SpaceX
SpaceX’s first dedicated Starlink launch announced as mass production begins
SpaceX has announced a launch target of May 2019 for the first batch of operational Starlink satellites in a sign that the proposed internet satellite constellation has reached a major milestone, effectively transitioning from pure research and development to serious manufacturing.
R&D will continue as SpaceX Starlink engineers work to implement the true final design of the first several hundred or thousand spacecraft, but a significant amount of the team’s work will now be centered on producing as many Starlink satellites as possible, as quickly as possible. With anywhere from 4400 to nearly 12,000 satellites needed to complete the three major proposed phases of Starlink, SpaceX will have to build and launch a minimum of ~2200 satellites in the next five years, averaging 37 high-performance, low-cost spacecraft built and launched every month for the next 60 months.
A shift in the Stars
Despite the major challenges ahead of SpaceX, things seem to be going quite smoothly with the current mix of manufacturing and development. As previously reported on Teslarati, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk forced the Starlink group through a painful reorganization in the summer of 2018, challenging the remaining leaders and their team to launch the first batch of operational Starlink satellites no later than June 2019. As a consequence, a sort of compromise had to be reached where one additional group of quasi-prototype satellites would be launched before settling on a truly final design for serious mass-production.
According to SpaceX filings with the FCC, the first group of operational satellites – potentially anywhere from 75 to 1000 or more – will rely on just one band (“Ku”) for communications instead of the nominal two (“Ku” and “Ka”), a change that SpaceX says will significantly simplify the first spacecraft. By simplifying them, SpaceX believes it can expedite Starlink’s initial deployment without losing a great deal of performance or interfering with constellations from competitors like OneWeb.
Somewhere along the line, SpaceX would iteratively improve each subsequent ‘generation’ of Starlink satellites until they reached the nominal performance characteristics outlined in the company’s original constellation application. Knowing SpaceX, improvements would continue for as long as lessons continued to be learned from operating hundreds and eventually thousands of orbital spacecraft.
As one concrete example, recent SpaceX FCC documents stated that the first 75 Starlink spacecraft would feature a less-optimized reentry design, meaning that a select few components will not entirely burn up during reentry, creating debris that poses a
While the FCC has yet to grant SpaceX’s requested modifications, the other major goal is to reduce the operating orbit of the first phase of 1584 satellites to 550 km (340 mi), a change that SpaceX says will drastically reduce the potential lifespan of any orbital debris in the unlikely event of their creation. A lower altitude also places a major cushion between SpaceX’s first ~1500 satellites and the orbits of several other planned constellations, including OneWeb and Telesat.
Hello, Production Hell, my old friend
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Starlink program has begun the often painful steps of transitioning from a venture primarily focused on research and development to one focused mainly on building production lines and supply chains and manufacturing hardware. SpaceX’s Starlink facilities are currently housed in three nearby buildings located in Redmond, Washington, likely offering approximately 150,000 square feet (14,000 m^2) for a mix of office, development, and production spaces. At least one of the three non-office buildings could potentially become dedicated to production while one building – approximately 40,000 ft^2 (~3500 m^2) – has already been completely transformed into a prototype of a Starlink satellite production line, supporting manufacturing for first several dozen quasi-prototype spacecraft. For reference,
Mass-producing spacecraft at the scale needed to build even half of those needed for the first phase of ~4400 Starlink satellites will be a feat unprecedented in the history of the space industry. Barring FCC exemptions (possible but unlikely), SpaceX needs to launch ~2200 Starlink satellites between now and April 2024. To complete the first phase, the final number of satellites rises to ~4400. Adding on a proposed constellation of very low Earth orbit (
Perhaps SpaceX will be able to garner invaluable insight from the lessons its sister company learned during Model 3’s torturous “production hell”, in which the car company had to grow its production volume by almost a magnitude as quickly as possible. Ironically, it may even be the case that SpaceX has the easier task relative to Tesla.
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Elon Musk’s massive Terafab project, which will be the first true conglomeration between each of his major entities, is set to get its final location soon, the CEO said on Tesla’s recent earnings call.
“The Terafab, we expect to announce a location soon, and provide more details about our plans in that regard. We’ll leave that to the product, the launch announcement rather than try to squeeze it into an earnings call,” Musk said last Wednesday.
Tesla Terafab set for launch: Inside the $20B AI chip factory that will reshape the auto industry
Terafab was announced by Musk back in March and was essentially a massive, vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing project that would provide all the chips the three companies needed for their AI initiatives without needing third-party companies.
The plant will produce over 1 terawatt of AI compute each year, and will help back up projects like Optimus, Full Self-Driving, and other AI-based projects that Musk’s companies are working on.
In April, less than a month after the project was launched, Intel announced it would join the project, contributing manufacturing expertise and consulting to Terafab as a whole. Intel is one of three chip manufacturers that produce sub-5 nanometer chips at scale. TSMC and Samsung are the other two.
However, there was no true indication of where Terafab would end up, but most believe it will likely be somewhere in Texas. Business Insider has reported that SpaceX plans to build out Terafab in Grimes County, Texas, but this is unconfirmed.
Musk confirmed recently that it would not be on Giga Texas property, as it is simply too large.
The sheer scale of TERAFAB is going to be insane.
Elon said it wouldn’t be suitable for anywhere on Giga Texas property because it’s too big:
“We couldn’t possibly fit the Terafab on the GigaTexas campus. It will be far bigger than everything else combined there.
Several… pic.twitter.com/79GbhNNuf4
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 23, 2026
Terafab holds much of Musk’s grand ambitions for the future within its construct. It holds so much responsibility for the future and the biggest projects that Musk’s companies can imagine.
“I think this is a very big announcement and it deserves to have its own day in the spotlight and not be squeezed into an earnings call,” he said. “I do think Terafab is going to be an amazing initiative and a necessary one, and one without which we will be constrained in our ability to scale Optimus production, because we simply won’t have enough AI chips.”
He continued by stating that Terafab is necessary for scaling Optimus, which Musk said could be the biggest product of any kind of all time. “It’s crucial to solve that, and we’ll have to solve memory, logic, and packaging in order to scale Optimus.”
SpaceX performed a secret test on a specific portion of Starship with its recent 13th test flight last week, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
Starship’s 13th test flight took place last Friday, and in many aspects, it was one of the most overwhelmingly successful launches in the project’s history.
All of the mission objectives were met without incident, both the Super Heavy Booster and Ship managed to perform safe splashdowns in the Gulf of America and the Indian Ocean, respectively, and the deployment of Starlink satellites came and went without any complications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
However, there was more on the agenda for SpaceX with Flight 13. Musk revealed an internal test of the ship’s heat shield tiles, as the space exploration company wanted to push them to the limits after previous issues.
Many noticed that Starship’s initial launch seemed to be more accelerated than normal, and that was not a mistake. Musk revealed that SpaceX decided to give Flight 13 an intentionally aggressive acceleration rate in an effort to test how well the tiles would remain attached to the ship:
This flight intentionally had much higher acceleration to test how well the heat shield tiles would remain attached at high dynamic pressure.
Test was successful.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
SpaceX had issues with some of the heat shield tiles remaining attached early on in the Starship program. The first six test flights presented some kind of anomaly with them, so the company’s big focus with them was to figure out a way to keep them intact through the duration of the flight.
Things truly improved as Flight 10 showed that ceramic tiles generally stayed attached to the ship far better due to refined attachment, as SpaceX utilized pins instead of adhesives. Flights 10 through 13 truly showed some clear progress with the heat shield tiles, and this latest test seems to be where some real progress was noticed, especially by Musk.
The 13th Starship launch last Friday was the second with Starship V3, SpaceX’s latest and greatest iteration of the spacecraft. Goals and ambitions are getting even grander as the project continues to progress. Musk has already hinted that SpaceX will likely try to catch Starship with Flight 14.
Just hours after Starship Flight 13 achieved a successful soft splashdown of its upper stage in the Indian Ocean on July 24, Elon Musk announced an ambitious next step for the company’s next launch of the rocket.
“Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on [the] next flight,” the SpaceX CEO posted on X on Friday.
That “next flight” is expected to be Flight 14. The plan involves returning the Starship upper stage, commonly called the “ship,” to the Starbase launch tower in Texas and catching it mid-air using the same mechanical “chopsticks” arms that have already proven themselves with the Super Heavy booster.
Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
A successful catch would mark the first time an orbital-class upper stage has been recovered this way, advancing SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability for the entire vehicle.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower-catch technique multiple times with Super Heavy. The first successful catch came on Flight 5 in October 2024, when Booster 12 was plucked from the sky by the Mechazilla arms. Subsequent flights, including those involving Boosters 14 and 15, repeated the feat. Several of those recovered boosters were later inspected, refurbished, and flown again, proving the system’s viability for quick turnaround.
Traditional reusable rockets, such as SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 or Blue Origin’s New Shepard, land on legs either on land or droneships. Rocket Lab has recovered its small Electron first stages by helicopter, but those are far lighter vehicles.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), completed a catch of its booster on July 10. They are the only entity besides SpaceX to attempt and complete the feat.
Flight 13 provided encouraging data. The ship executed a controlled reentry, flipped, and soft-landed intact in the ocean after deploying Starlink satellites, offering the first clear post-splashdown views of an undamaged heat shield. The Super Heavy booster, meanwhile, experienced a harder splashdown in the Gulf of America.
Musk has previously stressed that ship catches would only follow multiple successful soft ocean landings to minimize risk of debris over land.
If Flight 14 succeeds, SpaceX would take a major stride toward routine, rapid reuse of both stages—critical for lowering launch costs and supporting ambitious plans for lunar and Mars missions. For now, teams are reviewing the Flight 13 data. Should everything check out, the next Starship flight could deliver one of the most spectacular recoveries in aerospace history.
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