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SpaceX, Firefly Aerospace targeting three rocket launches in two days
Update: As is a common occurrence in spaceflight, two of the three planned missions have been delayed or scrubbed. Firefly’s second Alpha launch has slipped to no earlier than (NET) September 12th after an aborted attempt on the 11th, and SpaceX’s Starlink 4-34 mission was pushed from September 11th to September 13th.
SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace are on track to attempt three orbital launches this weekend as the former continues to relentlessly assemble a constellation of Starlink internet satellites and the latter works to secure its first success.
On the heels of 40 successful Falcon 9 launches this year, SpaceX is a few days away from two more Starlink missions that will likely leave the company with more than 3000 working satellites in orbit.
Founded in 2017, 15 years after SpaceX, Firefly Aerospace is almost entirely focused on one near-term goal: the first successful launch of its Alpha rocket.
Firefly’s Alpha rocket lifted off for the first time on September 2nd, 2021. Just moments after launch, a faulty cable caused one of the Alpha first stage’s four Reaver engines to shut down, immediately dooming the attempt. The rocket inexplicably persevered, though, and managed more than two minutes of powered flight before it lost control, became a range safety risk, and was terminated.
More than a year later, Firefly believes it has solved the problems that doomed Alpha Flight 1 and is on the cusp of the rocket’s second launch attempt, which has been scheduled no earlier than (NET) 3pm PST (22:00 UTC) on Sunday, September 11th.
Recently, the second fully stacked Alpha rocket completed a wet dress rehearsal and static fire while installed on Firefly’s Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) SLC-2W pad, confirming its readiness for flight. Measuring 1.8 meters (6 ft) wide and 29.5 meters (~95 ft) tall, Alpha is about half the width and height of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 workhorse, and Firefly estimates that the expendable rocket will be able to launch up to 1.17 tons (~2560 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
That’s several times more performance per launch than competitors like Rocket Lab, Astra Space, and Virgin Orbit, but 14 times less than a partially reusable Falcon 9. At $15 million apiece, however, the rocket’s list price will be 4.5 times less than Falcon 9’s, which could be enough to create a niche for customers that want to spend a bit more to send smaller satellites exactly where they want instead of getting dropped off in the general vicinity as a rideshare payload.
Demonstrating an impressive level of transparency, Firefly will offer a public livestream of Alpha’s second flight in full awareness that it could ultimately broadcast a launch failure for the second time in a row. There are very few instances in the history of spaceflight where a new group’s new rocket successfully reached orbit on its first launch, so it’s a credit to the startup to acknowledge the reality that launch failures are a common extension of the development process, rather than something to hide from the public.
SpaceX knows that reality well. Falcon 1, its first rocket, was about half the size of Firefly’s Alpha and suffered three launch failures in two and half years before finally succeeding on its fourth attempt. More than a magnitude larger, Falcon 9 likely benefitted from SpaceX’s Falcon 1 experience and had a much smoother start to life, though it did eventually experience its own share of failures years after its 2010 debut.
12 years later, Falcon 9 is one of the most successful launch vehicles of all time, and has simultaneously pioneered the commercially viable reuse of orbital-class rockets. Currently on a historic pace of one launch every ~6.2 days in 2022, Falcon 9 recently completed its 146th successful launch in a row and 173rd successful launch overall.
Hopefully continuing those trends, Next Spaceflight reports that Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch two more batches of Starlink satellites at 9:10 pm EDT on Saturday, September 10th, and 10:53 pm EDT on Sunday, September 11th. In addition to several dozen Starlink satellites, the first mission – Starlink 4-2 – is expected to carry a relatively large 1.5-ton (~3300 lb) satellite prototype for space-to-phone communications startup AST SpaceMobile. The second mission, known as Starlink 4-34, should be a dedicated launch of another 53 or 54 Starlink satellites.
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
