SpaceX is set to make history by returning southern trajectory polar corridor launches to Florida’s Space Coast with the launch of the Argentine SAOCOM-1B radar observation satellite later this month. Tentatively set to get off the ground no earlier than Saturday, July 25 the SAOCOM-1B mission has suffered delays ranging from hardware processing and integration to international launch team travel restrictions as a result of the global coronavirus pandemic.
In late February 2020, the SAOCOM-1B satellite departed Argentina aboard a Russian Antonov AN 124 cargo aircraft and arrived at the Shuttle Landing Facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was expected that launch and processing teams from Argentina’s National Commission for Space Activities (CONAE) would quickly follow to meet a March launch timeline. However, international travel restrictions imposed by the Argentine government in early March meant that SpaceX would have to wait an indeterminant amount of time to attempt the historic polar launch from Florida. As a result, the satellite was put into storage in one of SpaceX’s satellite processing facilities in Florida to await the arrival of its launch team.
A change in launch plans
The SAOCOM-1B satellite was initially thought to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) in California just as its twin predecessor, the SAOCOM-1A satellite did in October of 2018. At the time VAFB was the only US-based launch site used for polar orbit launch corridor services. However, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station had previously announced the option to re-open a southern polar orbit launch corridor from Florida in 2017, a launch trajectory that hadn’t been used in over half a century.
The option of polar trajectory launches from Florida increased SpaceX’s capacity to streamline its launch manifest to the company’s dual launchpad locations on Florida’s East Coast. In 2019, as reported by Michael Baylor of NASASpaceflight.com, SpaceX formally requested to move the launch of the SAOCOM-1B satellite from VAFB to Florida utilizing a southern, coast-hugging dog-leg trajectory over Cuba to a final polar orbital inclination.
For those asking for a visual of what a southward, doglegged polar launch trajectory out of Cape Canaveral will look like, here you go. https://t.co/FTTW8mbq0J pic.twitter.com/59YXoERkQl— Chris G (@ChrisG_SpX) October 9, 2019
The SAOCOM-1B satellite will join its L-Band, synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) SAOCOM-1A sister satellite in a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) – essentially an orbit over the poles of the planet that allows the solar arrays of the satellite to be in sunlight at any given time. The satellites operate in SSO and use L-Band and synthetic-aperture radar to create two-dimensional, all-weather Earth observation imagery to assist in global disaster-monitoring efforts. The sister satellites will also work in conjunction with a constellation of four Italian satellites already in orbit operated by COSMO-SkyMed.
Return to operational status
Following the easement of certain international travel restrictions in mid-July, a slim crew of 18 team members from CONAE and SAOCOM-1B satellite manufacturer INVstigacion APlicada (INVAP) was permitted to travel to Florida. The team members tested negatively for the COVID-19 virus prior to commercially traveling to Florida from Argentina, as well as, after their arrival at Miami International Airport. The team observed a two-week period of quarantine prior to traveling to SpaceX facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to begin pre-operational tasks.
On Monday, July 13 the team was able to get to work on launch campaign tasks with the satellite that had endured months of storage. The team ensured the health of the satellite and completed a full launch day simulation managed remotely from locations in Florida and Argentina. Following a successful run through and check of the satellite’s operational status, the launch campaign has just a few remaining steps before rocketing SpaceX into the history books once again.
SpaceX and CONAE teams will work together to safely encapsulate the satellite inside of a protective Falcon 9 payload fairing and mate the payload with the first stage Falcon 9 booster. Furthermore, the teams will complete a joint integration test of the payload and launch vehicle before finally transporting it to the launch pad.
The SpaceX launch manifest has recently undergone some schedule shuffling potentially leaving the SAOCOM-1B mission to be third in line behind the launch of the South Korean ANASIS-II military communications satellite and the delayed Starlink-9 mission. However, earlier in the week, the Starlink-9 booster was lowered from launch position at LC-39A and returned to the horizontal integration facility following a scrubbed launch attempt with SpaceX citing that more time was necessary to perform final check-outs. This most likely suggests that SpaceX plans to push the SAOCOM-1B mission ahead of Starlink-9 in the launch manifest.
According to CONAE, the SAOCOM-1B mission launch window extends from Saturday, July 25 to Thursday, July 30 with a targeted liftoff at approximately 7:19 p.m. EDT (2319 GMT) from SLC-40.
Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues – $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow – $1.444 billion
- Profit – $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
