News
SpaceX’s second rocket recovery drone ship leaves port during Starlink launch
On October 18th, SpaceX’s second booster recovery ‘drone ship’ left Port Canaveral at the exact same time as a Falcon 9 rocket was launching 60 Starlink satellites a dozen miles to the north.
A remote point-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera recently installed by NASASpaceflight.com at the port quite literally captured drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) vacating its berth and a Falcon 9 lifting off on SpaceX’s Starlink-13 mission in the same frame. That one frame helps capture some of the sheer scale and spectacle of the reusable rocket infrastructure SpaceX has built from nothing in a few short years, as well as the feats of spaceflight that reusability has begun to enable.
In essence, in a single camera frame, viewers can watch a massive SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket weighing ~560 metric tons (~1.3 million lbs) and standing 70 meters (~230 ft) tall lift off on the way to a drone ship (Of Course I Still Love You) landing some 630 km (390 mi) downrange and, ultimately, to Earth orbit.
In the foreground, distant rocket exhaust likely glimmering on its deck, an entirely separate football-field-sized drone ship known as Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) begins a journey to an almost identical Atlantic Ocean landing zone to catch a different Falcon 9 rocket’s own Starlink launch and landing three days later.
Around eight minutes after liftoff, Starlink-13 Falcon 9 booster B1051 performed a flawless, bullseye landing on drone ship OCISLY, completing the rocket’s sixth orbital-class launch. If things went well during stage securing operations, OCISLY and JRTI could easily pass just a few miles (or less) apart as JRTI is towed out to – literally – the exact same landing zone.

Starlink-13 complete, SpaceX appears to be on track to launch another Starlink mission just three days later. Known as Starlink-14 or Starlink V1 L14, it will be the namesake 14th launch of operational v1.0 Starlink satellites, also marking SpaceX’s 13th Starlink launch in 2020 and 15th Starlink launch overall. Starlink-14 is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) Launch Complex 40 (LC-40) no earlier than (NET) 12:36 pm EDT (16:36 UTC), Wednesday, October 21st. L-1d weather forecasts predict a 60% chance of favorable conditions.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, if Starlink-14 launches on schedule or is delayed by less than 72 hours, the Falcon 9 booster supporting it will break SpaceX’s (and thus the world’s) rocket turnaround record.
“NextSpaceflight.com reports that SpaceX has assigned Falcon 9 booster B1060 to Starlink-14. If Starlink-14 lifts off on schedule on October 21st, B1060 will beat out B1058 for the crown of fastest booster turnaround, launching twice in just 48 days. Falcon 9 B1058 set the current world record when it beat NASA’s Space Shuttle (54 days) with a 51-day turnaround earlier this year.”
Teslarati.com – October 15th, 2020

As usual, SpaceX will host an official webcast typically scheduled to begin ~15 minutes before launch. Tune in around 12:20 pm EDT (16:20 UTC) to catch Falcon 9’s Starlink-14 launch and landing live.
News
Anti-Tesla union leader ditches X, urges use of Threads instead
Tesla Sweden and IF Metall have been engaged in a bitter dispute for over two years now.
Marie Nilsson, chair of Sweden’s IF Metall union and a prominent critic of Tesla, has left X and is urging audiences to follow the union on Meta’s Threads instead.
Tesla Sweden and IF Metall have been engaged in a bitter dispute for over two years now.
Anti-Tesla union leader exits X
In a comment to Dagens Arbete (DA), Nilsson noted that her exit from X is not formally tied to IF Metall’s long-running labor dispute with Tesla Sweden. Still, she stated that her departure is affected by changes to the platform under Elon Musk’s leadership.
“We have stayed because many journalists pick up news there. But as more and more people have left X, we have felt that the standard has now been reached on that platform,” she said.
Jesper Pettersson, press officer at IF Metall, highlighted that the union’s departure from X is only indirectly linked to Tesla Sweden and Elon Musk. “Indirectly it does, since there is a lot of evidence that his ownership has caused the change in the platform to be so significant.
“We have nevertheless assessed that the platform had value for reaching journalists, politicians and other opinion leaders. But it is a microscopic proportion of the public and our members who are there, and now that value has decreased,” Petterson added.
IF Metall sees Threads as an X alternative
After leaving X, IF Metall has begun using Threads, Meta’s alternative to the social media platform. The union described the move as experimental, noting that it is still evaluating how effective the platform will be for outreach and visibility.
Pettersson acknowledged that Meta also does not operate under Sweden’s collective bargaining model, but said the union sees little alternative if it wants to remain visible online.
“In a perfect world, all large international companies would be supporters of the Swedish model when they come here. But unfortunately, the reality is not like that. If we are to be visible at all in this social media world, we have to play by the rules of the game. The alternative would be to become completely invisible, and that would not benefit our members,” he said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk confirms SpaceX is not developing a phone
Despite many recent rumors and various reports, Elon Musk confirmed today that SpaceX is not developing a phone based on Starlink, not once, but twice.
Today’s report from Reuters cited people familiar with the matter and stated internal discussions have seen SpaceX executives mulling the idea of building a mobile device that would connect directly to the Starlink satellite constellation.
Musk did state in late January that SpaceX developing a phone was “not out of the question at some point.” However, He also said it would have to be a major difference from current phones, and would be optimized “purely for running max performance/watt neural nets.”
Not out of the question at some point. It would be a very different device than current phones. Optimized purely for running max performance/watt neural nets.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 30, 2026
While Musk said it was not out of the question “at some point,” that does not mean it is currently a project SpaceX is working on. The CEO reaffirmed this point twice on X this afternoon.
Musk said, “Reuters lies relentlessly,” in one post. In the next, he explicitly stated, “We are not developing a phone.”
Reuters lies relentlessly
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026
We are not developing a phone
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026
Musk has basically always maintained that SpaceX has too many things going on, denying that a phone would be in the realm of upcoming projects. There are too many things in the works for Musk’s space exploration company, most notably the recent merger with xAI.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
A Starlink phone would be an excellent idea, especially considering that SpaceX operates 9,500 satellites, serving over 9 million users worldwide. 650 of those satellites are dedicated to the company’s direct-to-device initiative, which provides cellular coverage on a global scale.
Nevertheless, there is the potential that the Starlink phone eventually become a project SpaceX works on. However, it is not currently in the scope of what the company needs to develop, so things are more focused on that as of right now.
News
Tesla adds notable improvement to Dashcam feature
Tesla has added a notable improvement to its Dashcam feature after complaints from owners have pushed the company to make a drastic change.
Perhaps one of the biggest frustrations that Tesla owners have communicated regarding the Dashcam feature is the lack of ability to retain any more than 60 minutes of driving footage before it is overwritten.
It does not matter what size USB jump drive is plugged into the vehicle. 60 minutes is all it will hold until new footage takes over the old. This can cause some issues, especially if you were saving an impressive clip of Full Self-Driving or an incident on the road, which could be lost if new footage was recorded.
This has now been changed, as Tesla has shown in the Release Notes for an upcoming Software Update in China. It will likely expand to the U.S. market in the coming weeks, and was first noticed by NotaTeslaApp.
The release notes state:
“Dashcam Dynamic Recording Duration – The dashcam dynamically adjusts the recording duration based on the available storage capacity of the connected USB drive. For example, with a 128 GB USB drive, the maximum recording duration is approximately 3 hours; with a 1 TB or larger USB drive, it can reach up to 24 hours. This ensures that as much video as possible is retained for review before it gets overwritten.”
Tesla Adds Dynamic Recording
Instead of having a 60-minute cap, the new system will now go off the memory in the USB drive. This means with:
- 128 GB Jump Drive – Up to Three Hours of Rolling Footage
- 1TB Jump Drive – Up to 24 Hours of Rolling Footage
This is dependent on the amount of storage available on the jump drive, meaning that if there are other things saved on it, it will take away from the amount of footage that can be retained.
While the feature is just now making its way to employees in China, it will likely be at least several weeks before it makes its way to the U.S., but owners should definitely expect it in the coming months.
It will be a welcome feature, especially as there will now be more customization to the number of clips and their duration that can be stored.