News
NASA Artemis delegation tours SpaceX’s Starship factory and launch pad
Thanks to the failure of Blue Origin’s NASA Human Landing System (HLS) lawsuit, SpaceX and the space agency were finally able to get back to work last month.
Taking advantage of that, NASA astronauts and Artemis Program leaders recently took a tour of SpaceX’s South Texas Starship factory and launch pads – a massive hub of activity that the company has deemed Starbase. In doing so, save for updates from SpaceX and even members of the public over the last 6-9 months, NASA officials were finally able to get up close and personal with the progress SpaceX has made while the space agency was temporarily forced to halt all work on HLS.
While some aspects of SpaceX’s progress towards orbital Starship test flights were hampered by asymmetry between different programs, namely the readiness of Super Heavy and Starbase’s orbital launch site, SpaceX has still made some impressive progress in less than a year. At the start of 2021, Starbase’s lone orbital launch site was effectively a dirt lot and a fraction of the launch mount – the latter constructed well in advance of the rest of the pad. Less than a year later, that orbital launch site – including a skyscraper-sized launch tower, three massive arms, perhaps the most complex launch mount in spaceflight history, and the largest cryogenic tank farm ever built for a rocket – is on the verge of completion.
Several weeks of work are likely needed for SpaceX to finish and qualify the ~146m (~480 ft) launch tower’s ‘chopsticks’ – arms meant to lift and possibly catch Starships and Super Heavy boosters – and quick-disconnect swing arm, which fuels Starship and helps stabilize the rocket. The pad’s massive tank farm has also yet to be filled with any liquid methane fuel (LCH4).
However, that tank farm is complete enough – and filled with hundreds of tanker trucks of liquid oxygen and nitrogen – to begin extensive cryogenic proof testing with Super Heavy Booster 4 (B4), Starship’s first potentially fligthworthy booster. That process began on December 17th and a second cryogenic proof followed on December 21st. On the 22nd, SpaceX continued to expand the ambition of its booster testing and filled Super Heavy B4 more than any booster before it, loading it with two or three thousand tons (4.4M-6.6M lb) of cryogenic liquids in about two hours. There are signs that most of that liquid was actually liquid oxygen (LOx) – the oxidizer Starship will be filled with before launch – and both sides of the tank farm were visibly active.
In other words, once SpaceX is confident that the tank farm is safe to store liquid methane, the first Super Heavy wet dress rehearsals and static fire tests – eventually simulating full thrust just before liftoff – could begin almost immediately. Once the tower’s three arms are at least partially functional, SpaceX will also be able to install a Starship on top of Super Heavy for the second time and test a fully-integrated two-stage Starship launch vehicle for the first time, paving the way for the first orbital-velocity launch attempt as soon as as the FAA grants a license.
Though SpaceX technically hasn’t started building a prototype of the actual Starship Moon lander that will returns humans to the lunar surface, every single Starship and Super Heavy booster it builds and tests mature’s the foundation of that crewed variant’s design, as well as the fleet of boosters and ships that will be required to fuel it in orbit. By all appearances, Starship S20 – the first completed orbital-class prototye – has passed all the tests thrown at it and is ready for the program’s first orbital-velocity launch attempt. If the speed of recent testing continues, Super Heavy Booster 4 may not be far behind it.
Tesla is starting to truly tease and hype its groundbreaking Cybercab event, which takes place tomorrow in Austin, Texas. It will be the first time members of the public will be able to ride in a Cybercab, a vehicle without any manual controls, on public roads.
Tesla has been dropping some hype on X over the past several days, but this morning, the excitement has truly started to build up for the event. Although Cybercab has been unveiled before, this is truly Tesla’s announcement that it is ready to start offering autonomous rides for public passengers in its new ride-hailing-geared vehicle for the first time.
The hype has started with a variety of different social media posts that are a true indication that Tesla is preparing for something big. Teasing so much of the potential of Cybercab, including its ability to truly revolutionize how people hail rides for local travel, is what the big idea for the event entails. The time that many Tesla owners, fans, and investors have been waiting for is potentially here:
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 2, 2026
The event has remained slim on details. Even invitees are still awaiting true details about what the event will entail, where they’ll go, and what is in store for the evening. This is pretty typical for an event run by Tesla; they keep things under wraps for the most part until the very last minute.
However, there is no secret about what the real intention of Tesla is for this event: it is going to be a huge reveal party for a vehicle that has no steering wheel and no pedals. It is a truly massive step for the company moving forward.
No steering wheel, no pedals
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) September 2, 2026
Speculation persists as to whether this is going to be an event that simply announces that rides will begin with the Cybercab, or it will be something more substantial. Tesla has said in the past that they plan to sell the Cybercab to the general public in what could become a great way to earn passive income by adding it to a more global fleet of Robotaxi-geared vehicles.
Tomorrow, the show begins in Austin, and the Cybercab goes live at some capacity; we just don’t know exactly how quite yet.
News
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
SpaceX filed with the FCC for Starship Flight 14, its first true orbital launch attempt.
SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to fly Starlink terminals during Starship’s fourteenth flight test, and the filing lays out a genuine trip to orbit, something the program has never attempted.
Every Starship flight so far, including Flight 13’s successful splashdown in the Indian Ocean on July 24, has flown a suborbital arc that ends with the ship reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launches. The FCC paperwork describes a mission profile built around an actual orbital insertion instead.
The payload is the other half of the story. Flight 13 carried 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, but because that mission never reached orbit, the satellites reentered along with the ship rather than joining the constellation, something Teslarati covered in detail after SpaceX released footage shot from one of those satellites as it drifted away from Starship in space. Flight 14 is designed to close that gap. If the orbital insertion holds, the roughly 20 V3 satellites onboard would separate into an operational orbit and could eventually go into service, each one rated for about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity by SpaceX’s own account.
SpaceX announces new Starbase for ‘thousands of Starship launches annually’
Elon Musk first flagged the orbital attempt during SpaceX’s August 4 earnings call, the company’s first as a public entity following its June IPO under the ticker SPCX. He also floated catching the ship with the Starbase tower on the same flight, an idea he walked back on August 20, saying the catch attempt would more likely come “in a few months,” as Teslarati reported at the time. Flight 14 will instead target a splashdown for the ship in the Indian Ocean, the same recovery method used since Flight 12.
Hardware has been catching up to the ambition. Booster 21 completed a full 33-engine static fire on August 28, and Ship 41 finished its own six-engine test the week before. An airspace briefing circulated to pilots on August 20 listed September 15 as the target date, later than the end of August window Musk mentioned on the earnings call, though SpaceX has not confirmed a launch date publicly and Starship schedules routinely slip while hardware and FAA paperwork line up.
The FCC filing itself does not guarantee a launch date. It covers communications authority, and not flight readiness, considering SpaceX still needs Ship 41 fully stacked and cleared by the FAA before Flight 14 can fly. But the filing is a real marker of intent and it puts a specific regulatory process behind what had so far only been Musk’s word on the earnings call.
Tesla is set to launch Cybercab on Thursday at an event in Austin, Texas, which will officially bring the company’s first steering wheel-less and pedal-less vehicle to a limited number of consumers for the first time.
The event, which is invite-only, is still thin on details: we’ll be there, and it seems the event will be held at Gigafactory Texas, but the launch of this vehicle truly relies on it being operational outside of the factory and on public roads.
🚨 Close-Up look at Tesla Cybercab without steering wheel: pic.twitter.com/9TXCDeDCz7
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 3, 2026
Nevertheless, there are some big things to expect, and other things to temper expectations on. For what it’s worth, we believe this event could be perhaps the biggest indication that Tesla is ready to truly enter a new phase and chapter in its historic story.
Tesla Cybercab’s First Foray into the Public with Real-World Riders
Cybercab will likely hit the streets of Austin and the surrounding areas, likely in the established geofence that Tesla has expanded on for the past 14 months. Just yesterday, Tesla expanded it once again by 9 percent.
Tesla will put, for the first time, a vehicle without any manual controls on public roads, likely without any help from teleoperators. This is a truly groundbreaking development if it comes through in this fashion: it would be groundbreaking for Tesla to roll out a truly driverless ride-hailing vehicle.
Cybercab Has Already Been Unveiled
This is not an unveiling event. Cybercab has been released for nearly two years, as Tesla first showed it to the public on October 10, 2024.
FIRST LOOK: Tesla ‘Cybercab’ Robotaxi makes its global debut
While there is some small speculation that Tesla could release the Roadster at the event as a surprise, it seems more likely the focus will be on the Cybercab and the huge accomplishment that will come with releasing a vehicle with no manual controls.
There Will Be a Lot of Hype
What’s important to remember about the Cybercab event is that Tesla will continue to prioritize safety and the rollout will likely be slow, just as it has been with Robotaxi.
One of the biggest complaints about Robotaxi is vehicle population, and the fact that the wait for a ride, at least in some instances, has been longer than most want to admit.
It will take time for this project to truly scale. It will take time for Tesla to roll this out in a large fashion. The important thing to note is that they are doing it, and they’re doing it with a vehicle that is completely engineered and built internally. That’s something no other ride-hailing service can say.
Tesla starts teasing and hyping groundbreaking Cybercab event
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
