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SpaceX launches 3000th Starlink satellite
SpaceX has successfully launched its 3000th Starlink satellite as part of Falcon 9’s 54th dedicated mission for the low Earth orbit (LEO) internet constellation.
After high upper-level winds forced SpaceX to call off a launch attempt three hours prior, Falcon 9 lifted off from NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Launch Complex 39A at 10:14 pm EDT (02:14 UTC), carrying another 52 new Starlink V1.5 satellites inside the rocket’s flight-proven payload fairing. Like the fairing halves, both of which had already supported two orbital-class launches, the Falcon 9 booster (B1073) SpaceX assigned to the mission was also flying for the third time.
For the most part, Falcon 9 performed nominally. The booster lifted an expendable upper stage and the enclosed payload most of the way out of Earth’s atmosphere before separating and heading back to Earth. Falcon 9’s upper stage was as perfect as ever, boosting the Starlink stack the rest of the way into a low and elliptical parking orbit, where it eventually spun itself end over end and deployed all 52 satellites at once.
Falcon 9 booster B1073 made it through its reentry and landing burns without issue and safely touched down on drone ship A Shortfall Of Gravitas (ASOG) about nine minutes after liftoff. While that landing was ultimately a success, B1073’s accuracy was not exactly flawless and the booster came to a halt with two of its four legs unusually close to the edge of the drone ship’s deck. Had the booster missed the bullseye by just 5-10 more feet, it could have easily landed with one or two feet off the deck and tipped into the Atlantic.
Nonetheless, the landing was successful and SpaceX should have no issue recovering the booster. In any other context, it would barely be worth noting, but flawless Starlink launches with near-bullseye landings have become such a frequent and routine occurrence that any departure from that norm has become interesting.
Starlink 4-26 (referring to the 26th batch of Group or Shell 4 satellites) was SpaceX’s 54th dedicated Starlink launch overall and 21st Starlink launch in 2022 alone. The mission also carried SpaceX’s 3000th Starlink satellite into orbit, a milestone so far removed from the next largest satellite constellation that it’s now more reasonable to compare Starlink to every other satellite currently in orbit. Of the 3009 Starlink satellites SpaceX has now successfully launched since 2018, 2750 are still in orbit. Assuming all 52 Starlink 4-26 satellites are healthy, astrophysicist and space object tracker Jonathan McDowell estimates that SpaceX has 2714 working satellites in orbit.
Excluding 75 prototype satellites launched over the years, all but 5 of which have since deorbited, 92.3% of all operational Starlink satellites launched by SpaceX since November 2019 are still working in orbit. While Starlink V1.0’s 7.7% satellite failure rate is far from desirable, SpaceX has made clear progress with its V1.5 design, which began launching in September 2021. Excluding 38 satellites that were lost when a solar storm caused Earth’s atmosphere to expand, unexpectedly increasing drag to uncontrollable levels, only 10 of the 1218 Starlink V1.5 satellites SpaceX has launched have failed and prematurely reentered for technical reasons – a failure rate of 0.9%.
If SpaceX’s V1.5 satellites continue to demonstrate excellent reliability as they reach ages similar to their V1.0 predecessors, it will bode well for the sustainability and predictability of current and future Starlink constellations. Meanwhile, the roughly 2270 Starlink satellites that are currently operational continue to deliver internet services to hundreds of thousands of customers in countries around the world, improving the lives of countless people.
According to Next Spaceflight, SpaceX has up to five more Starlink launches scheduled this month as it continues to relentlessly pursue a record-breaking launch cadence with its Falcon 9 rocket. Up next, Starlink 3-3 could launch from California as early as August 12th. Photographer Ben Cooper reports that another East Coast Starlink mission is working towards a “mid-August” launch soon after.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming
Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.
Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.
In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”
The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”
Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner
SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.
Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.
The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.
It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”
The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.
Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.
Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.
Big news! SpaceX is introducing a new @Starlink for Communities program that lets you earn money by providing Starlink internet to your neighbors or people nearby, who can pay for access by the hour, day, week, or month.
Neighbors pay for the access they need, while the person… pic.twitter.com/DtOUs0Ekvt
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 1, 2026
The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.
A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.
Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.
Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.
Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.
The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.
Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.
The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.
Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.
Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.
The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.
2026.38 just dropped.
Model 3 gets Dynamic Headlight Leveling — low beams auto-aim around traffic for max visibility, less glare. Model 3 / Y (AMD HW3) also pick up sharper Tesla visuals + an enhanced park scene on the center display.
Legacy Intel cars get Supercharger Site… pic.twitter.com/45ac4AH6Vs
— Frunk To Trunk (@FrunkToTrunk) September 30, 2026
Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.
When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.
Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.
The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.
Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.
For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.
Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming
Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing
