SpaceX
SpaceX builds new orbital Starship sections as Starhopper loses its engine
Amidst the growing buzz centered around the imminent second launch of Falcon Heavy, SpaceX’s South Texas team has continued to work on Starhopper and the first orbital Starship prototype. wrapping up the first major tests of the former and making new progress on the latter’s aeroshell.
For unknown reasons, SpaceX technicians uninstalled Starhopper’s Raptor – the second full-scale engine ever built – shortly after the vehicle’s first true hop test and proceeded to package it up for shipment elsewhere, likely McGregor’s test facilities or the Hawthorne factory. Simultaneously, the third completed Raptor (SN03) was recently installed in McGregor according to photos and observations published by NASASpaceflight.com, preparing to continue to the engineering verification tests that began in February. Once those tests are complete and the engine design is modified to account for the lessons learned with Raptor SN01, SpaceX’s next step will be to begin ramping Raptor production in preparation for multi-engine Starhopper testing and – eventually – the completion of the first orbit-capable Starship prototype.
Needless to say, SpaceX is juggling a lot of interconnected projects in an effort to speed its Starship/Super Heavy (formerly BFR) development program, none of which are being discussed by the company in more than a cursory manner. What follows is thus meant to be an informed but speculative estimate of what is currently going on and what is next for BFR.
Starhopper slips the surly bonds
Over the course of the last two weeks, SpaceX has been almost continuously testing the first integrated Starship prototype, a partial-fidelity vehicle known as Starhopper. The testing primarily involved almost a dozen wet dress rehearsals (WDRs) in which the rocket was filled with some quantity of liquid oxygen and methane propellant and helium for pressurization as engineers and technicians worked through several bugs preventing Raptor from safely operating. According to CEO Elon Musk, some form of ice – potentially methane, oxygen, or even water – was forming in or around parts known as “prevalves”, likely referring to valves involved in the process of supply rocket engines with the right amount of fuel and oxidizer.
Less than 24 hours later, those valve issues were apparently solved as Starhopper’s Raptor ignited for the first time in a spectacular nighttime fireball. 48 hours after that first ignition, SpaceX once again fueled Starhopper and ignited its Raptor engine, lifting a spectacular handful of feet into the air before reaching the end of its very short tethers. According to Musk, the first Raptor ignition was completed with “all systems green”. After the second test, no additional comments were made. Less than three days later, SpaceX technicians uninstalled Starhopper’s Raptor (SN02) and shipped it somewhere offsite, indicating that it may have suffered a fault similar to the one that caused relatively minor damage to Raptor SN01 at the end of its February test campaign. Regardless, it appears that this development will keep Starhopper grounded for the indefinite future barring the imminent shipment of Raptor SN04 or the completion of SN01’s refurbishment.
The Raptor pack grows
Starhopper’s unplanned grounding ties
While the exact strategy behind SpaceX’s Raptor and BFR propulsion development programs
Regardless, the somewhat buggy behavior exhibited by the integrated Raptor and Starhopper indicate the obvious: both are fairly immature hardware still in some form of development, be it the late (Raptor) or the very earliest stages (Starhopper). By performing even more testing and continuing to optimize and gain familiarity with the hardware at hand, the fairly predictable process of development will arrive at more or less finished products.
Starship’s first orbital prototype
Last but not least, work continues on what will hopefully become the first orbit-capable Starship prototype, built in full-scale out of sheets of stainless steel that are far thinner than the metal used to construct Starhopper. This, too, is a normal process of development – as progress is made, prototypes will gradually lose an emergency cushion of performance margins, a bit like a sculptor starting with a solid block of marble and whittling it down to a work of art. Starhopper is that marble block, with inelegant, rough angles and far more material bulk than truly necessary.
As seen above, the orbital prototype – just the second in a presumably unfinished series – is already dramatically more refined. Instead of the first facade-like nose cone built for Starhopper, Starship’s nose section is being built out of smoothly tapered stainless steel panels that appear identical to those used to assemble the rocket’s growing aeroshell and tankage. As of now, there are five publicly visible Starship sections in various forms of fabrication, followed by a half-dozen or so tank dome segments waiting to be welded together as finished bulkheads.
Intriguingly, the only quasi-public official render of SpaceX’s steel Starship features visible sections very similar to those seen on the orbital prototype’s welded hull. They aren’t all visible in the render, but those that are are a distinct match to the aspect ratio of the welded sections visible in South Texas.
Extrapolating from this observation, Starship, as rendered, is comprised of approximately 16 large cylinder sections and 4-8 tapered nose sections. Based on the real orbital prototype, each large section is 9m in diameter and ~2.5m tall. Assuming Starship is 55 meters (180 ft) tall, this would translate into 22 2.5m sections, a nearly perfect fit with what is shown in the official render. Back in South Texas, SpaceX has 6 tapered sections and 7 cylinder sections in work, meaning that they would reach around 32.5m (~105 ft) – about 60% of a Starship hull – if stacked today.
If we assume that SpaceX follows Falcon procedures to build the seven-Raptor thrust structure separately (~2 sections) and excludes most of the cargo bay (~2-3 sections) on the first orbit-capable Starship, those ~13 in-work sections could be just a tapered nose cone away from the prototype’s full aeroshell. Time will tell…
Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes.
News
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
News
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
Tesla ended its Semi event with a Roadster teaser revealing a new front light bar.
Tesla closed out its Semi event in Nevada on Thursday night with a nod to its own history, dropping a short Roadster teaser that suggests the production car will look noticeably different from the prototype first shown in 2017.
“We can’t have a Semi event without the Roadster,” Tesla engineering executive Lars Moravy told the crowd before the clip played. The line was a deliberate callback. Tesla first revealed the next generation Roadster in November 2017 by driving it out of the back of a Semi trailer at the truck’s original unveiling in Hawthorne, California.
The new video opens on trailer doors swinging apart in the dark. A thin white light bar glows across what appears to be the nose of the car, Tesla and SpaceX logos flash over the frame, and the Roadster name appears before the clip ends on “See you next week.” Tesla posted the nine second clip on X after the livestream wrapped.
See you next week pic.twitter.com/BT52bGVxFu
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 25, 2026
The light bar is the most concrete design detail so far. The 2017 prototype used two separate curved headlamp pods, while a connected front light strip would bring the Roadster in line with the Cybertruck, Cybercab, Semi, and refreshed Model Y. Sawyer Merritt was among the first to point out what looked like part of a SpaceX logo in the video, something Tesla has not addressed.
That logo fits the buildup around the optional SpaceX Package, which Elon Musk has long said would use cold gas thrusters to improve acceleration and possibly allow the car to briefly leave the ground. Tesla’s “Go for launch” post on September 12 set the October 1 date, and invitations sent to reservation holders place the event in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Waco sits roughly 20 minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA has put a temporary flight restriction in place from September 18 through October 2, covering a 1.5 nautical mile radius from the surface up to 10,000 feet.
Tesla is also taking money ahead of the reveal. The company reopened Roadster reservations earlier this week with a $5,000 refundable card payment, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. That puts buyers at $50,000 committed before Tesla has published a price.
The original pitch set a high bar: 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds before any upgrades, 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and production in 2020. That timeline has slipped repeatedly, and Tesla has since pointed to production at Gigafactory Texas no earlier than 2027. The company has said next Thursday’s event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets, the three details original reservation holders have been waiting on for nearly nine years.
News
SpaceX readies Starship Flight 14 for a historic journey into uncharted territory
SpaceX finished Starship’s Flight 14 rehearsal, clearing the way for its first orbital flight Monday.
SpaceX has cleared one of the last hurdles before Starship’s first trip to orbit. The company posted on X Thursday afternoon that its launch rehearsal for Flight 14 was complete, keeping the mission on track for Monday, September 28. The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. CT at Starbase, Texas, and runs for 75 minutes.
A wet dress rehearsal is essentially launch day without the launch. Crews fill Booster 21 and Ship 41 with thousands of tons of extremely cold propellant, run the countdown nearly to ignition, then drain everything back out. It lets engineers catch leaks or equipment problems before anything leaves the pad. SpaceX still needs a launch license from the FAA before the stack, which stands 407 feet tall, can fly.
Flight 14 matters because of where it is going. All 13 previous Starship flights followed a suborbital path, which works like throwing a ball extremely high and far: the vehicle reaches space, but it is always on a course that brings it back down within about an hour. This time, Ship 41 will perform a short engine firing called an orbital insertion burn roughly 25 minutes after liftoff, giving it enough speed to keep falling around Earth instead of back into it. SpaceX plans about six laps at an altitude near 275 kilometers (171 miles) over nearly 10 hours, as Teslarati detailed when the mission was first announced.
Launch rehearsal complete ahead of Starship Flight 14 pic.twitter.com/h5LBYyBqi4
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 24, 2026
Getting into orbit also means Starship has to prove it can get back out. The ship must relight a single Raptor engine in space to slow down for reentry. SpaceX says it will only attempt the orbital insertion burn after flight controllers confirm the hardware needed for that return burn has enough backup, and its flight plan includes health checks that could shorten the mission to two or five orbits.
Flight 14 is also the first to put working satellites into service. Flight 13 carried 20 Starlink V3 satellites in July, but they came back down with the ship because that mission never reached orbit. This time, 26 V3 satellites are meant to stay up and join the constellation within a few weeks. Together they add about 26 terabits per second of network capacity, which SpaceX says is roughly 10 times what a single Falcon 9 launch of older V2 Mini satellites adds. Three of them carry cameras that will photograph Starship’s heat shield in orbit to check for tile damage before reentry.
The hardware has changed too. Ship 41 flies with extra fasteners on tiles in the most vulnerable areas, fixes for gaps where superheated plasma slipped behind tiles, and curved tiles designed to reduce heating between them. Two tiles recovered from Ship 40 will fly again, the first reuse of any part of a Starship heat shield. Booster 21 carries better engine filtering and new relight software after ice clogged three center engines on the previous booster, leaving only eight of 13 engines to restart for its landing burn.
Ship 41 is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a new recovery zone after several Indian Ocean landings, while Booster 21 aims for the Gulf. Neither will be caught by the tower on this flight. Elon Musk said in August that a ship catch was likely “in a few months.”
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
