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SpaceX’s ninth Starlink launch gets a boost from first all-women weather crew
SpaceX’s second Starlink launch of the month is currently tracking towards a June 13th liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In order for a rocket launch to get off the ground, however, a perfect mix of ingredients must come together. One of the most crucial ingredients is the weather. Behind the scenes, the U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron of the 45th Space Wing Operations Group – based out of Patrick Air Force Base – works diligently to monitor and predict weather conditions leading up to and at the time of liftoff. Every rocket launch that lifts off from Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Air Force Station utilizes the weather monitoring services provided by the 45th Weather Squadron and SpaceX – the most prolific US launch company is – no different.
For SpaceX’s upcoming Starlink V1 L8 Rideshare Program mission, the entire weather team on console is female, a first in program history. The team is made up of six women all responsible for specific roles that must coordinate and work cohesively to monitor the weather and determine when it is safe to launch the Falcon 9.
The diverse team is comprised of military personnel and civilian weather officers. It is overseen by Maj Emily Graves, Launch Weather Commander, and orchestrated by Capt. Nancy Zimmerman, Launch Weather Director. A Lead Launch Weather Officer, Arlena Moses, coordinates information between the launch customer, SpaceX, and the 45th while three other members constantly monitor and decipher mountains of weather data.
Airman 1st class Hannah Mulcahey serves as Duty Forecaster and Jessica Williams serves as Radar Launch Weather Officer. Williams is responsible for monitoring information produced by a series of systems every three minutes. She monitors radar data for the amount of precipitation, clouds that are present in the area, and the thickness of the clouds among other things. This information is used to determine whether or not the rocket’s flight path is safe for the duration of the mission. Thick clouds can be an indicator of an unstable atmosphere capable of producing electricity – either naturally as cloud produced lightning or lightning produced by a rocket thrusting through the unstable atmosphere called triggered lightning.
Should radar information be too ambiguous or overexaggerated, the Reconnaissance Launch Weather Officer, Melody Lovin, coordinates the mission with a reconnaissance aircraft known as Weather One. For SpaceX’s upcoming launch, Weather One will only be activated if there is going to be bad weather present for launch, a small possibility if the launch date slips. Other launch customers such as NASA or United Launch Alliance will sometimes have Weather One in the air on standby throughout the duration of the countdown to launch dependent on mission constraints.
When Launch Weather Director, Capt Nancy Zimmerman, was asked during a media teleconference about how this historical assignment came about, she stated that it was pure coincidence. “It was happenstance. The flight commander of space lift, my supervisor, actually created a team, as he always does, and was like ‘Huh, this is actually an all-female team. Have we ever done this?’ And looking back through the database, you know, it hasn’t been done and he was like ‘Well, should we do this?’ and I said ‘Yes, let’s do it.’” Zimmerman said .
A primary factor enabling an all-female led launch weather team is simply that the workforce of the 45th Weather Squadron is now comprised of more females than ever before. According to Lovin, “We simply have more women on the team. Before we only had one and that was from the year 2000 to 2018 and 2018 came around and a lot of resident launch weather officers left and they also decided to expand the unit.” She went on to state that the massive uptick in launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center was a driving factor of the weather unit expansion, “when they expanded the unit they hired three more women, so that means we have six women on the team.”
The personnel of the 45th Weather Squadron work day in and day out to monitor and forecast weather conditions ensuring safe air and space operation all year round. When it comes to rocket launches, watching the weather begins early and is done frequently. Weather patterns in central Florida can change rapidly causing a rocket launch attempt to be scrubbed completely, which is what occurred with SpaceX’s first attempt to launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station.
Understanding and tracking developing weather patterns of central Florida allows the 45th Weather Squadron to create launch mission execution forecasts that outline a possibility of violation (POV) of specific launch weather constraints ahead of a launch attempt and any planned backup attempts. These comprehensive forecasts cover everything from systems like frontal boundaries that influence area weather to the type of clouds expected at the time of launch. The forecasts are put together based on a series of ten Lightning Launch Commit Criteria rules and a series of user-defined constraint rules that are specific to each mission and launch vehicle such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V for example.
The ten lightning launch commit criteria rules have been in place since the 1980s when an Atlas-Centaur rocket was ultimately lost due to triggered lightning. The rocket launched into a highly unstable and electrified atmosphere full of thick clouds creating the conditions necessary to trigger a lightning strike of the vehicle. It lost its navigation system and began to dangerously veer from its course. It was then destroyed in-flight by launch teams.
Given the high degree of uncertainty of Florida weather, a well-versed team of highly trained weather professionals is a necessary piece of the puzzle that is rocket launching. For the first time, that team is made up of incredibly inspiring females that undoubtedly will make the correct GO/NO GO call on launch day.
For SpaceX’s first Starlink SmallSat Rideshare Program mission, targeted to launch no earlier than (NET) Saturday, June 13 at 5:21 a.m. EDT (09:21 UTC), the 45th Weather Squadron team predicts a 30% chance of violation – meaning that weather is 70% GO for launch. The primary concern is a bank of cumulus clouds expected to be in the area. You can view the full launch mission execution forecast on the 45th Weather Squadron’s website.
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News
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
News
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
Tesla ended its Semi event with a Roadster teaser revealing a new front light bar.
Tesla closed out its Semi event in Nevada on Thursday night with a nod to its own history, dropping a short Roadster teaser that suggests the production car will look noticeably different from the prototype first shown in 2017.
“We can’t have a Semi event without the Roadster,” Tesla engineering executive Lars Moravy told the crowd before the clip played. The line was a deliberate callback. Tesla first revealed the next generation Roadster in November 2017 by driving it out of the back of a Semi trailer at the truck’s original unveiling in Hawthorne, California.
The new video opens on trailer doors swinging apart in the dark. A thin white light bar glows across what appears to be the nose of the car, Tesla and SpaceX logos flash over the frame, and the Roadster name appears before the clip ends on “See you next week.” Tesla posted the nine second clip on X after the livestream wrapped.
See you next week pic.twitter.com/BT52bGVxFu
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 25, 2026
The light bar is the most concrete design detail so far. The 2017 prototype used two separate curved headlamp pods, while a connected front light strip would bring the Roadster in line with the Cybertruck, Cybercab, Semi, and refreshed Model Y. Sawyer Merritt was among the first to point out what looked like part of a SpaceX logo in the video, something Tesla has not addressed.
That logo fits the buildup around the optional SpaceX Package, which Elon Musk has long said would use cold gas thrusters to improve acceleration and possibly allow the car to briefly leave the ground. Tesla’s “Go for launch” post on September 12 set the October 1 date, and invitations sent to reservation holders place the event in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Waco sits roughly 20 minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA has put a temporary flight restriction in place from September 18 through October 2, covering a 1.5 nautical mile radius from the surface up to 10,000 feet.
Tesla is also taking money ahead of the reveal. The company reopened Roadster reservations earlier this week with a $5,000 refundable card payment, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. That puts buyers at $50,000 committed before Tesla has published a price.
The original pitch set a high bar: 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds before any upgrades, 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and production in 2020. That timeline has slipped repeatedly, and Tesla has since pointed to production at Gigafactory Texas no earlier than 2027. The company has said next Thursday’s event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets, the three details original reservation holders have been waiting on for nearly nine years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s release in Europe is set to be delayed by at least a few months.
The European Union will not vote on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on October 6. The draft agenda for the 119th meeting of the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles lists only a 25-minute “continuation of discussions” on the Netherlands’ Article 39 request, not a decision. The next scheduled TCMV session is in December, which is now the earliest date a bloc-wide vote could occur.
Tesla Europe had pointed to October 6 as a possible EU-wide vote after the Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted the first European type approval on April 10.
That approval, under UN Regulation 171 plus an Article 39 exemption in EU Regulation 2018/858, is the legal file other member states have been recognizing one by one. The same committee has already discussed the request twice without voting.
Elon Musk’s reply to the delay was a single word: “Sigh.”
Sigh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2026
Seven EU countries have now cleared FSD Supervised on their own roads: the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia. Those seven states represent about 53 million people, or roughly 12 percent of the EU population. An EU-wide authorization still needs a qualified majority: at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population, about 292 million people.
Germany, France, Italy, and Spain remain the decisive markets. France has already rejected the current system; several other governments have flagged speed-limit compliance as the main sticking point.
The safety case Tesla is putting in front of those governments is now public. On September 1, Tesla Europe said FSD Supervised was in use by more than 70,000 customers, covering over 1 million kilometers a day, and was 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on EU public roads.
An earlier mid-year cut of the same fleet data, covering 65 million kilometers in five approved countries, put the collision advantage at 5.2 times, with zero highway collisions over 41.9 million kilometers. Tesla also reported far fewer automatic emergency braking events, harsh accelerations, and hard swerves than in comparable manual Tesla driving. Those figures are company-reported, not independently audited.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is taking over Europe: fourth country gets FSD approval
The public-health backdrop is harder to dispute. European countries recorded about 19,400 road deaths in 2025, or roughly 53 a day, most of them attributed to human error. FSD Supervised is not unsupervised autonomy; the driver remains legally responsible. But the software is already legal and in daily use across seven member states.
Until TCMV votes, the rest of the EU remains a patchwork: available in Prague and Amsterdam, locked behind review in Paris and Berlin. December is now the next chance to close that gap.
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
