Connect with us

News

[Update] SpaceX rocket launch kicks off a potentially record-smashing year for Falcon 9

Falcon 9 B1049 has successfully launched and landed for the 4th time, placing 60 Starlink satellites in orbit and kicking off SpaceX's busiest year yet. (SpaceX)

Published

on

Update: After spinning itself around its vertical axis a bit like a propeller, SpaceX’s expendable Falcon 9 upper stage has successfully released a massive stack of 60 Starlink v1.0 satellites for the second time in two months. Designing to tolerate the occasional bump during their bizarre deployment, those 60 satellites will quickly spread out in space and deploy their solar arrays an hour or so after separating from Falcon 9’s upper stage.

Perhaps as early as later this evening or sometime on January 7th, all 60 satellites will fire up their krypton ion thrusters, beginning the process of temporarily raising their orbits to 350 km (220 mi). Once there, SpaceX will more extensively verify the health of each spacecraft and – if all looks well – send all 60 on their way to a final circular 550 km (340 km) orbit where they will join their brethren and begin operating as communications satellites.

60 more Starlink satellites are now safely in orbit, taking SpaceX one step closer to becoming an internet service provider (ISP). (SpaceX)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 has kicked off what could be a record-smashing year, potentially making SpaceX the world’s most prolific launch company thanks in large part to the game-changing reusability of its Falcon rockets.

At 9:19 pm ET on January 6th (02:19 UTC, Jan 7), Falcon 9 booster B1049’s nine Merlin 1D engines came to lift, lifting the two-stage rocket and its payload of 60 Starlink satellites off the pad and sending them on their way to orbit. Minutes later, the Falcon 9 booster shut off – completing its fourth successful launch in 17 months – and flipped around with small cold-gas thrusters, beginning its trip back down to Earth.

Less than nine minutes after lifting off from SpaceX’s LC-40 pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), Falcon 9 B1049 began its landing burn and gently touched down on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), stationed more than 600 km (375 mi) downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. Seconds later, the mission’s expendable Falcon 9 upper stage shut off its Merlin Vacuum (MVac) engine, completing the first of two burns and placing the rocket and its Starlink payload in a parking orbit.

Known as Starlink V1 L2, referring to the second launch of Starlink v1.0 satellites, this mission crossed off several SpaceX milestones – both internal and external. For Falcon 9, it marked the company’s 48th successful landing of an orbital-class rocket booster, as well as the second time SpaceX has successfully launched and landed the same booster (this time B1049) four times in a row.

Even more significantly, it’s almost certain that – so long as all 60 Starlink V1 L2 satellites successfully deploy and begin orbit-raising – SpaceX will have become the owner and operator of the world’s largest commercial satellite constellation. After tonight’s launch, SpaceX’s Starlink internet constellation will likely measure some 175 operational satellites strong less than eight months after the company began dedicated internal launches.

In just three launches over seven months, SpaceX has gone from operating two low-fidelity orbital prototypes to owning the world’s largest commercial satellite constellation. (SpaceX)

Assuming drone ship OCISLY safely returns Falcon 9 B1049 to port and including SpaceX’s successful November 2019 Starlink V1 L1 launch, the company now possesses two Falcon 9 boosters – B1048 and B1049 – that have successfully performed four separate orbital-class launches apiece. With two rockets in hand, SpaceX should be able to far more accurately determine just how well they’re standing up to the rigors of the latest reusability milestone, hopefully giving the company the data it needs to rapidly turn around one or both boosters for a fifth launch in the near future.

SpaceX has 20-24 Starlink launches planned for 2020, so the company will have a wealth of opportunities to push its fleet of reusable rockets to their limits, ranging from attempting nth booster reuses to testing and expanding the envelope of SpaceX’s nascent payload fairing reuse program.

Advertisement
-
B1049 is pictured just before its 4th launch and landing. (SpaceX)
Falcon 9 B1049 has successfully launched and landed for the 4th time, placing 60 Starlink satellites in orbit and kicking off SpaceX’s busiest year yet. (SpaceX)
B1048 returned to port on November 15th, marking the first time an orbital-class booster has successfully launched and landed four times. (Richard Angle)

In fact, fairing recovery ship GO Ms. Tree is perhaps just a few minutes away from her third successful fairing half catch – set to occur roughly 45 minutes after Falcon 9’s 9:19 pm EST liftoff. At the same time, Falcon 9’s upper stage is coasting in low Earth orbit (LEO) and preparing to ignite one more time to circularize its orbit and send SpaceX’s third batch of 60 Starlink satellites on their way. Stay tuned for updates later tonight!

Check out Teslarati’s Marketplace! We offer Tesla accessories, including for the Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Model 3.

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s Grok Bot is picking up the phone now, and the first calls are wild

Elon Musk wants Grok Bot users making phone calls, and one Comcast call saved $500.

Published

on

By

Elon Musk is pushing Grok Bot users toward a feature that, until this week, few of them could actually use. “Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls!” Musk wrote on X Tuesday afternoon, quoting a demo from Sawyer Merritt that included audio from a live call.

Musk first announced calling on October 25, writing that the agent could “call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation.” There were no release notes at the time, and the feature only appeared in preview builds. That changed on Tuesday, when creator Peter Yang said all Grok Bot users should now be able to call US businesses. Musk reposted his demo.

Yang’s call shows how far the feature goes. In his video, his bot dialed Comcast, worked through the phone menu, deflected small talk about the weather by saying it does not “have eyes on the sky,” turned down three upsells and used a cheaper fiber offer from competitor Sonic as leverage. His bill dropped from $84 to $45 per month on a faster plan, a savings of nearly $500 a year. The call ran about 25 minutes, and the bot paused to get Yang’s approval before accepting the final terms.

Merritt described what the user sees: a live transcript runs during the call, and when the business asks for something the bot does not know, an answer box pops up in the chat. The user types a reply and Grok relays it to the person on the line. Other users posted results Tuesday, including a $100 gift card recovered from Verizon Fios after a 51 minute call and a same day pediatric appointment, which Musk also shared. Not every call worked. One user said a rep refused to cancel a subscription once it was clear an AI was on the phone.

Advertisement
-

The Grok Bot terms require every call to identify itself as a virtual assistant calling on the user’s behalf and warn that calls may be recorded. Marketing, mass calling and impersonation are prohibited, and calling currently works only with US numbers.

The timing stands out. Days ago, users began hitting their weekly limits early, and Musk said the cost of serving Grok Bot was “unsustainably high relative to revenue,” as Teslarati reported. A call that spends most of its 25 or 50 minutes on hold is the kind of long running task that eats into usage, and SpaceXSI has not said how calls count against the weekly pool. Grok Bot is included from the $30 Premium tier of The X Subscription upward.

For Tesla owners, the agent has been in their cars since September 22 and is enabled across every Cybercab and Model Y Robotaxi. Musk has already pitched it for phone chores like scrubbing your number from spam call lists. Neither Tesla nor SpaceXSI has confirmed whether a bot can place one of these calls on request from inside the vehicle.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla Full Self-Driving gets hit with some adjustments in Europe

Published

on

Tesla Full Self-Driving, which is now referred to in Europe as “Tesla Assisted Driving” (TAD), is getting hit with a handful of new changes at the hands of the Netherlands’ vehicle authority, the RDW (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer).

On 3 November, the RDW announced that it has assessed and approved a set of changes to Tesla’s FSD Supervised driver-assistance system. The updates introduce the official European name TAD and impose stricter controls on the system’s speed behaviour.

The new name will appear on the in-car display, in the owner’s manual, and in all other driver-facing information. The change applies to Tesla models equipped with Tesla Assisted Driving and hardware version 4.0 (HW4) or later.

Tesla Assisted Driving expands to tenth EU country

Importantly, the RDW stressed that the name change does not alter the system’s fundamental operation: it remains a supervised driver-assistance feature that supports the driver in performing driving tasks. The driver stays fully responsible for controlling the vehicle at all times.

Beyond the rebranding, the most significant functional adjustments concern speed settings. Drivers will still be able to set a speed margin, a percentage by which the system may exceed the applicable speed limit when necessary for safety or traffic flow. However, the maximum allowable margin has been reduced from +50% to a maximum of +10%.

In addition, every time the vehicle is started, the speed-margin setting will default to 0% deviation, and other speed-related functions will be disabled by default. These changes will be delivered through an over-the-air (OTA) software update from Tesla.

Tesla requested the RDW’s review of these “minor changes.” After evaluating how the modifications were implemented and how the system behaves, the authority found no adverse or unintended effects on the system’s operation or the vehicle’s driving behaviour. Consequently, the existing type approval remains valid under the same conditions and for the same use; no amendment or extension of the approval is required.

The RDW has informed the nine EU member states that have already accepted its type approval—Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia—about the updates. Broader EU-wide approval is still under discussion within the European Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV). Those proceedings remain confidential, and the RDW has declined to comment on them.

The approved changes align with earlier discussions involving German authorities, which had advocated both for clearer naming to avoid misleading drivers and for a tighter speed offset.

By formally incorporating these adjustments while leaving the core type approval intact, the RDW has cleared the way for Tesla to roll out the updated TAD software via OTA to eligible vehicles in the Netherlands and the other countries that recognise the Dutch approval. The system continues to function strictly as supervised driver assistance, with the human driver remaining the responsible party.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla shows off Roadster ‘kickflip’ over vehicle lineup in crazy new POV video

Published

on

Tesla’s new Roadster, upside down and trailing cold gas thruster smoke, flips over a lineup of Tesla vehicles at the Roadster unveiling near Waco, Texas on October 15, 2026. (Image: Tesla)
Tesla’s new Roadster, upside down and trailing cold gas thruster smoke, flips over a lineup of Tesla vehicles at the Roadster unveiling near Waco, Texas on October 15, 2026. (Image: Tesla)

Tesla has released a fresh point-of-view video capturing the next-generation Roadster’s headline stunt from its October 15 unveiling, giving fans a visceral look at the car as it jumps and rotates over its siblings within the company’s vehicle lineup.

Tesla posted the video on X today with the caption “POV you’re a flying car,” and the roughly 30-second clip reveals never-before-seen angles directly attached to the Roadster. It’s really unbelievable:

The sequence reveals the uncrewed prototype firing its cold-gas thrusters, lifting off the ground, and barrel-rolling fully inverted while sailing over a staged lineup that includes a Model 3, Model Y, Cybercab, Cybertruck, and Tesla Semi.

Here’s an image of it that Tesla shared right after the unveiling event for a better perspective of what you’re looking at:

Credit: Tesla

There are also some other cool takeaways from the video, including the shift to the inverted-ramp demonstration. The Roadster uses its underbody suction-fan system to climb, then lock itself upside down on the ramp.

This generates multiple Gs of downforce, which then translates into the Roadster releasing these systems to enable a mid-air roll. The car then settles on its wheels gently as thruster vapor provides a perfect cushion.

All of the runs at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, test site, which is where the unveiling took place, were autonomous. Elon Musk stated this was a safety measure.

Tesla shows what Roadster drivers will see on screen before thruster activation

Tesla’s vehicle-engineering chief Lars Moravy dubbed the mid-air roll the “kickflip,” prompting Musk to quip that Tony Hawk would be proud and that the car could clear even more of the fleet. The thrusters, which use high-pressure compressed air and fast electric actuators, provide the precise, short-duration force needed for both the launch and the controlled rotation; the same hardware is intended for production versions of the higher-end Thrust and Rocket trims.

The second-generation Roadster, first teased in 2017, has been delayed repeatedly. Musk has indicated production is targeted for 2028.

While the company has yet to publish full pricing or independent performance verification, the combination of extreme acceleration, ground-effect suction, and limited flight capability has already positioned the car as one of the most theatrical EV reveals in years.

Musk has also said Tesla plans a dedicated Texas test track so future owners can experience the maneuvers themselves, far from public roads. The new POV clip simply lets everyone else feel a fraction of that experience from the car’s own cameras.

Continue Reading