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SpaceX’s first Starlink V2 satellites spotted at Starbase
On Monday, SpaceX was spotted loading some of the first Starlink V2 satellite prototypes into a custom mechanism designed to refill Starship’s magazine-like payload bay.
While it’s not the first time SpaceX has used the dispenser, the photos captured by photographer Kevin Randolph for the YouTube channel ‘What about it!?’ are the first to clearly show real prototypes of the next generation of Starlink satellites. According to CEO Elon Musk, those Starlink Gen2 or V2 satellites will be “at least 5 times better”, “an order of magnitude more capable,” and about four times heavier than current (V1.5) Starlink satellites.
The potential of the new satellite bus design paired with Starship’s massive fairing and lift capacity could dramatically improve the viability and cost-effectiveness of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. First, though, the company needs to launch and qualify prototypes of the new satellite design and verify that all associated ground support equipment works as expected.
Due to the designs SpaceX has settled on for both Starlink V2.0 satellites and the Starship hardware that will deploy them in orbit, that ground support equipment and the general path each satellite will take from its arrival at the launch facilities to liftoff on a Starship are wildly different than anything done before. July 18th’s photos (and screenshots from a recent factory tour) confirm that the next-gen satellites are basically enlarged versions of their smaller predecessors, which are also narrow rectangles.
The new spacecraft have a very similar aspect ratio but are around seven meters long and three meters wide (23′ x 10′) instead of approximately 3m x 1.5m (10′ x 5′). They also appear to be about twice as thick and reportedly weigh ~1,250 kilograms to V1.5’s estimated 310 kilograms (~2,750 lb vs ~680 lb). As a result, the V2.0 bus will have about 7-10 times more usable volume than V1.0 and V1.5. It should be no surprise, then, that each next-gen satellite could offer almost magnitude more usable bandwidth.
Assuming that Starship launch costs are roughly the same as Falcon 9 and that Starship can only launch a similar 50-60 satellites at once, an almost 10x performance improvement from a satellite that only weighs five times as much relative to V1.5 would make Starlink V2.0 constellation deployment at least twice as cost-efficient to deploy even if Starship could only launch the same mass (~16 tons) as Falcon 9. In fact, a recent SpaceX render suggests that Starship will be able to carry 54 Starlink V2.0 satellites initially. As a result, even if Starship costs five times more to launch than Falcon 9 (~$75M), it will still be cheaper per unit of bandwidth launched. If Starship eventually reaches marginal launch costs as low as Falcon 9 (~$15M), the cost of Starlink launches (not including satellite cost) could plummet from about $15,000 per gigabit per second (Gbps) to around $1,500-2,500 per Gbps depending on individual satellite bandwidth.
The total cost of the network will be higher, of course, and dependent on more variables, but the combination of Starship and V2.0 satellites could eventually reduce the relative cost of Starlink launch operations by a factor of 5-10. If Starlink V2.0 satellites are actually cheaper to manufacture per unit of throughput than V1.5 satellites, which is not implausible once mass-production begins, those savings will deepen. If Starship can quickly mature and becomes fully and efficiently reusable, the equation could become even more favorable.
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Still, loading Starship with satellites is going to be no minor feat and will add a significant amount of complexity and risk relative to the methods SpaceX currently uses for Falcon 9 Starlink launches. SpaceX’s initial Starship payload bay design is a roughly square enclosure that slots just above the ship’s uppermost tank dome and below its inward-curving nosecone. Per a render of the mechanism released last month, it measures about nine meters (30 ft) tall and eight meters (26 ft) wide, can store up to 54 Starlink V2.0 satellites, and dispenses pairs of satellites through a relatively tiny payload bay door that’s only wide enough for the task at hand.
Starship’s airframe is almost exclusively welded together. Once the nosecone and payload bay are installed on top of a ship, the only way to access the interior of the bay is through the dispenser door or an even smaller human-sized access port. SpaceX’s solution: build a mobile satellite storage box that will be lifted by crane (or launch tower arms) dozens to hundreds of feet off the ground and use the payload bay’s own dispenser mechanism in reverse to load satellites like bullets into a giant magazine. If that sounds simple, which it shouldn’t, it’s not.
It’s great, then, to see SpaceX apparently practicing that process with some of the first Starlink V2.0 prototypes. In photos captured on July 18th, workers were spotted loading several satellites into the only existing ‘loader’ inside one of Starbase’s three main factory tents. Each satellite was lifted using a load-spreader device that was presumably required to prevent the extremely long and thin satellites from bending too much in the middle during the lift. It’s unclear whether SpaceX is solely practicing the process or if it’s actually installing satellites well in advance for loading onto a Starship prototype.
Starship S24 is in the middle of preflight testing and has already been greeted by the satellite loader once before, possibly to load a prototype or mockup before ground testing began. Starship S25 appears to be at least a month or two away from completion, though its nose and payload bay section are much closer.
SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.
The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.
Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.
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Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.
The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.
As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo
SpaceX released new footage of Starship in space captured by the Starlink satellites it deployed.
SpaceX released a new video Friday evening showing Starship from an angle showcased by its own Starlink satellites, watching the rocket drift away in orbit.
The 65 second clip, posted on X, stitches together footage from four cameras mounted on a single Starlink V3 satellite. It opens with a close view of Starship’s 171 foot upper stage, still catching sunlight, then pulls back as the two spacecraft separate.
The footage comes from Starship’s 13th flight test, which launched July 24 from Starbase after a scrubbed attempt and an abort caused by an engine issue the week before. When Flight 13 finally flew, it carried the first batch of functional Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever deployed, twenty of them, with six equipped with cameras meant to scan the ship’s heat shield during reentry.
View of Starship in space from a Starlink V3 satellite on Flight 13.
This composite is made of imagery from four separate cameras on a single satellite. Six of the satellites were equipped with cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to… pic.twitter.com/sNTHHz5vLr
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 31, 2026
Flight 13 checked most of its boxes. Starship deployed all 20 satellites, relit a Raptor engine in space, and splashed down softly in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia. Musk’s longer term plan calls for a Starlink V3 constellation of 100,000 satellites, according to a recent FCC filing, with Starship as the only vehicle capable of launching them at the volume that requires. Each Starship flight is designed to carry up to 60 V3 satellites once the vehicle reaches routine service, well beyond what Falcon 9 can carry in a single mission.
Starship is next expected to fly with an attempt at catching the ship itself with the launch tower’s mechanical arms, a maneuver SpaceX has so far reserved for the Super Heavy booster.
Tesla flexed the new features of the Model Y L with a dedicated media event at the company’s Diner on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The Model Y L is the extended-wheelbase version of the all-electric crossover, which has been voted the best-selling car in the world on three occasions. The vehicle is already rolling off production lines at Gigafactory Texas, and first deliveries are slated to take place later this year.
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Teslarati was invited to the event, but due to some scheduling conflicts, we could not make it to Los Angeles. Instead, we will have our hands on a media unit sometime in August, so we’ll be able to spend some more extended time with the Model Y L.
However, plenty of those who made it to LA shared some cool features that set the Model Y L apart from the Model Y.
Multi-Row Climate Control
Tesla fitted the Model Y L with full climate control on all three rows on the front screen. It can be adjusted by selecting which row you’d like to modify on the right-hand side of the touch screen:
The Model Y L has a little row of icons on the right side of the climate screen so the front passenger can more quickly jump to whatever row they want to control. pic.twitter.com/uJS44mgCvk
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 30, 2026
Better Rear Window Visibility
One of the strangest things about the Model Y, especially the Juniper iteration, is the rear window has extremely limited visibility when looking into the rearview mirror.
Tesla has improved upon this with the Model Y L:
This is a drastic difference. https://t.co/wTdhitD5aA pic.twitter.com/z6hFs0Jkss
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 30, 2026
PowerShare will be included
Model Y L will come with PowerShare in North America, with an 11.5kW output to your home. Tesla said it would require Powerwall 3 for operation.
Wireless Charging Pad
There has been some speculation that Tesla would upgrade the wireless charging pads in the United States, but this is not the case.
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Tesla confirmed that it does not come with the cooled pads as the Y L in China does. This is because North America has not adopted Qi charging yet.
Thermal Management Improvements
These improvements in the Model Y L were seen with thermal management:
- Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
- +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather, 7 miles of real-world range gained
- 8x more solar energy reflection off of glass roof
- 30% reduction in solar energy entering the cabin
Some of the thermal management improvements in the new Model Y L Premium:
• Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
• Up to 15 min faster cabin cooling in sunny conditions
• +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather +7 miles of real-world range gained
• +10 miles recovered after… pic.twitter.com/jZirFWFdtO— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 31, 2026
Demand
Tesla said the Model Y L is almost sold out in the U.S. It comes with
- 1 year of FSD Supervised
- 1 year of Supercharging
- 1 year of Premium Connectivity
- Free exterior paint color, interior, and wheel option at no additional cost
SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch
SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo
