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SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy launch may feature record-breaking center core landing

Falcon Heavy clears the top of the tower in a spectacular fashion during its debut launch. (Tom Cross/Pauline Acalin)

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Thanks to a temporary reopening of the US federal government, SpaceX was finally able to continue the process of filing FCC and FAA paperwork needed to acquire permits for upcoming launches, including Falcon Heavy.

One such filing related to the first operational Falcon Heavy launch has revealed a fairly impressive statistic: comprised of three first stage boosters, SpaceX indicated that Falcon Heavy’s center core will attempt to land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) nearly 1000 km (600 mi) away from its launch site, easily smashing the record for the greatest distance traveled by a Falcon booster in flight.

The same FCC filings also revealed a No Earlier Than (NET) launch date: March 7, 2019. Originally targeted for mid to late February, the complexity and logistical challenges of building, shipping, testing, and delivering two side boosters, a center core, one upper stage, and a payload fairing from SpaceX’s California factory to its Texas test facilities and Florida launch pad unsurprisingly took a small toll on the launch’s aspirational schedule. Nevertheless, if the launch data actually holds to March 7th, SpaceX will not have missed the mark by much considering that this Falcon Heavy – based on new and more powerful Block 5 boosters – is likely a significant departure from the Block 2/Block 3 hardware that has flight heritage from the triple-booster rocket’s Feb. 2018 launch debut.

The second (and third) flight of Falcon Heavy is even closer to reality as a new side booster heads to Florida after finishing static fire tests in Texas. (Reddit /u/e32revelry)

Just shy of a year after Falcon Heavy’s launch debut, it appears that the rocket’s second and third launches were pushed back by a fundamental lack of production capacity. In other words, SpaceX’s Hawthorne rocket factory simply had to focus on more critical priorities in the 6-9 months that followed the demo mission. At nearly the same time as Falcon Heavy was lifting off for the first time, SpaceX’s world-class production crew was in the midst of manufacturing the first upgraded Falcon 9 Block 5 booster (B1046) and wrapped up final checkouts just 10 days after Heavy’s Feb. 6 launch debut, sending the pathfinder rocket to McGregor, Texas for the first static fire of a Block 5 booster.

In the meantime, SpaceX’s decision to intentionally expend otherwise recoverable reused Falcon boosters after their second launches meant that the company’s fleet of flightworthy rockets was rapidly approaching zero, a move CEO Elon Musk specifically indicated was meant to make room for Block 5, the future (and final form) of the Falcon family. SpaceX’s busy 2018 launch manifest and multiple critical missions for the US government were thus balanced on the success, reliability, and rapid production of a serious number of Merlin engines, boosters, and upper stages. This included B1051 – the first explicitly crew-rated Falcon 9 – and B1054, the first SpaceX rocket rated to launch high-value US military (specifically Air Force) satellites. However, SpaceX also needed to produce a cadre of Falcon 9 boosters capable of easy reuse to support the dozen or so other commercial launches on the manifest.

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That gamble ultimately paid off, with Block 5 performing admirably and supporting a reasonable – if not record-breaking – rate of reuse. SpaceX successfully launched B1054 for the USAF, completed B1051 (now at Pad 39A awaiting NASA’s go-ahead), and built enough reusable Block 5 boosters to support nine additional commercial missions in 2018. In hindsight, barring an assumption of a truly miraculous and unprecedented Falcon booster production rate, Falcon Heavy’s next launches were almost guaranteed to occur no fewer than 6-12 months after the rocket’s launch debut – SpaceX’s entire launch business depended on building 5+ unrelated Falcon 9 boosters, while Falcon Heavy customers Arabsat and the USAF were unlikely to be swayed to launch on flight-proven hardware so early into Block 5’s career.

https://twitter.com/_TomCross_/status/1048483536917823488

All cylinders firing

Once Falcon 9 B1054 departed SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory (see above) in early October, it appears that the company’s production team pivoted directly to integrating and shipping the next three (or more) Falcon Heavy boosters back to back for the rocket’s second and third launches. The first new side booster departed the factory in mid-November, followed by a second side booster in early December and a (presumed but highly likely) center core at the turn of 2019. Both side boosters have been static-fired in Texas and are now at SpaceX’s Florida facilities, while the center core either just completed its Texas static fire testing or is already on its way East.

 

Once the center core and upper stage make their way to SpaceX’s Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A, the company’s technicians and engineers will be able to integrate the second Falcon Heavy to have ever existed in preparation for a critical static fire test. That could occur as early as February, although the launch debut of Crew Dragon (DM-1) – now NET March from Pad 39A after a relentless string of slips – will likely take precedence over Falcon Heavy and could thus directly interfere with its launch, as the launch pad and transporter/erector (T/E) has to undergo at least a few days of modifications to switch between Falcon 9 and Heavy.

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Regardless, the next two Falcon Heavy launches will be well worth the wait. SpaceX’s FCC filings indicate that the center core may travel nearly 1000 km (600 mi) East of Pad 39A to land on drone ship OCISLY after launch, smashing the previous record attempt – during the June 2016 launch of Eutelsat 117WB – of ~700 km (430 mi). That Falcon 9 booster – albeit a less-powerful Block 2 variant – was unsuccessful in its landing attempt, running out of oxidizer seconds before landing. Falcon Heavy’s debut center core also happened to suffer a wholly different but no less fatal anomaly during landing, causing it to miss the drone ship and slam into the Atlantic Ocean at almost half the speed of sound (300 mph/480 km/h).

Known for their rocket performance estimates, NASASpaceflight forum user “Orbiter” first pointed out the impressive distance – gathered by mapping coordinates included in SpaceX’s Jan. 28th FCC filing – and estimated that the Falcon Heavy center booster flying a trajectory as implied could be traveling as fast as ~3.5 km/s (2.2 mi/s) at main engine cut-off (MECO), the point at which the booster separates from the upper stage and fairing. This would be a nearly unprecedented velocity for any Falcon booster, let alone a booster with plans to land after launch. Falcon 9 MECO typically occurs at velocities between 1.5 and 2.5 km/s for recoverable missions, while even the recent expendable GPS III launch saw F9 S1’s engines cut off around 2.7 km/s.

Whether that MECO velocity estimate is correct, Falcon Heavy’s NET March launch of the ~6000 kg (13,300 lb) Arabsat 6A satellite is likely to be an exceptionally hot reentry and recovery for the center core, while the rocket’s duo of side boosters will attempt a repeat of the debut mission’s spectacular double-landing at LZ-1.


Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes!

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming

Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.

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Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.

In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”

The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”

Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner

SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.

Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.

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The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.

It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”

The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.

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Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing

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(Credit: Starlink | X)

Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.

Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.

Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.

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The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.

A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.

Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.

Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.

Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.

The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.

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Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration

Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.

The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.

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Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update

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Credit: @jojje167 on X

Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.

Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.

The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.

Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.

When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.

Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.

The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.

Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.

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For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.

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