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SpaceX could provide satellite broadband service as early as 2020

SES-11's refurbished Falcon 9 seen on the morning of October 11th. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)

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Patricia Cooper, SpaceX’s VP of Satellite Government Affairs, provided a statement to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding SpaceX’s broadband satellite constellation ambitions.

Of note, Cooper reiterated on Wednesday that SpaceX intends to launch two prototype satellites into orbit within the next few months, and further suggested that an operational Starlink launch campaign is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2019. She also noted that the company’s initial ~4000 satellite constellation is meant to be launched over a space of five years, with limited service beginning in 2020 or 2021 once ~800 satellites have been placed in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

While officially unconfirmed, FCC filings have for several months suggested that SpaceX was hoping to launch its first prototype communications satellites relatively soon, and Cooper’s comments indicate that those prototypes will be launched in late 2017 or early 2018. According to those documents, the reported orbit of SpaceX’s prototype Microsats fits perfectly with the planned orbit of PAZ, a Spanish Earth imaging satellite, which is scheduled for launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA on January 30 2018.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation efforts could provide the company with valuable experience that can be applied around Mars. (unofficial logo by Eric Ralph)

More experimental satellites are likely to follow the launch of Microsat 2A/2B, although SpaceX’s aggressive technology development strategy could preclude future experimental launches if all goes as planned. If SpaceX hopes to begin operational launches by 2019 and launch ~800 satellites no later than 2021, the company will have to both settle on a finalized design and rapidly expand its satellite manufacturing capabilities in the near term.

Nevertheless, Cooper unambiguously stated that SpaceX is not currently pursuing outside investment for Starlink research and development. This suggests the company is relatively confident in its near and long term strategies for rolling out its satellite broadband constellation, despite its aggressive schedule.

OneWeb, also pursuing a large broadband constellation, plans to effectively mirror SpaceX’s current strategy approximately one year before, with initial launches in 2018 and limited service in 2019. As such, OneWeb’s success or lack-thereof will almost certainly inform SpaceX’s own strategy, although the technologies being pursued by both companies are somewhat different, as are the launch opportunities for each company.

After launching SES-10, the first stage was recovered for a second time aboard the drone ship OCISLY. Reuse will be a major boon for SpaceX’s internal satellite efforts. (SpaceX)

As a vertically-integrated launch provider with considerable expertise in orbital rocketry, SpaceX undoubtedly has the upper hand over all competitors simply because it can quite literally launch at cost, bypassing the relative difficulty of procuring vast numbers of commercial launches. Combined with SpaceX’s ability to unilaterally fly on refurbished launch vehicles, it is all but impossible that competing broadband constellation providers can meet a similar level of cost efficiency while purchasing market-value launches.

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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.

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Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash

An Amazon cargo plane crash near Miami’s airport stopped feet from dozens of Tesla Cybercabs.

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Photorealistic depiction of the Amazon Prime plane crash in Miami on Sep 3, 2026 near a fleet of Tesla Cybercab
Photorealistic depiction of the Amazon Prime plane crash in Miami on Sep 3, 2026 near a fleet of Tesla Cybercab

An Amazon Prime Air Boeing 767 cargo jet overran the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, killing five people and injuring five more. The jet, operated by North Carolina based carrier 21 Air as Flight 7598, touched down around 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, then crossed the airport perimeter, plowed across NW 67th Avenue and struck multiple vehicles before catching fire, according to the Associated Press.

Photos and video from the scene show the aircraft’s nose stopped within meters of a fenced staging lot holding dozens of gold painted Tesla Cybercabs, the steering wheel free robotaxi Tesla began putting on public roads in Austin last week. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue has confirmed the plane struck “multiple vehicles” but has not said whether any Cybercabs were among them, and neither Tesla nor airport officials have addressed the fleet directly.

The Cybercabs had not yet entered commercial service in Miami. Tesla’s existing Robotaxi operation there runs on modified Model Y vehicles and has been unsupervised since Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the detail on X in July.


Elon Musk offered the briefest of reactions. Replying to a Zero Hedge post about the Cybercabs sitting so close to the wreckage, he wrote a single word: “Weird.” He has not commented further, and Tesla has not issued a statement.

The timing puts Tesla’s newest vehicle near an unrelated but highly visible tragedy just days after its Austin debut, a launch that had already drawn scrutiny from federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit how Tesla certified the Cybercab as compliant with federal vehicle safety standards, a process Teslarati covered after the vehicle’s September 3 launch event. That inquiry concerns the car’s lack of a steering wheel and pedals, not the Miami crash.

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Investigators from the FAA and NTSB are focused on the plane, not the parking lot beside it. Flight data reviewed by outlets including Simple Flying show the 767 touched down around 170 knots, well above the 135 to 140 knot range typical for the aircraft, though investigators have not determined a cause. Amazon said it is working with authorities and that its priority is the safety of everyone affected.

Whether any Cybercabs were damaged, and what Tesla plans for the fleet parked near one of the country’s busiest airports, remain open questions.

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Tesla crosses major Unsupervised Self-Driving milestone

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has reached a notable benchmark in its autonomous driving program after its Robotaxi fleet surpassed one million miles of unsupervised operation. The company made the announcement during its Cybercab event in Austin on September 3.

Tesla Vice President of AI Ashok Elluswamy told attendees he was happy to report the fleet had achieved one million miles of unsupervised Robotaxi operation as a testament to safety.

The new total marked a sharp increase from the 380,000 unsupervised miles Tesla disclosed during its second-quarter 2026 earnings update in late July.

In roughly six weeks, the company added about 620,000 miles. That acceleration followed Tesla’s decision to remove in-vehicle safety monitors from most of its operations outside the San Francisco Bay Area.

Credit: Tesla

Tesla first launched Robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025 with safety drivers present. It later began fully unsupervised rides and expanded into Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. The San Francisco Bay Area remains the exception, where a safety monitor still rides in the vehicle under California permitting rules.

The company has not released a city-by-city breakdown of the one million unsupervised miles.

The milestone arrived as Tesla began offering public Cybercab rides in Austin. The purpose-built vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals and is designed only for autonomous ride-hailing. Production versions joined the existing fleet of modified Tesla vehicles already operating in the service.

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Tesla’s unsupervised mileage is growing at a double-digit weekly rate according to earlier company comments, yet its fleet size remains modest compared with established competitors. Waymo has accumulated more than 200 million fully autonomous rider-only miles. Tesla has described its own unsupervised operations as having recorded zero notable incidents in the period leading up to the July update.

The one-million-mile figure reflects Tesla’s shift from supervised testing to broader driverless service in multiple states. It also highlights the company’s strategy of using both existing Model Y vehicles and the new Cybercab to scale its network.

Credit: Tesla

Whether the rapid recent growth continues will depend on further city expansions, regulatory approvals, and the performance of the purpose-built Cybercab in everyday paid rides. Tesla has not specified how many of the latest miles involved the new vehicle versus the rest of the fleet.

The announcement underscores Tesla’s progress toward a larger robotaxi network while illustrating the remaining gap in total autonomous experience relative to longer-operating rivals.

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Tesla Robotaxi will be a 24/7 service: here’s when

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Credit: @AdanGuajardo/X

Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this week that 24-hour Robotaxi service is close. Replying on X to a rider who wanted Cybercab trips all night, he wrote that the capability would arrive “next month or so” once “the next tech to merge on the v15 plan” is ready.

The comment landed on September 4, one day after Tesla opened public Cybercab rides in Austin. It is the clearest near-term timeline yet for overnight unsupervised operation. Tesla’s paid Robotaxi network currently runs from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week across Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.

That 16-hour window is shorter than the 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. schedule the company used for much of the prior year.

Elluswamy did not name the specific feature or say whether the change would apply first to purpose-built Cybercabs, the existing Model Y fleet, or both. He also offered no city-by-city rollout list. The link to Full Self-Driving v15 is nevertheless significant.

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Tesla has described v15 as a step-change architecture with seven parallel improvement tracks and roughly ten times more parameters than earlier builds. Early versions of that software already operate on the Robotaxi fleet and contain about 40 percent of the planned gains.

By July 2026, the unsupervised fleet had logged more than 380,000 miles across six cities in two states with what the company called an impeccable safety record and no notable incidents caused by the vehicles themselves. Tesla has repeatedly argued that camera-based end-to-end neural networks, rather than extra sensors, are the core of the solution.

Overnight service would test that claim in lower-light conditions and would also raise vehicle utilization, a key variable for Robotaxi unit economics. The company has already begun using public Superchargers at night and is building dedicated Robotaxi charging sites.

Riders have asked why software must change if the cars already drive in the dark. The practical answer appears to be reliability and scale: Tesla has held back mass expansion until more of the v15 stack is merged, citing the need for higher confidence before putting thousands of unoccupied vehicles on streets around the clock.

If the next module arrives on the timetable Elluswamy sketched, 24-hour service could begin in October 2026 in at least some markets.

That would mark a shift from a daytime-bounded pilot to a service that can run whenever demand exists, including the late-night hours that have so far remained out of reach.

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