Connect with us

News

SpaceX record-setting booster returns to Port in remarkable condition (photos)

Booster B1049 returned to Port after delivering a batch of 60 Starlink satellites into space. Credit: R. Angle/Teslarati

Published

on

SpaceX has successfully recovered its second Falcon 9 in less than a week. Just four days after it launched, booster B1049 returned to sailed into Port Canaveral. The veteran booster is the first to launch and successfully land five times. On June 3, at 9:25 p.m. EDT (0125 GMT on June 4), B1049 took to the skies, delivering another batch of Starlink satellites into orbit.

Now, just three days after a flawless mission, the veteran rocket sailed triumphantly into port. Perched atop SpaceX’s newly remodeled drone ship, Just Read the Instructions (JRTI), B1049’s exterior was visibly more charred after its most recent trip through the atmosphere. This successful landing marks the first mission that JRTI was active in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the third successful sea recovery in a row for SpaceX.

So far this year, SpaceX has successfully launched nine boosters this year. All but two of them have been recovered—two failed to land on the drone ship. One of those botched attempts was due to some residual cleaning agents trapped inside the engine. That booster, B1048, was SpaceX’s only other booster (so far) to fly five times. 

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster B1049 has successfully launched and landed five times. Credit: R. Angle/Teslarati

But it surely won’t be the last. B1051 has already completed four successful missions and could see flight again soon. SpaceX has at least two other launches planned for June, including another Starlink launch and the launch of a GPS satellite for the Air Force. That flight will be on a new booster, B1060, per the Air Force’s request.

As it stands now, government payloads require SpaceX to use a new booster, versus a previously flown one. That was also the case for NASA’s commercial crew program. On May 30, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley flew to the International Space Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The booster, which returned to Port just a few days ago, what a shiny new booster. However, in a recent development, NASA amended the agreement, saying that SpaceX could use previously flown boosters as well as reuse its Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Advertisement

Currently, SpaceX reuses its cargo version of Dragon, but each upgraded cargo (and Crew) variant can be reused as many as five times. Each booster is currently rated for ten flights, with minimal refurbishments in between.

SpaceX’s fleet of veteran rockets has dwindled a bit, with the loss of B1048 and B1056. Those losses came on the heels of two planned expenditures: B1046 and B1047. B1046was purposefully detonated as part of the company’s In-flight Abort test that occurred in January. That test was a lead up to the Demo-2 mission and proved that SpaceX’s launch escape system worked while B1047 carried the AMOS-17 satellite into orbit and was expended after depositing the satellite into space.

However, the California-based rocket builder should have some new Falcons rolling off the assembly line this summer, which will help support its ambitious Starlink launch manifest. This year, SpaceX has launched six Starlink missions, with at least one more planned for June, possibly two.

Advertisement

To date, SpaceX has launched a total of 482 Starlink satellites, but the company needs between 400-800 satellites on orbit to begin rolling out minimal coverage. To provide the coverage it wants, SpaceX is going to have to keep up the launch pace. And to do so, it will test the reusability factor of its rockets.

So far, we’ve seen two rockets fly five times, but when will B1049 fly a sixth time? How soon will we see a booster reach the 10-flight mark? What sort of refurbishments will it need then? With many more Starlink flights on deck, it will be interesting to see which boosters fly on which missions.

I write about space, science, and future tech.

Advertisement
Comments

Investor's Corner

Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”

Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.

Published

on

By

Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.

While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure

The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.

Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

Advertisement

Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.

Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.

As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.

Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

News

Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days

Published

on

Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.

Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.

On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.

The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.

Advertisement

The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.

Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.

Advertisement

Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

SpaceX’s Elon Musk relieves worries about orbital data centers

Published

on

Rendering of Elon Musk overlooking a Starship fleet (Credit: Grok)
Rendering of Elon Musk overlooking a Starship fleet (Credit: Grok)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently confronted worries about orbital data centers and launching satellites in mass quantities in space, as some voiced concerns about crowding.

Musk’s SpaceX plans to combat the issue of needing data centers by launching them into space instead of taking up valuable real estate on Earth. It has been a major point of SpaceX’s future, including its looming IPO, which could be the largest ever.

In a recent interview filmed at SpaceX’s Starlink terminal factory in Bastrop, Texas, Elon Musk directly addressed concerns that deploying large numbers of AI satellites for orbital data centers could crowd Earth’s orbit. His message was straightforward and reassuring: space is vast beyond human intuition.

“Space is really big,” Musk said. “It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the Earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” He emphasized that even zooming in makes a satellite appear large, but from a planetary perspective, they are minuscule specks.

Advertisement

Musk pointed to SpaceX’s real-world experience operating roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites as evidence that large constellations can be managed safely. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of how to operate just really large constellations and do it safely,” he noted. SpaceX remains the only operator with meaningful experience at this scale, giving the company unique insight into tight orbital packing without compromising safety

Advertisement

The discussion highlighted SpaceX’s plans for “AI1” satellites—essentially orbiting racks of AI compute powered by massive solar arrays and cooled via radiative panels in space’s vacuum.

These satellites leverage proven Starlink V3 technology, making them simpler to design than communications satellites. A first-generation unit targets around 150 kW peak power, with a 70-meter wingspan for solar panels and radiators. Laser links will connect them to each other and the Starlink network, delivering low-latency access (on the order of a few milliseconds from low-Earth orbit).

FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan

Musk framed orbital data centers as a practical solution to Earth’s constraints on AI growth. Ground-based facilities face power shortages, water demands for cooling, and grid limitations. In space, constant sunlight (no day-night cycle), vacuum radiative cooling, and abundant solar energy offer clear advantages.

Advertisement

Production will ramp up at an expanded “Gigasat” factory in Bastrop, with solar manufacturing already underway and full AI satellite output expected at reasonable volume by the end of 2027. Starship’s rapid, high-volume launch capability, aiming for multiple flights per hour, will make massive deployment feasible.

Critics sometimes raise risks like space debris or Kessler syndrome, but Musk’s response underscores scale: even a million satellites would represent an imperceptible fraction of available orbital volume when viewed against Earth’s size. SpaceX’s automated collision avoidance and deorbiting designs for Starlink further mitigate concerns.

This vision ties into broader ambitions. Musk sees orbital AI compute as a step toward harnessing more of the Sun’s energy, advancing humanity on the Kardashev scale from a Type 0 civilization toward Type 1 and eventually Type 2. By moving power-hungry data centers off-planet, SpaceX aims to unlock orders-of-magnitude more compute while preserving Earth’s resources.

Musk’s comments should ease public anxiety. With proven operational expertise, incremental engineering, and the immensity of space itself, orbital data centers represent not overcrowding, but smart expansion into the final frontier.

Advertisement
Continue Reading