News
SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 launch delayed until November as lull drags on
For unknown reasons, SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket launch has slipped from October to November, extending an already record-breaking lull in commercial US launch activity.
Depending on when SpaceX finally returns to flight, the company could have easily spent more than a quarter of 2019 between launches.
On August 7th, SpaceX successfully completed its most recent launch – orbiting Spacecom’s AMOS-17 communications satellite – and the company’s tenth orbital launch of 2019. Aside from two spectacular back-to-back Falcon Heavy launches in April and June and SpaceX’s first dedicated Starlink launch in May, 2019 has be a relatively normal year for SpaceX’s commercial launch business.
Shifting satellite sands
A comment made in September by SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell was nevertheless spot-on – 2019 has been a bit quieter than 2017 and 2018 and a large chunk of that slowdown can be reportedly explained by the lack of customer readiness. The satellites SpaceX’s paying customers have contracted launches for simply aren’t ready for flight.
In short, after finding its stride over the last two and a half years, SpaceX’s orbital launch capacity has grown to the point that it’s nearly outpacing the world’s commercial satellite manufacturing capabilities: SpaceX can launch them faster than the established industry can build them.
Although SpaceX’s unexpected 2019 launch lull is likely more of a perfect storm and coincidence than anything, it may still be a sign of things to come in the next decade and beyond. Annual orders for large geostationary communications satellites – representing a substantial share of the global launch market – reached their lowest levels ever in 2017 and 2018, a trend that appears likely to continue almost indefinitely.
Those often massive satellites tend to cost nine figures ($100M+), weigh at least several metric tons, and are designed with a failure-is-not-an-option attitude that has inflated their complexity and price tags to dysfunctional levels.
The Small-ening
SpaceX is undeniably aware of this trend, caused in large part by the growing commercial aversion (at least for new entrants) of putting all one’s eggs in an incredibly large and expensive satellite basket. Smaller satellites – be it in low Earth orbit, geostationary orbits, or even interplanetary space – are now largely viewed as the way forward for companies interested in commercializing spaceflight. Large spacecraft certainly still have their place and many industry stalwarts are extremely reluctant to part ways with the established standard of big communications satellites, but small is almost unequivocally the future.
SpaceX is clearly onboard and has become the only launch services company in history to pursue plans to build, launch, and operate its own satellite constellation, known as Starlink. In a beta test at an unprecedented scale, SpaceX launched its first 60 Starlink satellite prototypes in May and has since been working to finalize designs and aggressively ramp up production.
SpaceX’s current plans for Starlink involve a constellation of nearly 12,000 satellites, potentially growing to 40,000+ well down the road. SpaceX much launch approximately half of those satellites by November 2023 and all of them by November 2027, a feat that will require the company to build and launch spacecraft at a rate unprecedented in the history of commercial space.
Shotwell indicated at the same September 2019 conference that SpaceX’s goal was to launch as many Starlink missions as possible while attempting to avoid disrupting the schedules of its commercial launch customers. In fact, the launch expected to end SpaceX’s 2019 launch lull was and still is a Starlink mission, the first flight of 60 finalized ‘v1.0’ satellites.
For unknown reasons probably related SpaceX’s relatively recent entrance into satellite manufacturing, that ‘Starlink-1’ launch (and 1-3 more expected to occur in quick succession) has slipped from a relatively firm October 17th planning date to late-October, and now has a tentative launch target sometime in November. Pending mission success, a second launch (‘Starlink-2’) could follow as early as November or December, while SpaceX also plans to launch Crew Dragon’s In-Flight Abort (IFA) as early as late-November, Cargo Dragon’s CRS-19 mission NET December 4th, and the Kacific-1 communications satellite in mid-December.
Check out Teslarati’s Marketplace! We offer Tesla accessories, including for the Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Model 3.
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”
