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SpaceX rings in the New Year with preparations for first Falcon 9 launch of 2020
SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 launch of 2020 – and the new decade – is just around the corner after drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) departed Port Canaveral on Monday to prepare for its 27th booster landing attempt.
Known as Starlink-2, SpaceX’s first launch of the new year slipped a handful of days from December 30th to January 3rd and finally January 6th and will be the company’s second launch of 60 upgraded Starlink v1.0 satellites, as well as the third dedicated Starlink launch overall. Just one of potentially dozens of SpaceX launches planned in 2020, the year is setting up to be – by a long shot – the company’s most ambitious year ever.
Meanwhile, Starlink-2 alone is set to ring in at least two significant milestones, pushing the nascent broadband internet constellation a step closer to serving customers and Falcon 9 reusability a step closer to being fully realized.
Drone ship OCISLY departed Port Canaveral on December 30th and is now being towed some 630 km (390 mi) downrange to Falcon 9’s planned Atlantic Ocean recovery location. SpaceX’s first launch and landing of 2020 will also be the three-year-old drone ship’s 27th attempted Falcon booster recovery and – hopefully – 23rd successful recovery.
Simultaneously, SpaceX technicians are in the midst of preparing other recovery fleet assets for what appears to be a partial fairing recovery attempt. Twin fairing catchers Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief debuted on their first simultaneous fairing catch attempt in December 2019 but each unfortunately missed their catches, instead picking up the floating fairing halves off the surface of the Atlantic and returning to port on December 18th.
The fairing halves were thus still successfully recovered and may be able to fly again on a future Starlink mission, but both fairing recovery ships suffered damage during their first simultaneous deployment. Ms. Tree suffered minimal damage in the form of tears to its secondary net – an easy fix – but Ms. Chief was not as lucky and somehow lost one of the two white booms that support each of her four arms.
That wounded arm was visibly hanging lower than its companions when Ms. Chief returned to port and technicians have since removed all of her arms, presumably evaluating whether the ordeal overstressed any components or caused significant damage.
Unsurprisingly, Ms. Chief will reportedly not take part in the fairing recovery portion of SpaceX’s imminent Starlink-2 launch, although it’s starting to look like Ms. Tree will be able to attempt a catch. SpaceX will still attempt to extract both fairing halves from the Atlantic even if the catch attempt fails and appears to be preparing GO Navigator to recover the half that would have otherwise been assigned to Ms. Chief.
Two milestones, one launch
As implied by the Starlink-2 title, SpaceX’s first launch of 2020 will feature the third batch of 60 Starlink satellites. Excluding 9 Starlink v0.9 satellites that have been intentionally lowering their orbits over the last several months to hasten reentry, this will give SpaceX a constellation of at least 170 operational satellites less than eight months after the company began launching the satellites.
This may not immediately seem significant but 170 operational satellites in orbit could make Starlink the world’s largest satellite constellation and SpaceX the world’s largest constellation operator. The only known competitor that comes close is Planet Labs, an Earth observation company believed to have approximately 150-170 operational satellites in orbit – most of which are 5-10 kg (10-20 lb) ‘Doves’ roughly the size of a loaf of bread.
Put another way, after Starlink-2, SpaceX will have around 45 metric tons (100,000 lb) of functional Starlink satellites in orbit, a constellation mass probably only rivaled by major geostationary commsat operators, global navigation satellites, and a few other high-value military constellations.
Meanwhile, according to NASASpaceflight.com, SpaceX has assigned Falcon 9 booster B1049.3 to its Starlink-2 mission, meaning that the launch will mark the second time that a single SpaceX rocket has flown four orbital-class missions. This follows on the footsteps of the November 11th, 2019 Starlink-1 launch, which saw Falcon 9 B1048 become the first booster to fly four times.
At this point, SpaceX has two additional Starlink launches scheduled in January and has plans for as many as 38 orbital launches throughout 2020. To complete that incredibly ambitious manifest, SpaceX will have to dig deep into its fleet of reusable rockets, meaning that Falcon 9 B1049’s imminent fourth launch is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg. Falcon 9 B1049 is scheduled to launch SpaceX’s Starlink-2 mission no earlier than (NET) 9:20 pm ET, January 6th (02:20 UTC, Jan 7).
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Elon Musk says SpaceX will finally retire Falcon 9 once Starship flies reliably every week.
Elon Musk gave the clearest timeline yet for retiring Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket.
The comment came in a reply on X, where Musk wrote that “once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to shift super scarce SpaceX engineering and production resources to Starship to get launch rate to several times per day, which means winding down Falcon.” He was responding to physicist Casey Handmer, who noted that NASA is reportedly uneasy about SpaceX phasing out Falcon after building what Handmer called the most successful launcher ever, with the fleet nearing 1,000 total launches.
Now @SciGuySpace reports NASA is in a tizzy because after running the most successful launcher ever for more than a decade and nearing 1000 launches, @SpaceX is planning to retire Falcon in favor of Starship in a few years.
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$19.99 USDSorry, NASA, you’ve had 15 years to burn down the… https://t.co/uCNoMwK0v9
— Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer) August 22, 2026
Falcon 9 is still SpaceX’s busiest vehicle by far. The company is on pace for roughly 140 to 145 Falcon flights this year, following 165 in 2025, president Gwynne Shotwell told Time earlier in 2026. She has already said Falcon flights would “tail off” as Starship comes online, while reports indicate that SpaceX has stopped booking new Falcon 9 launches past 2028 and halted production of some expendable Falcon hardware, according to Bloomberg.
It’s worth noting that Musk’s post is a condition, and not a countdown on when Falcon will retire. Starship has not yet flown weekly, let alone daily. Its most recent flight in July ended with a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, a milestone Musk pointed to earlier this month when he said the vehicle’s heat shield problem was effectively solved. SpaceX towed that ship to Christmas Island for inspection, and the next flight, Flight 14, is aimed at putting Starship into orbit for the first time. A tower catch attempt for the upper stage has been pushed back to what Musk has called “a few months” away.
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
The gap between Falcon’s role today and Starship’s promised role tomorrow matters most to NASA. Falcon and its Dragon capsule remain the only way the agency rotates astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and Starship is not certified to carry NASA crews. Musk’s post did not address how that handoff would work if Falcon winds down before a crew-rated Starship variant exists. The timing lines up with Musk’s other recent Starship comments. Two days before the Falcon post, he told a different X user that SpaceX is aiming for more than 30 Starship launches a day by 2030, or roughly 10,000 a year, a figure tied to the Trump administration’s new push for higher national launch cadence. Falcon, which took over a decade to reach its first 100 launches, was never built to approach that kind of volume.
For now, Falcon 9 keeps flying at a near-record pace while Starship works to prove it can do the job Musk has already picked out for it.
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
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$19.99 USDStill tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3
