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SpaceX teases more Starship flight tests “in the days ahead”
A SpaceX engineer hosting the company’s recent record-breaking Starlink launch told viewers to “stay tuned for additional [Starship] test flights in the days ahead.”
Spoken during a segue focused on Starship’s first fully successful landing days prior, the senior SpaceX employee’s choice of words could scarcely have been more intriguing and wide-open to interpretation. Ever since Starship SN15 stuck the landing on May 5th, the ~50-meter (~165 ft) tall steel rocket has taken a small but noteworthy departure from partial prototypes SN5 and SN6 – both of which survived short hop tests last year.
Unlike Starship SN5 and SN6, which both took two full days to safe, SpaceX recovery teams were able to approach full-size prototype SN15 less than four hours after touchdown and an adjacent highway was opened to the public just half a day after that. More importantly, as of May 11th, Starship SN15 has effectively been ready for transport for five days.
Unlike any prior Starship test, Starship SN15 was the first vehicle to test out a new custom-built transporter that also serves a purpose similar to the Octagrabber robots SpaceX uses to secure landed Falcon boosters at sea. It’s unclear how exactly the jig works but it appears to separate into two pieces – both attached to a pair of self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) – that can then encircle a landed Starship and be bolted together.
In that sense, just like Octagrabber allows SpaceX to secure Falcon boosters without a crane, SpaceX’s new Boca Chica recovery jig allows it to secure landed Starships without having to attach a crane and lift a rocket with unknown structural integrity. Technically, once that recovery jig is in place around Starship and the rocket is firmly secured to it, there’s nothing preventing SpaceX from immediately transporting it elsewhere. SN5 and SN6 went back to SpaceX’s Starship factory almost immediately after they were craned onto transporters.
That process also required landing leg removal, which involved a crane lifting SN5 and SN6 and workers carefully balancing the rocket on jack stands to gain access. With SN15, that new jig meant that SpaceX could lift the Starship with the transporters’ own hydraulic leveling systems, removing the need for a crane. Thanks to that improvement, the rocket’s legs were removed less than two days after landing.
However, beyond moving Starship SN15 from the edge of the landing zone to its center, SpaceX has yet to actually transport it anywhere more than four days after it was ready to roll. According to CEO Elon Musk, SpaceX “might try to refly SN15 soon” and the fact that the company still hasn’t transported Starship SN15 back to the build site seems to imply that Musk really meant “soon”.
In other words, there isn’t an obvious reason for SpaceX to keep Starship SN15 at the launch site unless the company believes that transporting it elsewhere would be counterproductive. Given that SpaceX has yet to install replacement landing legs on the rocket, it’s hard to guess the company’s plans for SN15, but it is clear that SpaceX itself is undecided. According to an excellent NASASpaceflight.com overview of where things currently stand, SpaceX is evaluating its next steps and options include reflying Starship SN15, rolling out Starship SN16 and flying that prototype “to a higher altitude,” or even jumping straight to “orbital testing” with a future Starship and a Super Heavy booster.
SpaceX’s webcast host hinting at multiple additional Starship launches “in the days ahead” has not helped to calm that storm of speculation and possibilities. As of May 11th, SpaceX has nevertheless scheduled a a road closure for an apparent transport to or from the launch pad. What transpires could easily end all speculation if Starship SN15 or SN16 wind up on the move, but it’s just as likely that SpaceX is simply preparing to move the latest of seven or eight custom-built propellant storage tanks to its growing orbital launch site.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
