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SpaceX’s upgraded Starship passes first ‘cryoproof’ test after repairs
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says an upgraded Starship prototype has passed its first cryogenic proof or ‘cryoproof’ test after undergoing a week of repairs.
Around noon, local sheriffs closed the road to Starbase’s orbital launch site (OLS) and SpaceX cleared the pad of all personnel, freeing up Starship S24 for the next stage of testing. A week prior, on May 27th, Ship 24 suffered some degree of internal damage during a simpler pneumatic proof test with ambient-temperature nitrogen gas. It’s now clear that most of that pneumatic proof test was successful, demonstrating that the Starship’s main propellant tanks and associated plumbing and valves were structurally sound and working as expected.
Still, for about a week after that first test, teams of SpaceX workers swarmed the Starship prototype 24/7 and were seen extracting damaged plumbing and carefully transporting replacement parts inside. Only on the morning of June 2nd was Ship 24 sealed up again.
Cryogenic fluid loading – liquid nitrogen or a combo of LN2 and liquid oxygen (LOx) – began shortly before 3pm CDT (UTC-5) and the Starship’s main tanks were fully filled about 70 minutes later. SpaceX then let those fluids naturally warm, causing a small portion to boil into gas and gradually raise the pressure inside Ship 24’s main tanks. As the pressure grew, sections of the layers of frost and ice that formed on the outside of its thin steel tanks occasionally sloughed off in sheets or broke off in fragments – the only evidence of stress aside from venting.
After about an hour fully filled, SpaceX began detanking and depressurizing Ship 24. The road and pad were reopened around 8:40 pm. All told, aside from an apparent leak on its liquid oxygen tank access hatch, a very common occurrence, Ship 24 exhibited no unusual behavior and made it through its first cryoproof without any obvious issue. More importantly, SpaceX did not appear to reattempt the pneumatic proof test the ship partially failed before the harder cryoproof test, implying that its first test was mostly successful. CEO Elon Musk later confirmed that the Starship had passed its first cryoproof test a few hours after.
Despite Musk’s positive comment, there was no evidence of activity in Ship 24’s nose section, where a number of crucial vents and secondary header tanks – meant to serve as attitude control thrusters and store landing propellant – are located. Ship 24 is the first Starship prototype with a new design that moved both header tanks into the tip of the nosecone. The nose itself is also the first with a number of other manufacturing and design upgrades to reach a test stand, so verifying that it works as expected is doubly important.
Given that the plumbing that failed in the first test may have been connected to Ship 24’s nose section and header tanks and that neither was obviously involved in the subsequent June 2nd cryoproof, it’s likely that the Starship prototype is not done with cryoproof testing just yet. Nonetheless, the ship’s survival and passage of its first cryoproof bodes well for the next steps.
In the near future, SpaceX is expected to move Ship 24 to a nearby ‘suborbital pad’ and test stand that has been significantly modified to simulate the thrust and mechanical stress of six Raptor 2 engines. If or when Ship 24 passes that test or tests, SpaceX will likely remove the stand’s hydraulic rams and begin installing Raptor engines and associated heat shielding. Then, Starship S24 can enter the final stages of qualification: wet dress rehearsal and static fire testing.
SpaceX has requested additional road closures for potential testing on June 6th, 7th, and 8th.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI Director Ashok Elluswamy celebrated Christmas Eve by sharing personal experiences with Robotaxi vehicles that had no safety monitor or occupant in the driver’s seat. Musk described the system’s “perfect driving” around Austin, while Elluswamy posted video from the back seat, calling it “an amazing experience.”
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Elon and Ashok’s firsthand Robotaxi insights
Prior to Musk and the Tesla AI Director’s posts, sightings of unmanned Teslas navigating public roads were widely shared on social media. One such vehicle was spotted in Austin, Texas, which Elon Musk acknowleged by stating that “Testing is underway with no occupants in the car.”
Based on his Christmas Eve post, Musk seemed to have tested an unmanned Tesla himself. “A Tesla with no safety monitor in the car and me sitting in the passenger seat took me all around Austin on Sunday with perfect driving,” Musk wrote in his post.
Elluswamy responded with a 2-minute video showing himself in the rear of an unmanned Tesla. The video featured the vehicle’s empty front seats, as well as its smooth handling through real-world traffic. He captioned his video with the words, “It’s an amazing experience!”
Towards Unsupervised operations
During an xAI Hackathon earlier this month, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla owed be removing Safety Monitors from its Robotaxis in Austin in just three weeks. “Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. So there will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks,” he said. Musk echoed similar estimates at the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting and the Q3 2025 earnings call.
Considering the insights that were posted Musk and Elluswamy, it does appear that Tesla is working hard towards operating its Robotaxis with no safety monitors. This is quite impressive considering that the service was launched just earlier this year.
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
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NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
