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SpaceX launches 90th orbital mission of the year

Falcon 9 launching a Starlink mission from SLC-40 (Credit Richard Angle)

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Just after midnight at 12:07 am ET (05:07 UTC), 23 V2 mini Starlink satellites were lofted into space from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The Falcon 9 with the Group 6-33 Starlink satellites launched to the Southeast to insert them into the same 43-degree orbital inclination as previous Group 6 missions.

As with the recent prior missions for Group 6, the satellites deployed from the 2nd stage just over an hour after lift-off, with this launch, 5,559 Starlinks have been launched into orbit since 2018, including the first two prototypes, Tintin A and B. Of those, 4,530 are in their operational orbits, with more joining the ranks as they undergo their checkouts and raise themselves to the proper orbits. Of these 4,530, 327 are the V2 mini variant capable of handling ~4x more bandwidth than the older generation, according to Jonathan McDowell’s Starlink statistics site.

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The Falcon 9 that was assigned to this mission was Booster 1077, which took a trip to space and back for the 9th time. B1077 last launched 37 days ago and has now launched 4 Starlink missions, Crew 5 and CRS-28 to the ISS, and 3 communications satellites. The Falcon 9 made a soft touchdown on the droneship “Just Read the Instructions” following its portion of the mission.

This was also a pretty rapid turnaround for SLC 40, with it being just over 4 days since the last launch. The current record for SLC 40 is 3 days and 22 hours between launches.

If SpaceX is able to get their launch pad turnaround time between launches down even a bit, that will not only help them accomplish their goal of 100 launches this year but also put them in a position to exceed that in 2024. While the pad turnaround time is definitely something the SpaceX ground team is capable of, they are still a bit limited when it comes to recovering boosters as the wait for a Falcon 9 to return on a droneship is around 3 days with good weather and it takes a few days for the droneships to return back to landing areas in the Atlantic or Pacific ocean. If SpaceX is able to further utilize the return to launch site capability of the Falcon, that will put them in a much better position to far exceed 100 launches next year.

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Next up for SpaceX is another early morning launch, this time a Starlink mission no earlier than December 8th at 12 am PT (08:00 UTC), and the Falcon Heavy is still targeting the evening of December 10th.

Questions or comments? Shoot me an email at rangle@teslarati.com, or Tweet me @RDAnglePhoto.

Launch journalist, specializing in launch photography. Based on the Space Coast, a short drive from Cape Canaveral and the SpaceX launch pads.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy

The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.

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Ministério Das Comunicações, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.

The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.

X’s updates to its updates

As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks. 

“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.

The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.

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xAI and X

X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award. 

As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.

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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award

The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards

The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close. 

MotorTrend reverses course

MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.

According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.

Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.

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High cost and high capability

MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.

Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.

Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.

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Elon Musk’s Grokipedia surges to 5.6M articles, almost 79% of English Wikipedia

The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago.

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UK Government, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia has grown to an impressive 5,615,201 articles as of today, closing in on 79% of the English Wikipedia’s current total of 7,119,376 articles. 

The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago. Needless to say, it would only be a matter of time before Grokipedia exceeds English Wikipedia in sheer volume.

Grokipedia’s rapid growth

xAI’s vision for Grokipedia emphasizes neutrality, while Grok’s reasoning capabilities allow for fast drafting and fact-checking. When Elon Musk announced the initiative in late September 2025, he noted that Grokipedia would be an improvement to Wikipedia because it would be designed to avoid bias. 

At the time, Musk noted that Grokipedia “is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”

Grokipedia was launched in late October, and while xAI was careful to list it only as Version 0.1 at the time, the online encyclopedia immediately earned praise. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger highlighted the project’s innovative approach, noting how it leverages AI to fill knowledge gaps and enable rapid updates. Netizens also observed how Grokipedia tends to present articles in a more objective manner compared to Wikipedia, which is edited by humans.

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Elon Musk’s ambitious plans

With 5,615,201 total articles, Grokipedia has now grown to almost 79% of English Wikipedia’s article base. This is incredibly quick, though Grokipedia remains text-only for now. xAI, for its part, has now updated the online encyclopedia’s iteration to v0.2. 

Elon Musk has shared bold ideas for Grokipedia, including sending a record of the entire knowledge base to space as part of xAI’s mission to preserve and expand human understanding. At some point, Musk stated that Grokipedia will be renamed to Encyclopedia Galactica, and it will be sent to the cosmos

“When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote, adding in a later post that “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”

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