Connect with us

News

SpaceX drone ship leaves port for Starlink mission during a Falcon 9 launch

Drone ship A Shortfall Of Gravitas, July 2021. (Richard Angle)

Published

on

In preparation for SpaceX’s next launch, drone ship A Shortfall Of Gravitas (ASOG) was spotted departing Port Canaveral in the middle of the company’s second Falcon 9 launch and landing this month.

Rideshare mission Transporter-3 lifted off at 10:25 am EST on Thursday, January 13th and delivered 105 small satellites to orbit without issue, completing the second of five SpaceX launches planned for the first month of 2022. Thanks to its relatively light payload, the mission’s Falcon 9 booster was able to boost all the way back to Cape Canaveral for its landing. Ten minutes before Falcon 9 lifted off, SpaceX drone ship ASOG left its Port Canaveral berth, timing its departure such that the vessel was towed past fans and media members there to watch Transporter-3 a matter of seconds after Falcon 9 B1058 stuck its tenth landing just six miles (9.5 km) to the north.

The day before Transporter-3, FAA and Coast Guard notices revealed that SpaceX was aiming to launch its third mission of the month on the evening of Monday, January 17th. Launch photographer Ben Cooper backed up those notices soon after, confirming SpaceX’s plans to launch another batch of Starlink satellites (likely Group 4-6) no earlier than (NET) 7:26 pm EST. Starlink 4-6 will likely mirror 4-5 and carry ~49 Starlink V1.5 satellites to low Earth orbit, using an odd slightly southeastern trajectory to allow both the booster and payload fairing to land near the Bahamas.

During SpaceX’s Starlink 4-5 webcast, an engineer standing in as its host revealed that the purpose of its unusual trajectory and inefficient dogleg maneuver was to increase the odds of successful booster and fairing recovery by landing in a region of the sea that tends to be calmer in the winter. The tradeoff: to get there, Falcon 9 has to perform a slight dogleg maneuver (a bit like a mid-flight right turn), consuming more propellant and thus forcing SpaceX to remove 4 Starlink satellites from the nominal payload of 53. That increases the relative cost of each southerly Starlink launch by about 8% – an inefficiency that SpaceX clearly views as preferable to the risk of losing a Falcon 9 booster (worth $30-40M) or fairing ($2-3M per half) to the ocean.

Falcon 9 B1058 is pictured landing directly behind departing drone ship ASOG.

Much like the first shell of SpaceX’s first 4408-satellite Starlink constellation, which SpaceX mostly completed last year, “Group 4” refers to an almost identical shell of 1584 satellites that will operate at a slightly (0.3%) different inclination and slightly (10 km; 2%) lower orbit. With 49-53 satellites on each mission, it will take SpaceX another 26-29 Falcon 9 launches to complete the new shell if every satellite works as planned.

If, as SpaceX’s plans for January suggest, the company’s Starlink V1.5 output has recovered to Starlink V1.0 levels (120-180+ satellites per month) after a five to six-month drought in H2 2021, SpaceX could more or less complete Shell 4 by the end of 2022 if it can average two Starlink launches per month for the rest of the year. January 2022 bodes well for that prospect, as SpaceX intends to conduct a third Starlink launch (4-7) near the end of the month if it can launch Starlink 4-6 and Italian Earth observation satellite CSG-2 within a few days of January 17th and January 27th.

Advertisement
-

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

News

EVgo taps Tesla Superchargers for mass charging expansion

Published

on

Credit: EVgo

EVgo has tapped Tesla Superchargers for its most recent efforts to expand its charging presence in the United States, a move that seems logical based on the effectiveness of the automaker’s own infrastructure.

EVgo opened its first Supercharger site in Illinois, a 12-stall station near downtown Chicago at 3145 South Ashland Avenue in the Riverside Square & River’s Edge center, right beside a grocery store. This marks the start of the company’s plan to deploy hundreds of Supercharger stalls across the United States, primarily at grocery-anchored Regency Centers properties where drivers can shop, eat, or run errands while they charge.

The new location uses Tesla’s Magic Dock technology so both NACS and CCS vehicles can plug in natively without drivers needing to carry their own adapters. Peak power reaches 325 kW at this site, with pricing set between $0.25 and $0.35 per kWh depending on the hour—the same rate for Tesla and non-Tesla drivers.

The stalls also appear in Tesla’s in-car navigation and Trip Planner, making them easy for Tesla owners to find and route to. Illinois has seen EV registrations rise nearly 60 percent over the past two years, and EVgo’s broader network has experienced more than 700 percent growth in charging demand over three years, so the timing fits the market’s trajectory.

Choosing Tesla hardware through the Supercharger for Business program turns out to have been a smart, practical move.

Tesla’s V4 stalls and cabinets deliver high, reliable power with a proven track record of strong uptime, while Magic Dock delivers true dual-standard compatibility in one package. Because the sites show up in Tesla’s navigation tools, EVgo instantly gains visibility among millions of existing Tesla drivers, which should raise utilization and help the company double its addressable market as more vehicles adopt NACS. EVgo still owns the stations and sets pricing, yet benefits from Tesla’s established hardware, longer cables, and operational support.

The result is faster, lower-risk infrastructure expansion that serves every EV driver—Tesla or otherwise—with convenient, high-power charging at everyday retail locations. For drivers, that means fewer adapters, more predictable stops, and a denser network just as electric vehicles become everyday transportation.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla Giga Texas reportedly moves to 24/7 production

Published

on

Credit: @JoeTegtmeyer/X

Tesla’s Austin Gigafactory is reportedly shifting to round-the-clock vehicle production through the end of 2026, according to longtime drone observer Joe Tegtmeyer.

In his November 2 update, Tegtmeyer, widely regarded as one of the most reliable independent sources on Giga Texas activity (we call him the Drone GOAT), stated that the plant has added a night shift, creating two 12-hour production shifts.

Tegtmeyer said in his video:

“Now, I do have some interesting news about that when it comes to the production schedule here at Giga Texas, and things are actually looking pretty good, especially when you think about what the demand is and the delivery numbers that they’re looking for and what they’re expecting. So, normally they have shifts Monday through Friday. It’s a day shift and it’s about 10 hours long or so, give or take. But now they’re on day and night shifts and they’re going to 12-hour days. So they’re going to be adding or they have another shift. They have 12 hours for both of them. In addition to that, the typical downtime that we’re going to be seeing around the holidays, specifically Thanksgiving and Christmas to the New Year time frame is actually changed. And we’re not going to see those big several day events where there is no production. At least that’s what the plan is right now. So, it’s really a great sign, I think, when we consider what they’ve done in the past and what production and the deliveries have been so far. So, maybe it’s shaping up to be a really strong quarter.”

Previously, General Assembly typically operated on a single roughly 10-hour day shift, Monday through Thursday or Friday. The new arrangement keeps General Assembly on its Monday-to-Thursday schedule while adding overnight capacity, and most other areas of the factory continue working the full week with some weekend activity.

Notably, the plant is also forgoing the multi-day shutdowns around Thanksgiving and the Christmas–New Year period that have occurred in prior years

Giga Texas currently builds the Model Y, the larger Model Y L, the Cybertruck, and the Cybercab robotaxi. Tesla has not confirmed the shift change or specified which lines will receive the extra output. Recent comments suggest Cybercab production has been constrained by the pace at which the Robotaxi fleet can absorb new vehicles, making the Model Y and Model Y L the more likely beneficiaries as the company works through order backlogs.

Tegtmeyer’s November 2 footage and commentary also highlighted broader site progress. Cortex 2 continues to expand, with additional compute coming online, a roughly 25 percent lengthening of the structure on the north end, and work on a third cooling plant.

The Boring Company tunnel site showed increased activity in the large launch pit, while the Advanced Technology Chip Fab (a SpaceX–Tesla joint R&D facility) continued steel superstructure and heavy truss installation, along with concrete pours.

The reported capacity increase arrives as Tesla aims for a strong fourth quarter following solid third-quarter results. While unconfirmed by the company, the information aligns with Tegtmeyer’s consistent track record of accurate on-site observations.

If Tesla makes the decision to sustain the all-day production plans, the dual 12-hour shifts would meaningfully raise weekly output potential at one of Tesla’s most important manufacturing hubs.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla opens new “Cybaer” Engineering Center in Berlin

Tesla opened its Berlin Engineering Center, uniting four sites and 30 labs near Giga Berlin.

Published

on

By

Tesla has opened a new engineering hub in Berlin, putting the teams that design and test its European parts about 30 minutes from the factory that builds them.

The Berlin Tesla Engineering Center, or BTEC, opened Wednesday in the Köpenick district. Tesla Europe said on X that the project went from permit to operational in under a year and consolidates four engineering sites and 30 labs onto a single campus. It is the company’s third hub of this kind, after Fremont and Shanghai.

“We’re combining materials, powertrain, vehicle engineering & validation under one roof, enabling a short feedback loop between development & ramp,” Tesla Europe wrote.

 

Tesla converted the former production halls of a cable factory for the site. About 250 engineers and technicians are starting there, most of them relocated from existing Tesla facilities such as Tilburg in the Netherlands. Tesla has already applied for approval of a second phase that would take the headcount to roughly 500, and it put the total investment at €100 million.

Advertisement
-

The labs cover battery cells, motors, materials and complete vehicles, and a large hall is set aside for safety testing of components, including airbags. During the opening, staff demonstrated a pedestrian leg impact test on the front of a Tesla using a catapult rig, Tagesspiegel reported. The center’s logo is a cubist Berlin bear that employees call the “Cybaer.”

Tesla said its Berlin design and engineering teams already contributed to the Model Y, Semi and Roadster, and that the work continues at BTEC. The center will handle technical problem solving for Giga Berlin in Grünheide while also developing and validating parts for vehicles built in China and the United States.

“We came here to stay,” BTEC head Brückner told dpa. “We serve all of Europe via Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg.” He said a site close to the plant was a priority, and that the old industrial building allowed Tesla to move quickly.

That proximity matters more now that Giga Berlin is growing again. In June, Tesla said it would raise Model Y output at the plant to 7,500 vehicles per week and hire 1,000 more workers after a record first quarter of more than 61,000 units. The factory recently built 7,000 Model Ys in a single week for the first time. Tesla also more than doubled the planned 4680 cell capacity at the site to 18 GWh per year in May, and has talked about eventually taking Grünheide to one million vehicles annually.

Sales are giving Tesla reason to invest. KBA data released the same day showed Tesla’s German registrations nearly quadrupled year over year in October to 2,932 units, bringing the total for the first ten months of 2026 to 47,742.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading