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SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 launch in months gets a launch date
SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 launch in more than three months finally has a launch date and it looks like the company’s growing fleet is going to attempt to catch (or land) almost every piece of the rocket, a big first for Falcon 9 reusability if SpaceX can pull it off.
After an exceedingly long wait, SpaceX’s next launch – Starlink’s first “v1.0” mission – is finally on the Eastern range and is scheduled to launch no earlier than ~10 am ET (15:00 UTC) on November 11th, recently confirmed by SpaceFlightNow.com and LaunchPhotography. Although similar lulls in US orbital launch activity have occurred in the past, they are extremely rare: the last time a lull more than three months long occurred was in 2010.
For SpaceX, this is the longest the company has gone without a launch since Falcon 9’s last catastrophic failure, which grounded the rocket for ~4.5 months after a massive explosion in September 2016. By all appearances, the likely 14-week gap between orbital SpaceX launches is little more than the product of bad luck, with customer payloads and SpaceX payloads both coincidentally requiring more time than expected to prepare for flight.
Although the extreme delay between launches is unfortunate, it also happens to have given SpaceX’s recovery engineers a lot more time to prepare the latest member of the rocket recovery fleet for its first attempted fairing catch. Known as GO Ms. Chief, she joins fairing recovery vessel GO Ms. Tree (formerly Mr. Steven) and has spent the last two or so months being outfitted with a brand new net and arms – slightly different but nearly identical to Ms. Tree’s.
Pictured in Stephen Marr’s tweet at the top of this article, Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief appear to be more or less complete, and Ms. Chief took to the Atlantic Ocean with her net installed for the first time just over a week ago. If the ships are as prepared as they look, there’s a strong chance that Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief will be able to team up to attempt the first simultaneous catch of both halves of a Falcon payload fairing. At the moment, SpaceX has caught a single parasailing fairing half twice during its last two consecutive attempts, a strong sign that the company has solved what proved to be an extremely challenging problem.
Falcon 9’s next reusability milestone
As always, prior to launch, SpaceX will fuel and static fire the Falcon 9 rocket to verify that all systems are performing nominally. According to NASASpaceflight.com, that static fire test is scheduled no earlier than Tuesday, November 5th, approximately six days before launch.
Speaking last month, VP of Flight and Build Reliability Hans Koenigsmann stated that Starlink-1 would fly on a thrice-flown Falcon 9 booster, meaning that the mission will likely mark the first time SpaceX flies the same Falcon 9 booster four times. At this point, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Block 5 nth-reuse milestones are becoming less and less surprising as it becomes clearer than ever that the rocket upgrade – designed to support “at least” 10 launches per booster – is well on its way to reaching that goal.
At the moment, the most likely candidates for that fourth-flight milestone are Falcon 9 boosters B1048 and B1049, the former of which flew its third orbital mission in February 2019, while the latter supported SpaceX’s dedicated Starlink v0.9 launch debut in May 2019. Falcon 9 B1046 – also with three launches under its belt – is scheduled to fly for the fourth (and probably final) time as early as mid-December for Crew Dragon’s critical In-Flight Abort Test, while Falcon 9 B1047 flew its third and final mission in August 2019.
All things considered, SpaceX’s quasi return-to-flight after three months without a launch is set to be an exceptionally important mission for Falcon 9 and should be well worth the wait.
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SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.
The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.
Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.
The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.
As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo
SpaceX released new footage of Starship in space captured by the Starlink satellites it deployed.
SpaceX released a new video Friday evening showing Starship from an angle showcased by its own Starlink satellites, watching the rocket drift away in orbit.
The 65 second clip, posted on X, stitches together footage from four cameras mounted on a single Starlink V3 satellite. It opens with a close view of Starship’s 171 foot upper stage, still catching sunlight, then pulls back as the two spacecraft separate.
The footage comes from Starship’s 13th flight test, which launched July 24 from Starbase after a scrubbed attempt and an abort caused by an engine issue the week before. When Flight 13 finally flew, it carried the first batch of functional Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever deployed, twenty of them, with six equipped with cameras meant to scan the ship’s heat shield during reentry.
View of Starship in space from a Starlink V3 satellite on Flight 13.
This composite is made of imagery from four separate cameras on a single satellite. Six of the satellites were equipped with cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to… pic.twitter.com/sNTHHz5vLr
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 31, 2026
Flight 13 checked most of its boxes. Starship deployed all 20 satellites, relit a Raptor engine in space, and splashed down softly in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia. Musk’s longer term plan calls for a Starlink V3 constellation of 100,000 satellites, according to a recent FCC filing, with Starship as the only vehicle capable of launching them at the volume that requires. Each Starship flight is designed to carry up to 60 V3 satellites once the vehicle reaches routine service, well beyond what Falcon 9 can carry in a single mission.
Starship is next expected to fly with an attempt at catching the ship itself with the launch tower’s mechanical arms, a maneuver SpaceX has so far reserved for the Super Heavy booster.
Tesla flexed the new features of the Model Y L with a dedicated media event at the company’s Diner on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The Model Y L is the extended-wheelbase version of the all-electric crossover, which has been voted the best-selling car in the world on three occasions. The vehicle is already rolling off production lines at Gigafactory Texas, and first deliveries are slated to take place later this year.
Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990
Teslarati was invited to the event, but due to some scheduling conflicts, we could not make it to Los Angeles. Instead, we will have our hands on a media unit sometime in August, so we’ll be able to spend some more extended time with the Model Y L.
However, plenty of those who made it to LA shared some cool features that set the Model Y L apart from the Model Y.
Multi-Row Climate Control
Tesla fitted the Model Y L with full climate control on all three rows on the front screen. It can be adjusted by selecting which row you’d like to modify on the right-hand side of the touch screen:
The Model Y L has a little row of icons on the right side of the climate screen so the front passenger can more quickly jump to whatever row they want to control. pic.twitter.com/uJS44mgCvk
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 30, 2026
Better Rear Window Visibility
One of the strangest things about the Model Y, especially the Juniper iteration, is the rear window has extremely limited visibility when looking into the rearview mirror.
Tesla has improved upon this with the Model Y L:
This is a drastic difference. https://t.co/wTdhitD5aA pic.twitter.com/z6hFs0Jkss
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 30, 2026
PowerShare will be included
Model Y L will come with PowerShare in North America, with an 11.5kW output to your home. Tesla said it would require Powerwall 3 for operation.
Wireless Charging Pad
There has been some speculation that Tesla would upgrade the wireless charging pads in the United States, but this is not the case.
Tesla owner fixes common feature complaint with crafty DIY retrofit
Tesla confirmed that it does not come with the cooled pads as the Y L in China does. This is because North America has not adopted Qi charging yet.
Thermal Management Improvements
These improvements in the Model Y L were seen with thermal management:
- Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
- +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather, 7 miles of real-world range gained
- 8x more solar energy reflection off of glass roof
- 30% reduction in solar energy entering the cabin
Some of the thermal management improvements in the new Model Y L Premium:
• Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
• Up to 15 min faster cabin cooling in sunny conditions
• +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather +7 miles of real-world range gained
• +10 miles recovered after… pic.twitter.com/jZirFWFdtO— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 31, 2026
Demand
Tesla said the Model Y L is almost sold out in the U.S. It comes with
- 1 year of FSD Supervised
- 1 year of Supercharging
- 1 year of Premium Connectivity
- Free exterior paint color, interior, and wheel option at no additional cost
SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch
SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo
