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SpaceX Starlink antennas spied at Starship factory for the first time ever
SpaceX’s mysterious Starlink ‘user terminals’ have been spotted in public for the first time ever at the company’s South Texas Starship factory.
Offering a first-ever glimpse of the hardware that individual customers will use to connect to SpaceX’s growing satellite internet network, the lone photo provides a bit more detail than it might initially seem. Effectively invisible up to now, the user terminal – a small antenna system – has been described by both SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and COO/President Gwynne Shotwell as a the single biggest challenge standing in the way of Starlink’s success.
For SpaceX, building a mass-market consumer electronics product more or less in-house was already guaranteed to be a major (and expensive) challenge. The complex requirements and limitations facing an antenna meant for a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet constellation thus magnify a task that is already hard and turn it into a truly unprecedented feat of mass production. Regardless, SpaceX continues to persevere and the first public appearance of user terminals – as well as the consistent company position that service could begin rolling out just a few months from now – are encouraging signs.
The single biggest reason the user terminal component of Starlink is so daunting is relatively simple. Situated in low Earth orbit (LEO) to ensure that Starlink internet service offers latency (ping, response time, etc.) as good or better than fiber, the SpaceX satellites are moving quite rapidly, spending just a handful of minutes over any given spot on the Earth’s surface. Whereas existing satellite internet solutions are located in much higher orbits, including geostationary orbits where the spacecraft actually appear to hover above a fixed point on the ground, ground antennas for LEO internet constellations are much more challenging.
Instead of a literal dish tracking satellites as they streak across the sky, the only truly viable solution is an electronically-steered (phased array) antenna. The problem is that while phased array antennas have plummeted in price over the last five or so years, the going price for existing solutions puts them somewhere between one and two magnitudes too expensive mass-market consumer product. Even if customers loathe Comcast with all their hearts, the vast majority simply can’t rationalize spending thousands of dollars up front for comparable satellite service.
In other words, for Starlink to be viable regardless of the quality or affordability of the satellites themselves, SpaceX must somehow find a way to build millions of user terminals that are simultaneously far more capable than anything in their price range and as good or better than antennas that cost $5,000, $10,000, or even more. The challenge is amplified further by the fact that competing ground-based internet service providers (ISP) like Comcast incur nearly no material cost to add a customer to their network, while customers will typically already have the router and modem needed to gain access.
On top of being at least 5-10 times cheaper than comparable alternatives, Starlink user terminals must also be impressively reliable, bug-free, and easy to set up. Beyond that, though, the amount of room for improvement available to SpaceX is almost comical. Even mediocre customer service and vaguely transparent bills and pricing would likely paint Starlink in a favorable and highly preferable light when compared with the United States’ infamous ecosystem of monopolistic ISPs. Many consumers may happily spend several times more money than they’ve ever spent on internet-related technology just to gain access to Starlink and escape the yoke of their existing ISP.
According to Shotwell, SpaceX could begin rolling out Starlink internet to customers in the northern US and southern Canada once 14 batches – ~840 operational spacecraft – have been launched. SpaceX’s next Starlink v1.0 launch is scheduled as soon as June 23rd, meaning that an initial rollout could come as early as August or September.
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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the third quarter of 2026, marking a reasonable performance on the various financial metrics. Tesla still plans to hold a call that will field investor questions at 5:30 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. CT.
Here’s where Earnings came in:
- Total Revenues: $28.046 reported vs. $28.34B expected
- Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48 reported vs. $0.45 expected
- Operating Margin: 2.6 % reported vs. 2.5% expected
- Operating Income: $718M reported vs. $721M expected
- Free Cash Flow: $1.531B reported vs. ~-$4.51B expected
Tesla $TSLA Earnings Results:
Revenues: $28.046B
Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48
Operating Margin: 2.6%
Operating Income: $718M
FCF: $1.531B— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 21, 2026
Major Takeaways
Full Self-Driving (Supervised)
“FSD (Supervised)⁴ attach rate continued to grow, reaching over 75% of new vehicle deliveries in North America – our most mature market – a nearly twenty percentage point sequential increase. We believe that FSD is driving demand in markets where it is available, and we continue to work with regulators to get it approved in other markets.”
Tesla Semi
“We began volume production of Tesla Semi, our Class 8 heavy-duty truck. The top variant can go 500 miles at full 82,000 lbs gross combination weight while achieving an efficiency of 1.7 kWh/mile. That efficiency allows the Tesla Semi to use a third of the energy used by a comparable diesel truck to haul the same payload. In a transportation market where energy is one of the largest components of total cost per mile, this will provide a meaningful advantage to Tesla Semi operators.”
SI Compute
“We plan to reach 400 MW of SI training compute by the end of the year, supporting the development of both vehicle and humanoid robot autonomy software. Additionally, we continued construction for the Austin Fab, where we plan to start commissioning equipment in 2027.”
Robotaxi
“We began deployment of Cybercab into our Robotaxi fleet in Austin. We reached nearly two million cumulative unsupervised miles for our Robotaxi service as of the end of the quarter. Operating hours in Austin are now 6am to midnight, and we expect to reduce wait times via increased fleet supply and improvement of Robotaxi orchestration algorithms. Grok is available in Cybercab with access to Grok Bot and Connectors, which allows users to manage their inbox, calendars, files, chats and tasks – all hands free via voice command – making Cybercab a mode of transport, a productivity space and, with our entertainment options, a second living room.”
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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reports its earnings for Q3 today. Here’s what to expect, as the company will reveal its balance sheet after the market closes on Wednesday.
Tesla already reported deliveries just after Q3 ended, and it demolished Wall Street consensus estimates of roughly 462,000 vehicles. Tesla delivered 486,532 cars in the third quarter, which was a big beat, but was down 2.1 percent from the same quarter last year. Energy storage deployments were 13.7 GWh, up year-over-year.
Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong
For the quarter, analysts have already compiled their predictions for what Tesla will report this afternoon:
- Total Revenues: $28.34B
- Non-GAAP EPS: $0.43
- Operating Margin: 2.5%
- Operating Income: $721M
- Free Cash Flow: ~-$4.51B
Here are a few things we are looking forward to hearing about on the call:
Automotive Gross Margin and Overall Profitability
This was 16.3 percent in Q2, down from 19.2 percent in Q1, and was impacted by warranty charges and some fading regulatory credits. Consensus implies overall gross margin near 18 percent, but a miss here would potentially reinforce concerns about pricing pressure on its vehicles.
Pay attention to energy storage margins as well, especially since Tesla missed GWh expectations, although it was still a strong quarter.
Robotaxi/Cybercab, Unsupervised FSD, and Optimus Progress
The Say questions from retail investors usually focus on these types of projects, and this quarter is no different. Scaling the Cybercab fleet beyond Austin amid the open NHTSA safety review, timeline for Unsupervised FSD in customer cars, Robotaxi unit economics, and Optimus cost per unit plus when it could start generating revenue, are all things to be looking for.
Any concrete timelines or regulatory path details will likely move the stock more than the near-term numbers. SpaceX merger speculation, which was detailed during SpaceX’s earnings call last night, may also surface, although the key details were shared last night.
Elon Musk just confirmed the Tesla and SpaceX merger step everyone was waiting for
Say Investor Questions
- How does the Cybercab fleet scale past Austin, and what’s the regulatory path outside Texas given NHTSA’s open safety review?
- When can we anticipate FSD unsupervised in customer cars?
- When will the CyberCab be available for customer purchase/ownership?
- What’s the unit economics per paid robotaxi mile, and how does it compare to the thirty-cent target?
- Tesla has acknowledged that HW3 vehicles cannot support unsupervised FSD. When will owners know whether they can upgrade their hardware for free, and when will Tesla provide a clear plan?
The full Earnings Call will be streamed this evening after market close around 5 p.m. this evening.
SpaceX confirmed the date of Starship’s 15th launch window with some massive ambitions for the mission, as it will attempt to catch Ship for the first time.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed during SpaceX’s Earnings Call last night on October 20 that it would launch Starship for its 15th test flight in November, and there are some incredible things the company wants to try, making it perhaps the most groundbreaking launch in the program’s history.
SpaceX delivers blockbuster Q3 results as Super Intelligence segment booms
The most major development of the call was SpaceX’s intention to catch Ship alongside catching the Super Heavy Booster, something that has happened in the past. SpaceX showed an animation of the Ship catch, which will be done on the launch tower’s chopsticks:
SpaceX has released a new Starship tower catch animation for the upcoming Flight 15! https://t.co/kStn01Da8u
— Truthful🛰️ (@Truthful_ast) October 20, 2026
This monumental goal is to catch both the Ship and Booster in a dual-catch scenario, an incredible feat since SpaceX has never been able to reuse a Ship after launch. Musk said it would be “the first time that an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered,” and said it would be a “profound technology milestone.”
Musk said the odds of success on this first Ship catch attempt are “more likely than not,” but SpaceX is ultimately prepared for more tries moving forward. The SpaceX frontman said that, starting next year, Starship would have a “steady stream” of flights through the end of the year.
The cadence will accelerate in 2027, with Musk stating the company plans to target weekly flights in the first half of 2027 and twice-weekly by year-end.
The Flight 15 attempt follows that of Flight 14, which took off in late September and was Starship’s first orbital mission. It deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, accomplished a controlled ocean splashdown of both stages, and shed more light on potential challenges for the program moving forward.
As of now, the Starship program is firing on all cylinders.
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Tesla Q3 2026 Earnings results: in-line revenues, slight beat on EPS
Tesla reports Q3 Earnings today: here’s what to expect
