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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.
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.
Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
