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SpaceX installs two Starship wings ahead of Elon Musk’s Saturday update

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is just six days away from giving an updated Starship presentation and the company is working relentlessly to get the spacecraft as close to a finished product as possible.

In the last 48 hours, this burst of effort was marked (most notably) by the installation of two of Starship Mk1’s actuating fins/wings, revealing a definite departure from the design Musk and SpaceX revealed almost exactly a year ago. Musk took to Twitter this morning to partially describe some of those design changes and the reasoning behind them.

Musk confirmed that the current design will involve several legs attached to the rear of Starship, separating the fin-leg combination shown in previous tripod-fin renders. Intriguingly, Musk expressed that he has not fully “bought into” this updated design, motivated by analyses that indicated that separating the legs and fins would actually be a lighter solution than combining them. This is certainly unintuitive, but it’s extremely encouraging to hear that Musk is seriously trusting and bowing to the educated opinions of some of the extremely skilled engineers that SpaceX is known for.

Like the circa-2018 design, Starship 2019 will feature two actuating wings/fins near its rear and another two canard-like control surfaces near the nose. A third non-functional fin may or may not serve as a leg in the 2019 design. Those control surfaces will work in concert with “very rapid movement[s]” to ensure the stability of Starship during reentry and atmospheric operations, as well as ensuring that the spacecraft can safely and stably land on a variety of surfaces.

Starship, featuring its circa-2018 tripod fin/leg design, is pictured reentering Earth’s atmosphere. (SpaceX)

The new legs look quite a bit different as a result of the design change. As the two actuating fins no longer have to reach the ground and double as landing legs, they can be quite a bit smaller and situated further above Starship’s engine section and rear. It’s possible that the stubby fins will have tips attached at their ends to produce a more triangular shape, but we are now heading into unknown terrain until Musk or SpaceX provide updated renders, likely to come later this week.

SpaceX’s spectacular Starship Mk1 prototype is pictured here on September 22nd, just after the second fin’s installation. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)

Of note, based on observations of inactivity at SpaceX’s Cocoa, Florida Starship facilities, it appears that the company is wholly prioritizing Starship Mk1 in order to get the spacecraft prototype as close to finished as possible over the next several days. Work on Starship Mk2, pictured below, appears to have more or less been paused, almost certainly indicating that SpaceX has flown a large portion of its Florida-based workforce to Texas in a bid to expedite Starship Mk1’s assembly.

This is probably the result of CEO Elon Musk requesting that the spacecraft be nearly complete by the time he is supposed to present an updated design overview in Boca Chica, Texas. Knowing Musk, it’s likely that the event will be held with Starship Mk1 as a centerpiece, be it in several pieces or as a single, nearly-complete stack. Set to be livestreamed by SpaceX, that presentation is scheduled to occur on Saturday, September 28th.

Teslarati will be on the ground in Texas to cover the event live and in person. Stay tuned for updates in the coming days!

Check out Teslarati’s Marketplace! We offer Tesla accessories, including for the Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Model 3.

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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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Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade

Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.

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Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)
Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)

Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.

The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”

The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.

It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.

The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.

For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.

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Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next

Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.

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Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.

Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.

RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.

Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.

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Elon Musk roasts India’s billionaire Mukesh Ambani as Starlink fight heats up

Elon Musk sarcastically calls Mukesh Ambani ‘Prime Minister’ as the Starlink India standoff escalates again.

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Elon Musk escalated his public fight over Starlink’s launch in India on Friday, addressing Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani” in a sarcastic post on X. “Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India,” Musk wrote, before accusing Ambani of “monopolistic exploitation” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete.” In follow up posts, he said Starlink has proven essential during natural disasters and would help parts of India with no internet access.

The post came two days into a fight that Musk sparked up on Wednesday, when he said Starlink was “being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people.” He called it “a crime against the people of India” and left the names out, adding only, “You can guess who they are.” Jio and Airtel together hold more than 80% of India’s telecom market. On Thursday, Musk asked whether Ambani is “the real boss of India” and said Starlink has spent five years complying with “every single law and requirement” of the Indian government.

India’s government has pushed back each time. The Ministry of Communications called the suggestion that its framework is unfair or discriminatory “baseless and misconceived.” Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Friday that three companies hold satcom licenses: Starlink, Jio Satellite Communications, and Bharti backed Eutelsat OneWeb. Amazon’s Kuiper, now Amazon Leo, is still going through the process. None can launch until regulators finalize satellite spectrum pricing and the Home Ministry signs off on each company’s security compliance. Scindia said the telecom regulator and the Department of Telecommunications are close to a decision on pricing, The Hindu reported. Bharti chairman Sunil Mittal also said OneWeb is still waiting on approvals.

Starlink received its operator license in 2025 after a three year wait, and the space regulator IN-SPACe granted what industry executives called the last approval needed in July. The holdup since then centers on security, particularly concern that foreign operators could bypass Indian gateways.

Musk and Ambani have been on opposite sides of this before. In late 2024, Ambani argued for auctioning satellite spectrum, which Musk criticized as out of step with the rest of the world, and India chose administrative allocation instead. By March 2025, the two sides had signed a deal to sell Starlink devices in Reliance stores, and Starlink secured its telecom license that June. That partner is now also a competitor. Jio is reportedly weighing a constellation of 1,600 to 1,650 satellites costing an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion, while Akash Ambani has told shareholders Jio plans to lease capacity from global providers to move quickly.

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