a locked date. Starship’s schedule has slipped before over hardware readiness and FAA sign off, and the company has said as much in its own mission notes. But the plan itself represents the clearest marker yet that Starship is moving from a suborbital test program into something meant to carry paying payloads and, eventually, people.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.
Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.
Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”
The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.
Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.
Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.
The Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who has been a big reason the product has such high expectations due to delayed timelines and a constant need to make it even more insane than before.
Tesla announced on September 12 that it would officially unveil the Roadster in Waco, Texas, on October 1, ending years of patience for fans and reservation holders who have waited for the all-electric supercar to enter production since 2017.
Musk has said that this event will be well worth the wait on several occasions, and last year on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said that there should be a closing chapter to supercars- the end of cars that aren’t focused on safety.
He said:
“Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable. My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I think if Peter wants a flying car, he should be able to buy one. I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever. This is some crazy technology in this car. Let’s just put it this way: if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
Musk’s teases have continued, and now that the event is roughly two weeks away, it seems like Roadster is finally going to show up and blow some minds:
It’s out of this world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Excitement guaranteed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Tesla has definitely dragged out the development of the Roadster, but there is a good reason for it.
Tesla has been working on many other projects, most notably self-driving efforts to increase passenger safety, and those simply took priority over the Roadster, a low-volume, high-performance sports car that has a lightning-fast acceleration rate of 0-60 MPH in just 1.1 seconds, could potentially fly, and contributes very little to the company’s mission.
However, many people have the Roadster on pre-order through the referral program or with their own money, and it is time that Tesla delivers on that.
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
