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SpaceX repairing heat shield, reinstalling Raptors on first orbital-class Starship
SpaceX has begun reinstalling three of the six Raptor engines that will power the first orbital-class Starship and repairing the heat shield that will hopefully protect it on its first trip to space.
Known as Starship 20 or S20, the 50m (~165 ft) tall steel rocket prototype has been stationed at one of SpaceX’s two suborbital testing pads since August 13th. No testing has been done, though, and a small army of SpaceX technicians and engineers have instead spent the last three or so weeks effectively turning a collection of steel tanks, tubes, and parts into a functional rocket. While it’s unclear why SpaceX chose to do that outfitting work at an unsheltered launch pad, new activity suggests that it may be almost complete.
Exactly one month ago, SpaceX stacked Starship S20 on top of Super Heavy Booster 4 (B4) on August 6th, briefly creating the largest rocket in history and completing a fit test that was admittedly just as much a photo op. Ship 20 was rapidly destacked and returned to SpaceX’s Starbase factory, where all six of its Raptor engines were removed. About a week later, Ship 20 returned to the pad and has remained installed on Suborbital Pad B ever since.
At the time, the implication was that SpaceX had removed Ship 20’s engines to allow the prototype to complete cryogenic proof testing with hydraulic thrust simulators. However, despite having carefully modified Pad B over several weeks for that exact purpose, those modifications were rapidly removed before Ship 20’s second rollout. Precluding a proof test with thrust simulation, the next logical conclusion was that SpaceX would still perform a cryogenic proof test before reinstalling Ship 20’s Raptors and moving on to a static fire campaign.
Now, even that appears to have been p1recluded. Instead, as if Ship 20 were the second or third or fourth in a series of prototypes, SpaceX rolled three center Raptors to Pad B on September 5th and began installing the engines on Starship on the 6th. It’s hard to say anything with confidence given how chaotically Starship S20’s to-be-determined qualification testing has changed in the last several weeks but, with plenty of uncertainty, Raptor installation implies that the vehicle will perform its first ambient pressure and cryogenic proof tests with engines installed.
It remains to be seen if Ship 20’s three vacuum-optimized Raptor engines will also be installed over the next few days (seemingly the logical assumption) or if SpaceX will instead complete proof tests and center Raptor static fire testing before finally moving into new territory. SpaceX has never static fired more than three Raptors at once and certainly never tested multiple Raptor Vacuum (RVac) engines in close proximity – let alone all six simultaneously.
Meanwhile, much of the focus of the last few weeks appears to have been on finishing Ship 20 plumbing and avionics wire runs, though it’s hard to say exactly what has been done. What is extremely visible and easy to follow, though, is the process of finishing the first orbital-class Starship heat shield and repairing a few hundred tiles broken during its pathfinder installation. SpaceX has installed 500-1000+ tiles on flown Starship prototypes like SN15 but the company has never come close to the ~15,000 needed to cover the entire windward side of the world’s largest rocket upper stage.
SpaceX has undertaken that process for the first time over the last six or so weeks and unsurprisingly seen a number of successes and failures. At some point along the way, a significant fraction of the ceramic, dinner-plate-sized tiles SpaceX technicians installed chipped, broke, shattered, or ran into other fitment issues. Over the last month or so, a great deal of progress has been made fixing those problem tiles and SpaceX has also more or less completed tile installation on the angular ‘aerocovers’ that protect Starship’s flap mechanisms – requiring dozens of custom tiles with complex shapes and curves.
As of September 6th, Starship S20’s heat shield appears to be around 95% complete and the installation of Raptor engines implies that the rocket’s plumbing, avionics, and tankage are also nearly finished. In other words, after many weeks of work, SpaceX’s first orbital-class Starship prototype could be ready to kick off cryoproof and static fire testing just a week or so (and maybe less) from now. Stay tuned for updates!
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
