News
SpaceX sends OneWeb satellites to orbit on 55th launch of 2022
SpaceX has successfully launched the first of at least three missions for Starlink competitor OneWeb, completing its 55th launch of the year in the process.
Hopefully ending a strange series of delays that began last month, Falcon 9 lifted off from SpaceX’s NASA Kennedy Space Center LC-39A pad several days behind schedule on December 8th, 2022. The rocket performed perfectly, ascending for about nine minutes to reach a parking orbit around 400 kilometers (~300 mi) above Earth’s surface. B1069, Falcon 9’s flight-proven booster, shut down, separated from the upper stage, flipped around with cold-gas thrusters, and began boosting back to the Florida coast two and a half minutes after liftoff.
Thanks to the launch’s timing, which happened moments after sunset, B1069 first experienced sunset on the ground, ascended back into the light after liftoff, and finally experienced a second sunset while racing back to Earth – all beautifully captured by SpaceX tracking cameras. Eight minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9 booster touched down on SpaceX’s LZ-1 landing pad, completing its fourth orbital-class launch in 12 months. Around the same time, Falcon 9’s upper stage reached orbit.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
An hour after liftoff, the upper stage ignited a second time to circularize its parking orbit. Its payload – a record 40 OneWeb satellites weighing roughly 6.5 metric tons (~14,300 lb) – was then deployed in two sets of 13 and one set of 14 over the next half hour, after which the upper stage likely performed a deorbit burn to ensure it doesn’t become space debris.
For its own Starlink internet constellation, SpaceX routinely launches 54+ satellites – weighing almost 17 tons (~37,000 lb) – at once, demonstrating the kind of efficiency that can be achieved when a satellite is explicitly designed to use as much of Falcon 9’s performance as possible. To some extent, OneWeb did something similar, but for a different rocket. OneWeb’s far more traditional 150-kilogram (~330 lb) satellites were loosely designed to launch on Russia’s Soyuz 2.1 after the company purchased up to 21 of the rockets for $1-1.5 billion in 2015.
But their more traditional hollow-box design and traditional cylindrical payload dispenser means they take up as much or more space than Starlink satellites despite weighing 50-100% less. OneWeb says each satellite provides up to 7 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bandwidth, while each Starlink V1 satellite appears to have about 20 Gbps.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, OneWeb directly competes with SpaceX’s far larger Starlink internet constellation, and refused to engage with the company for launch services – even though Falcon 9 could have likely deployed its satellites more quickly and efficiently – until it was forced to.
“The only reason OneWeb agreed to launch a small subset of its first-generation satellites on SpaceX rockets was a series of egregious actions from Russia that made the pair’s exclusive arrangement too toxic to continue. In June 2015, just 16 months after Russia illegally invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and Donbas regions, OneWeb chose to tie itself at the hip to the unstable aggressor with a firm $1-1.5 billion contract that committed the entirety of its first satellite constellation to 21 Russian Soyuz rockets.
OneWeb nearly escaped consequences from that dubious decision. But in February 2022, Russia doubled down on eight years of small-scale war and Ukrainian occupation with a full-scale, gloves-off invasion with explicit genocidal intent. Europe eventually responded in part with economic sanctions and military supplies that Russia did not appreciate. In response, Russia took a batch of 36 OneWeb satellites hostage, stole the Soyuz rocket OneWeb had already paid for, and killed any possibility of the company completing the six or seven Soyuz launches left under its Arianespace contract. In September 2022, OneWeb announced that it had written off a loss of $229 million as a result of those stolen satellites and rockets.”
Teslarati.com — December 6th, 2022
OneWeb was thus forced to either accept major delays while waiting for European launch options or look elsewhere. OneWeb was able to secure two contracts for India LVM3 rockets, each carrying 36 satellites, but the company chose SpaceX – the only Western launch provider in the world with large amounts of near-term capacity to spare – to launch three batches of 40 satellites.
After its first SpaceX launch, OneWeb should have 500 working satellites in orbit. Another LVM3 launch and two Falcon 9 launches should leave the company with 616 of 648 planned satellites in orbit. It’s unclear how OneWeb intends to launch the 32 remaining satellites.
OneWeb Flight 15 was SpaceX’s 55th successful launch of 2022, leaving the company just five launches away from achieving a 60-launch target set by CEO Elon Musk in March. Following an unintentional 12-day gap between launches caused by several delays, it’s no longer clear if SpaceX can hit that target. SpaceX has never launched later than December 23rd, and it’s extremely unlikely that the company will be able to launch five more times in the next 15 days. Even if it can break through that apparent barrier, it’s also almost impossible to imagine that SpaceX will be able to launch five more times before the end of the year if each mission continues to suffer days or weeks of technical delays.
Originally scheduled to lift off on November 22nd, 29th, 30th, and December 7th, SpaceX’s next mission – carrying a private Japanese Moon lander – is scheduled to launch no earlier than December 11th. After HAKUTO-R, Spaceflight Now reports that SpaceX has another four launches tentatively scheduled this month.
Rewatch SpaceX’s first OneWeb launch here.
Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
