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SpaceX’s first Starlink launch of the year up next after schedule shuffle
Update: SpaceX’s Starlink-16 mission is now scheduled to launch no earlier than 8:45 am EST (13:45 UTC) on Monday, January 18th.
SpaceX’s first Starlink launch of the year is now up next after a major rideshare mission’s delays forced a schedule shuffle.
Known as Starlink-16 or Starlink V1 L16, the mission will be SpaceX’s 16th launch of operational v1.0 communications satellites and its 17th Starlink launch overall. Originally scheduled to follow SpaceX’s first dedicated Smallsat Program rideshare launch on January 14th, that Transporter-1 mission slipped to no earlier than (NET) January 21st after a rapid-fire series of chaotic events earlier this year.
Scheduled to launch NET 1:23 pm EST (18:23 UTC) on January 17th, Starlink-16 thus became SpaceX’s defacto second launch of the year. Progress towards that working date became visible when, drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) quickly offloaded its most recent Falcon 9 booster ‘catch’ and departed Port Canaveral for the second time this year on January 13th. Headed some 633 km (~400 mi) northeast, the autonomous rocket landing platform is right on schedule (and set to be in the right place) to support a Starlink launch around January 17th.
Reading between the lines of comments made on January 12th by a 45th Space Wing colonel, the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) expect to support many as 53 launches in 2021, some 42-44 of which can be attributed to SpaceX.
That figure meshes with CEO Elon Musk’s recent note that SpaceX is aiming to complete as many as 48 launches this year, 4-6 of which will likely fly out of the company’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, California facilities. If SpaceX does manage 40+ Florida launches in 2021, it’s safe to say that half – if not more – will be Starlink missions. In other words, SpaceX’s imminent Starlink-16 launch is likely the first of roughly two-dozen planned over the next 12 months, potentially orbiting almost 1500 satellites in a single year.
Perhaps just three days out from Starlink-16’s scheduled launch, which of SpaceX’s five readily-available Falcon 9 boosters is assigned to support the mission. Falcon 9 B1049 is (numerically speaking) the best candidate, having last launched in late November – 54 days prior to January 17th. Falcon 9 B1058 is the next ‘oldest’ in the sense that it’s the second to last most recently launched, giving SpaceX roughly 40 days to turn the booster around for Starlink-16.
Regardless of the booster SpaceX selects, it’s all but guaranteed to result in one of the fastest Falcon 9 turnarounds ever – an increasingly less significant milestone as the company works to aggressively cut the average time between booster launches. Chances are also good that Starlink-16 will sport at least one flight-proven fairing half as SpaceX continues to gain experience recovering and reusing the carbon composite nosecones.
Assuming Starlink-16 features the usual 60 spacecraft, success will mean that SpaceX has officially launched more than 1000 Starlink satellites since dedicated launches began a year and a half ago in May 2019. Altogether, a successful launch would leave SpaceX with roughly 940 functional spacecraft in orbit – half or more of which are currently either raising or phasing their orbits.
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Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026.”
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest model is coming very soon, and from what it sounds like, it could be “the last big piece of the puzzle,” as CEO Elon Musk said in late November.
During the xAI Hackathon on Tuesday, Musk was available for a Q&A session, where he revealed some details about Robotaxi and Tesla’s plans for removing Robotaxi Safety Monitors, and some information on a future FSD model.
While he said Full Self-Driving’s unsupervised capability is “pretty much solved,” and confirmed it will remove Safety Monitors in the next three weeks, questions about the company’s ability to give this FSD version to current owners came to mind.
Musk said a new FSD model is coming in about a month or two that will be an order-of-magnitude larger and will include more reasoning and reinforcement learning.
He said:
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026. We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”
NEWS: Elon Musk says FSD Unsupervised is “pretty much solved at this point” and that @Tesla will be launching Robotaxis with no safety monitors in about 3 weeks in Austin, Texas. He also teased a new FSD model is coming in about 1-2 months.
“We’re just going through validation… https://t.co/Msne72cgMB pic.twitter.com/i3wfKX3Z0r
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2025
It rings back to late November when Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.”
With the advancements made through Full Self-Driving v14 and v14.2, there seems to be a greater confidence in solving self-driving completely. Musk has also personally said that driver monitoring has been more relaxed, and looking at your phone won’t prompt as many alerts in the latest v14.2.1.
This is another indication that Tesla is getting closer to allowing people to take their eyes off the road completely.
Along with the Robotaxi program’s success, there is evidence that Tesla could be close to solving FSD. However, it is not perfect. We’ve had our own complaints with FSD, and although we feel it is the best ADAS on the market, it is not, in its current form, able to perform everything needed on roads.
But it is close.
That’s why there is some legitimate belief that Tesla could be releasing a version capable of no supervision in the coming months.
All we can say is, we’ll see.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon. Musk replied, basically confirming it.
Elon Musk confirmed through a post on X that a SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is on the way after hinting at it several times earlier this year.
It also comes one day after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was aiming for a valuation of $1.5 trillion, adding that it wanted to raise $30 billion.
Musk has been transparent for most of the year that he wanted to try to figure out a way to get Tesla shareholders to invest in SpaceX, giving them access to the stock.
He has also recognized the issues of having a public stock, like litigation exposure, quarterly reporting pressures, and other inconveniences.
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon.
Musk replied, basically confirming it:
As usual, Eric is accurate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
Berger believes the IPO would help support the need for $30 billion or more in capital needed to fund AI integration projects, such as space-based data centers and lunar satellite factories. Musk confirmed recently that SpaceX “will be doing” data centers in orbit.
AI appears to be a “key part” of SpaceX getting to Musk, Berger also wrote. When writing about whether or not Optimus is a viable project and product for the company, he says that none of that matters. Musk thinks it is, and that’s all that matters.
It seems like Musk has certainly mulled something this big for a very long time, and the idea of taking SpaceX public is not just likely; it is necessary for the company to get to Mars.
The details of when SpaceX will finally hit that public status are not known. Many of the reports that came out over the past few days indicate it would happen in 2026, so sooner rather than later.
But there are a lot of things on Musk’s plate early next year, especially with Cybercab production, the potential launch of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, and the Roadster unveiling, all planned for Q1.
Tesla has added the 15th automaker to the growing list of companies whose EVs can utilize the Supercharger Network this year, as BMW is the latest company to gain access to the largest charging infrastructure in the world.
BMW became the 15th company in 2025 to gain Tesla Supercharger access, after the company confirmed to its EV owners that they could use any of the more than 25,000 Supercharging stalls in North America.
Welcome @BMW owners.
Download the Tesla app to charge → https://t.co/vnu0NHA7Ab
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) December 10, 2025
Newer BMW all-electric cars, like the i4, i5, i7, and iX, are able to utilize Tesla’s V3 and V4 Superchargers. These are the exact model years, via the BMW Blog:
- i4: 2022-2026 model years
- i5: 2024-2025 model years
- 2026 i5 (eDrive40 and xDrive40) after software update in Spring 2026
- i7: 2023-2026 model years
- iX: 2022-2025 model years
- 2026 iX (all versions) after software update in Spring 2026
With the expansion of the companies that gained access in 2025 to the Tesla Supercharger Network, a vast majority of non-Tesla EVs are able to use the charging stalls to gain range in their cars.
So far in 2025, Tesla has enabled Supercharger access to:
- Audi
- BMW
- Genesis
- Honda
- Hyundai
- Jaguar Land Rover
- Kia
- Lucid
- Mercedes-Benz
- Nissan
- Polestar
- Subaru
- Toyota
- Volkswagen
- Volvo
Drivers with BMW EVs who wish to charge at Tesla Superchargers must use an NACS-to-CCS1 adapter. In Q2 2026, BMW plans to release its official adapter, but there are third-party options available in the meantime.
They will also have to use the Tesla App to enable Supercharging access to determine rates and availability. It is a relatively seamless process.
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
