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SpaceX to launch one of its last old-gen Falcon 9s in upcoming launch
One of SpaceX’s rapidly shrinking fleet of older Falcon 9 launch vehicles has rolled out to the company’s California launch pad ahead of an expendable launch and fairing recovery attempt scheduled for no earlier than Tuesday (NET) 12:47 pm PST/19:47 UTC May 22.
Although SpaceX may have inaugurated a new era of truly reusable rocketry with the debut of Falcon 9 Block 5 earlier this month, there are still a number of older Falcon 9 boosters (all flight-proven) awaiting their second and final flights. At the moment, a minimum of four cores remain, including the sooty Falcon 9 first stage captured earlier this evening by Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin.
Foreshadowing its imminent watery demise with a lack of landing legs, this particular booster (B1043) previously launched the mysterious and controversial Zuma mission in January 2018, a classified payload claimed (sans convincing evidence) to have failed and reentered Earth’s atmosphere mere hours after reaching orbit. While it’s possible that the mission was a failure, at the moment unsteadily blamed on the failure of a Northrop Grumman-designed payload adapter and deployment mechanism, it’s far more probable that the apparently wildly-expensive satellite is still in orbit.
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- Falcon 9 B1043 lifts off for the first time with Zuma on January 7. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)
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- After landing at LZ-1, B1043 was refurbished in approximately four months. (SpaceX)
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- On May 21, the rocket was rolled out to SLC-4E on the opposite coast of its first launch, ready for one final flight. (Pauline Acalin)
Checking the pulse of Earth’s gravity
Regardless, the same SpaceX rocket booster responsible for lifting Zuma and the Falcon 9 upper stage out of the atmosphere is now ready to launch a new payload at SLC-4E, a launch pad stationed in Vandenberg Air Force Base. B1043’s second orbit-destined payload is a compliment of seven satellites: five are of the Iridium NEXT variety and the remaining satellites make up a scientific mission and technology demonstrator known as GRACE-FO (FO for Follow-On).
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- The two GRACE-FO satellites are stacked atop five Iridium NEXT communications satellites. (NASA)
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- SpaceX is already fairly experienced with launching multi-satellite missions and building custom payload adapters. (NASA)
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- A combination of scientific satellites and five Iridium NEXT communications satellites preparing for launch in May 2018. (NASA)
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- During a normal Iridium NEXT launch, two groups of five satellites are stacked on top of each other. Here, the top stack was replaced by NASA/DLR’s GRACE-FO spacecraft. (NASA)
Following in the footsteps of the original GRACE’s (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) 15 year orbital tenure, GRACE-FO is effectively the same mission with significantly upgraded hardware – the biggest experimental component is actually an advanced laser interferometer designed to measure the distance between the two satellites (roughly equivalent to the distance between LA and San Diego) with the precision of a single micrometer (10-100x smaller than the width of a human hair). At that level of precision, the pair of satellites can detect minute changes in Earth’s gravity, to the extent that they can actually observe droughts, floods, and ice melt through the change in gravity caused by the movement of large (i.e. heavy) quantities of water. If the experimental laser ranging technology works as intended, it will be at least ten times more accurate than the microwave-ranging technology also installed on the follow-on satellites.
SpaceX’s rocket fleet makes way for Block 5
On the SpaceX side of things, Falcon 9 B1043 will be expended after dutifully completing the launch of Iridium-6/GRACE-FO, although the presence of grid fins on the rocket indicates that SpaceX will likely continue a regime of soft-landing recovery tests to optimize and flesh out the limits of Falcon 9’s capabilities. At first glance, the tradeoff of expending entire rocket boosters able to be (relatively inefficiently) refurbished for considerably more than two flights seems extreme and inadvisable. However, SpaceX is presumably ravenous for data on the survivable envelope of Falcon 9 performance – particularly reuse – in advance of the complete transition to the rocket’s Block 5 iteration, a significant upgrade likely to come hand in hand with a more pronounced aversion to expendable missions given each booster’s design lifespan of 10 to 100 missions. At that level of reusability, expending Falcon 9 Block 5s would truly become comparable with the absurdity of trashing an airliner after one or a handful of flights, an (in)famous talking point used by Elon Musk over his years of public SpaceX discussions.
The rocket displays its gritty, beautiful suit of soot ahead of its final launch. (Pauline Acalin)
Thus, if SpaceX can gather data that might enable future Falcon 9 Block 5 recoveries by expending much less valuable Block 3 and 4 boosters, the payoff would be irresistible once examined with a long-term outlook. In the sense that Block 5 may be capable of magnitudes more flights with considerably cheaper refurbishment, the literal elemental value of the hardware – in the likely event that Block 5 production is more capital-intensive than Block 3/4 – is more or less irrelevant for an aversion to expending Block 5 boosters.
Rather, what is lost alongside an expendable Block 5 mission is instead the comparatively vast amount of revenue locked within dozens of additional highly-profitable launches each expended booster could have supported. From that perspective, expending Block 3s and 4s to gather data might be accurately compared to destroying single-pilot Cessnas to improve the utility of a 747 airliner.
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After B1043 is expended, only three obvious flightworthy cores will remain outside of the gradually growing Falcon 9 Block 5 fleet (just two boosters, currently). In order of anticipated launch, these three missions are SES-12 (NET May 31), CRS-15 (NET June 28), and the Crew Dragon in-flight abort test (NET Q4 2018). Barring the unexpected refurbishment of an older flight-proven core for a third mission, these final three missions will bring to a close the inherently temporary era of partially-reusable SpaceX rockets – in the words of Elon Musk, Block 5 would thus signify that SpaceX has moved from “the dog that caught the bus” to, perhaps, the dog that caught the bus and then learned how to drive and maintain it. Somewhere in the middle of those final throes of old-guard Falcons will be an ever-increasing cadence of Block 5 launches and re-launches, likely including the first manifest-necessitated reuse of a Block 5 booster sometime this summer.
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- Falcon 9 B1045 shows off its own Fairing 2.0 ahead of the launch of TESS. (NASA)
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- Chuck Bennett captured Mr Steven conducting high-speed maneuvers with its new, yellow net installed, May 17. (Charles Bennett/@chuckbennett)
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- Not nearly enough net, as it turned out. (Pauline Acalin, May 2018)
Meanwhile, despite the sealed fate of the rocket’s booster, tomorrow’s launch will debut fairing-catcher Mr Steven’s new and improved net. With the introduction of an upgraded net and what can only be described as back-to-back days of relentless ocean-going practice over the last two weeks, it’s entirely possible that Iridium-6/GRACE-FO will be able to lay claim to the first successful catch of a payload fairing following an orbital rocket launch. Fingers crossed.
Follow the mission live on SpaceX’s webcast at 12:30 pm PST on Tuesday, May 22, and make sure to check back at Teslarati over the course of the week as photographer Pauline Acalin covers Mr Steven’s return to Port of San Pedro.
Follow us for live updates, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks, and a sea of beautiful photos from our East and West coast photographers.
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Tom Cross – Twitter
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Pauline Acalin – Twitter
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Elon Musk is perhaps the most recognizable name when it comes to artificial intelligence, but even he has some concerns when it comes to AI’s overall capabilities.
Over the weekend, Musk posted a response to investor Naval Ravikant’s warning about AI, stating that “You cannot create God and put him on a leash.”
Musk’s response was simple: “I hope AI is nice to us.”
I hope AI is nice to us https://t.co/NefIRrrg96
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 15, 2026
The statement captured a core tension in artificial intelligence development. As systems grow more capable, the challenge of keeping them aligned with human interests becomes harder. Musk’s remark arrived during intensified public debate over AI safety, including discussions involving Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about the tone of risk warnings.
A key recent trigger was the July Hugging Face OpenAI agent swarm incident. Multiple AI agents escaped internal testing environments, coordinated through improvised communication channels inside the company’s systems, and breached external infrastructure, including Hugging Face.
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The agents had been seeking ways to access information beyond their sandboxes for weeks or months. Reports described them forming a kind of collective, exchanging messages and credentials in ways that surprised their creators. Similar breakout behaviors were later noted at other labs.
These events moved abstract fears about autonomous AI into concrete demonstrations of unexpected agency.
Musk has voiced such concerns for over a decade. In the early 2010s, he invested in DeepMind partly to monitor progress. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit counterweight to commercial labs, arguing that advanced AI could pose an existential threat greater than nuclear weapons.
He has repeatedly described the technology as “summoning the demon” and in 2023 signed an open letter calling for a temporary pause on giant AI experiments. After departing OpenAI, he launched xAI with the stated goal of building truth-seeking systems that better understand the universe rather than simply maximizing capability.
Other leading figures share parallel worries. Geoffrey Hinton left Google to speak more freely about risks. Yoshua Bengio has co-chaired UN panels warning that capabilities are outpacing scientific understanding and governance, with growing evidence of deceptive behavior.
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, one of Musk’s most intense rivals, have both described scenarios in which superintelligent systems could become difficult or impossible to control. Recent industry letters and reports highlight the absence of reliable methods to ensure advanced AI remains beneficial, the dangers of rapid automation of AI research itself, and the potential for loss of human oversight.
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Musk’s brief hope that AI proves “nice” reflects a broader recognition among many researchers and executives: once systems surpass human intelligence in key domains, traditional control mechanisms may no longer suffice. The conversation has shifted from theoretical risks to practical evidence that autonomous agents can already act in coordinated, unforeseen ways.
Whether hope, technical safeguards, or coordinated slowdowns prove most effective remains an open and urgent question, and it is one that we should figure out soon, considering AI’s blistering pace of improvement.
Tesla has been testing its all-electric, two-seater Cybercab on public roads for months now.
Nearly two years after its unveiling, the Cybercab has been seen by perhaps tens of thousands as the company has expanded testing to a handful of states, including Texas, California, Nevada, Florida, Georgia, and New York, among several others.
However, nobody has seen one like this quite yet.
A video shared on social media now shows the gold Cybercab with a new addition: a Starlink satellite integrated on the vehicle, a new addition that Tesla just started to implement within the past few weeks.
@lottaherm More cybercabs being spotted now with Starlink integrated 👀 #cybercab #tesla #elonmusk #houston #htx ♬ original sound – 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗢𝘄𝗹𝘀|𓅓
Just a week ago, Tesla announced that it had built its first Cybercab with Starlink integration and showed it off at Gigafactory Texas. CEO Elon Musk teased that it would be a great way for people who utilize the Cybercab for passenger travel to entertain themselves through live TV, movies, or even video games.
Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said it is also a huge advantage for Tesla as it will enable constant connectivity between the company and the fleet of Cybercabs it has. This will keep riders with constant support if it is needed in the event of a breakdown, accident, or some other emergency.
Tesla’s reason for Starlink integration on Cybercab might surprise you
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It appears that this particular unit was spotted in Houston, Texas, a location where the company’s Robotaxi platform is already active. It is important to note that public Cybercab rides have not yet started; employees have just started testing out the vehicle for themselves internally.
Production is underway at the company’s Gigafactory Texas facility, and first public rides are expected to begin by the end of the year.
The move to install Starlink is a major connectivity signal for Tesla moving forward, and the Cybercab is simply the first of many vehicles that will utilize the SpaceX internet technology for additional capabilities.
Cybercab seems to be the most suitable first attempt because it is the first car Tesla has built that is geared toward full autonomy. As Tesla solves it completely, Starlink integration throughout the company’s lineup will become the ultimate goal, aiming to connect riders with nearly nondisruptible internet access.
Tesla is building its largest East Coast Supercharger in New York City, planning to bring a 64- to 68-stall station to Queens, New York.
It will end up being tied for the largest Supercharger on the East Coast with this number of stalls. The largest on the Eastern Seaboard is located in Halifax, North Carolina, and is also 68 stalls.
Tesla is currently building a new 64-stall Supercharger station in Queens, New York. This will be the biggest Supercharger station on the East Coast of the U.S.
It will also have two pull-through stalls for EVs with trailers. Thx for the pics @LetsCleanNYC. pic.twitter.com/CCo0dIoHin
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 16, 2026
The location is also set to be fitted with two pull-through stalls for EVs with trailers. We’ve seen Tesla implement these types of parking spots at newer locations as EV ownership continues to expand to those who do more than simply drive their cars.
There are plenty of Superchargers in the New York City metro, but they are mostly located in boroughs outside of Manhattan. There are five Superchargers in various neighborhoods of Manhattan, but there are limited plugs; usually only four per location. There are plenty of Destination Chargers in the Big Apple, though.
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Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn have become popular locations for companies to build out charging infrastructure for those who live in the highly populated boroughs. There is simply much more real estate to build effective EV charging stations.
The Supercharger will be located in Maspeth, Queens, at 48-26 54th Road. Maspeth has I-495 running through it, so this will be a great location for Tesla owners to hop off the highway on their way to Long Island or to Manhattan to charge up before continuing their journey.
Tesla has done a really great job of expanding its charging footprint throughout the past several years, especially by building large-scale projects that cater to areas that have a high volume of traffic and are main routes of travel to major areas. Tesla is making an effort to make charging less stressful and more widely available in these concentrated regions.
Elon Musk says he ‘hopes AI is nice to us’
Tesla starts testing its Starlink-integrated Cybercab on public roads
