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SpaceX eyes several Starlink launches in July

(Richard Angle)

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A SpaceX drone ship has headed to sea for the first of up to five Starlink launches planned in July.

Drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) was towed out of Port Canaveral, Florida on July 2nd, shifting setting up SpaceX for its first launch of the second half of 2022. Headed around 664 kilometers (~413 mi) northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, the semi-autonomous modified barge is scheduled to support the Falcon 9 booster recovery portion of SpaceX’s 49th dedicated Starlink launch.

After a couple delays and a pad change, launch photographer Ben Cooper reports that Starlink 4-21 – another batch of approximately 53 Starlink V1.5 satellites – is scheduled to launch from SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) LC-40 pad no earlier than (NET) 9am EDT (13:00 UTC), give or take, on Thursday, July 7th.

The mission will be drone ship JRTI’s 37th Falcon booster recovery attempt and, if successful, its 34th consecutively successful booster landing since January 2017. Hopefully joining it in one piece will be Falcon 9 B1058, which will become the second booster to attempt a 13th orbital-class launch and landing when it lifts off with Starlink 4-21 later this week. Falcon 9 B1060 became the first liquid rocket booster to complete 13 launches on June 17th.

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Starlink 4-21 is the first of up to five Starlink launches reportedly planned for July and was originally meant to launch from Kennedy Space Center’s LC-39A pad as early as June 26th after SpaceX and NASA decided to significantly delay a Dragon launch meant to use the same pad. SpaceX later chose to delay Starlink 4-21 to July 7th and shift it to LC-40 – a move likely meant to free up Pad 39A for the delayed Dragon’s latest mid-July launch target.

SpaceX has kept LC-40 relentlessly busy for the first half of 2022 and the pad hasn’t had more than three weeks of respite between launches since December 2021. It also supported back-to-back launches on June 19th and 29th, likely explaining Starlink 4-21’s ~10-day delay.

LC-40 will find no rest in July, either. After Starlink 4-21, Next Spaceflight reports that SpaceX intends to launch Starlink 4-22 and 4-25 from LC-40 or Pad 39A shortly after Cargo Dragon’s delayed CRS-25 space station resupply mission lifts off around July 14th. On the West Coast, SpaceX will reportedly begin launching a whole new shell of polar-orbiting Starlink satellites with Starlink 3-1 on July 10th and, while unlikely after the first mission’s recent delays, Starlink 3-2 before the end of the month.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Anti-Tesla union leader ditches X, urges use of Threads instead

Tesla Sweden and IF Metall have been engaged in a bitter dispute for over two years now. 

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UK Government, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Marie Nilsson, chair of Sweden’s IF Metall union and a prominent critic of Tesla, has left X and is urging audiences to follow the union on Meta’s Threads instead.

Tesla Sweden and IF Metall have been engaged in a bitter dispute for over two years now. 

Anti-Tesla union leader exits X

In a comment to Dagens Arbete (DA), Nilsson noted that her exit from X is not formally tied to IF Metall’s long-running labor dispute with Tesla Sweden. Still, she stated that her departure is affected by changes to the platform under Elon Musk’s leadership.

“We have stayed because many journalists pick up news there. But as more and more people have left X, we have felt that the standard has now been reached on that platform,” she said. 

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Jesper Pettersson, press officer at IF Metall, highlighted that the union’s departure from X is only indirectly linked to Tesla Sweden and Elon Musk. “Indirectly it does, since there is a lot of evidence that his ownership has caused the change in the platform to be so significant. 

“We have nevertheless assessed that the platform had value for reaching journalists, politicians and other opinion leaders. But it is a microscopic proportion of the public and our members who are there, and now that value has decreased,” Petterson added.

IF Metall sees Threads as an X alternative

After leaving X, IF Metall has begun using Threads, Meta’s alternative to the social media platform. The union described the move as experimental, noting that it is still evaluating how effective the platform will be for outreach and visibility.

Pettersson acknowledged that Meta also does not operate under Sweden’s collective bargaining model, but said the union sees little alternative if it wants to remain visible online.

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“In a perfect world, all large international companies would be supporters of the Swedish model when they come here. But unfortunately, the reality is not like that. If we are to be visible at all in this social media world, we have to play by the rules of the game. The alternative would be to become completely invisible, and that would not benefit our members,” he said. 

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Elon Musk confirms SpaceX is not developing a phone

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elon musk phone
Photo: Boss Hunting.com.au

Despite many recent rumors and various reports, Elon Musk confirmed today that SpaceX is not developing a phone based on Starlink, not once, but twice.

Today’s report from Reuters cited people familiar with the matter and stated internal discussions have seen SpaceX executives mulling the idea of building a mobile device that would connect directly to the Starlink satellite constellation.

Musk did state in late January that SpaceX developing a phone was “not out of the question at some point.” However, He also said it would have to be a major difference from current phones, and would be optimized “purely for running max performance/watt neural nets.”

While Musk said it was not out of the question “at some point,” that does not mean it is currently a project SpaceX is working on. The CEO reaffirmed this point twice on X this afternoon.

Musk said, “Reuters lies relentlessly,” in one post. In the next, he explicitly stated, “We are not developing a phone.”

Musk has basically always maintained that SpaceX has too many things going on, denying that a phone would be in the realm of upcoming projects. There are too many things in the works for Musk’s space exploration company, most notably the recent merger with xAI.

SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise

A Starlink phone would be an excellent idea, especially considering that SpaceX operates 9,500 satellites, serving over 9 million users worldwide. 650 of those satellites are dedicated to the company’s direct-to-device initiative, which provides cellular coverage on a global scale.

Nevertheless, there is the potential that the Starlink phone eventually become a project SpaceX works on. However, it is not currently in the scope of what the company needs to develop, so things are more focused on that as of right now.

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Tesla adds notable improvement to Dashcam feature

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has added a notable improvement to its Dashcam feature after complaints from owners have pushed the company to make a drastic change.

Perhaps one of the biggest frustrations that Tesla owners have communicated regarding the Dashcam feature is the lack of ability to retain any more than 60 minutes of driving footage before it is overwritten.

It does not matter what size USB jump drive is plugged into the vehicle. 60 minutes is all it will hold until new footage takes over the old. This can cause some issues, especially if you were saving an impressive clip of Full Self-Driving or an incident on the road, which could be lost if new footage was recorded.

This has now been changed, as Tesla has shown in the Release Notes for an upcoming Software Update in China. It will likely expand to the U.S. market in the coming weeks, and was first noticed by NotaTeslaApp.

The release notes state:

“Dashcam Dynamic Recording Duration – The dashcam dynamically adjusts the recording duration based on the available storage capacity of the connected USB drive. For example, with a 128 GB USB drive, the maximum recording duration is approximately 3 hours; with a 1 TB or larger USB drive, it can reach up to 24 hours. This ensures that as much video as possible is retained for review before it gets overwritten.”

Tesla Adds Dynamic Recording

Instead of having a 60-minute cap, the new system will now go off the memory in the USB drive. This means with:

  • 128 GB Jump Drive – Up to Three Hours of Rolling Footage
  • 1TB Jump Drive – Up to 24 Hours of Rolling Footage

This is dependent on the amount of storage available on the jump drive, meaning that if there are other things saved on it, it will take away from the amount of footage that can be retained.

While the feature is just now making its way to employees in China, it will likely be at least several weeks before it makes its way to the U.S., but owners should definitely expect it in the coming months.

It will be a welcome feature, especially as there will now be more customization to the number of clips and their duration that can be stored.

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