News
SpaceX says Starship Mk1 will test ‘skydiver’ landing before the end of 2019
A senior SpaceX director says that the Starship Mk1 prototype could lift off for the first time before the end of 2019, a flight debut SpaceX hopes will successfully demonstrate the next-generation spacecraft’s exotic ‘skydiver’ landing method.
SpaceX is in the late stages of building the first full-scale Starship prototypes, known as Mk1 (situated in Boca Chica, Texas) and Mk2 (Cocoa, Florida). The Texas-based Mk1 prototype is by far the furthest along and featured prominently at CEO Elon Musk’s Starship update presentation on September 28th, having been stacked to its final height of ~50m (165 ft) for the first time just days prior.
It’s clear now that more than a little showmanship was involved in the work that lead up to Starship Mk1’s unveiling. Within a week or two of the event, SpaceX technicians had separated Starship’s nose and tail sections, removed all three Raptor engines, and uninstalled the ship’s wings and canards, among other things.
Aside from the nose and tail section demate and removal of flaps, canards, and Raptors, the aero covers that were briefly attached to Starship’s exterior (raceways, canards, flaps, legs) were also removed. One raceway cover may or may not have been a casualty of high winds but all of the above hardware was carefully stored on the ground surrounding Starship Mk1 and is clearly meant to be installed more permanently in the coming weeks.
Nevertheless, Starship Mk1 obviously has a decent ways to go before it can be seriously considered flight-ready. On a positive note, aside from several days spent undressing Starship, SpaceX’s South Texas team (and others traveling from Florida and California) have been working 24/7 in the weeks since Musk’s presentation.
The last two weeks of Starship Mk1 activity have centered around installing the numerous crucial bits and pieces the rocket will need to function. This has included thousands of feet of power cables, avionics wiring, and propellant feed and transfer pipes; industrial-scale power controllers and flight computers, and much more.
The sheer quantity and range of sizes of piping being installed on Starship Mk1 all but confirms that the rocket will be a high-fidelity prototype capable of testing a wide range of capabilities related to autogenous pressurization and Raptor engine ignition. The mirrored presence of three sets of smaller pipes on the vehicle’s raceway (essentially a utility corridor) is a strong sign that Raptor and Starship’s smaller header tanks and COPVs (located in Mk1’s nose section) are closely related.
Some of the excess hot gas produced by Raptor may be tapped to supply COPVs that can then be used to reignite the engines in-flight. More likely, the small pipes are more of a one-way feed line from Starship’s header tanks to its Raptor engines and – as Musk has indicated – the cryogenic liquid propellant in those header tanks will be gasified with electric heaters or gas generators.
Starship gymnastics
Given all of the above, close followers were already readily aware of the fact that Starship Mk1 needed some significant work done before it would be ready for flight. On October 22nd, SpaceX Senior Director Gary Henry confirmed these suspicions, indicating that Starship Mk1’s 20 km (12 mi) flight test debut was now scheduled no earlier than two months from now (December 2019).
According to CEO Elon Musk and other SpaceX engineers, that 20 km flight debut is designed to prove that Starship’s radical new approach to flight and landing is viable. Musk has repeatedly described that Starship will in no way be an actual space plane and has stated that its ‘wings’ and ‘canards’ are not intended to be airfoils or wings. Instead, Starship will reenter Earth’s atmosphere, slow its horizontal velocity to near-zero, and proceed to free-fall straight down, using its fore and aft flaps to control its trajectory in the same way that skydivers use their body and limbs.
This bizarre approach will be capped off with an aggressive landing maneuver in which Starship will ignite its engines, wildly thrust-vector and swerve to cancel out the horizontal velocity imparted by that sideways ignition, and land vertically on Earth (or Mars). In theory, this strategy will radically reduce the amount of fuel Starship needs to land in atmospheres, but it’s far removed from anything SpaceX has attempted with Falcon 9 and Starship Mk1’s first flight will hopefully prove it to be a viable solution.
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News
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
NASA just gave SpaceX a $946 million contract for three more astronaut missions through 2030.
NASA has awarded SpaceX a $946 million contract modification covering three more astronaut missions to the International Space Station, according to an announcement the agency published Friday. The award adds Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s existing Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract, bringing the agreement’s total value to $5.92 billion across 17 flights.
SpaceX confirmed the award on X, writing that it was excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the Space Station from Florida. The new missions cover ground, launch, in orbit, and return operations, along with cargo transport and a lifeboat capability while docked at the station, and the period of performance runs through 2030.
We’re excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch @NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the @Space_Station from Florida https://t.co/Qm16vVK9F3 pic.twitter.com/drg3s7GtuM
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 18, 2026
The award follows a notice of intent NASA issued in May, when the agency first signaled it would purchase up to six additional post certification missions from SpaceX. Teslarati covered that filing at the time, noting NASA cited technical issues and schedule delays encountered by Boeing as a driving factor. Friday’s contract modification locks in three of those six missions, with the remaining three left open for NASA to award later, potentially to Boeing if Starliner clears certification.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has still not flown an operational crew rotation mission for NASA. The spacecraft’s most recent crewed test flight in 2024 ended without the astronauts returning aboard Starliner, and the company has spent the time since working through thruster problems. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said this week that SpaceX is not retiring Crew Dragon today, for sure, while stopping short of committing to fly it past 2030.
Crew-12 is currently docked at the space station, and NASA has said Crew-13 is targeting a launch in the coming weeks. The newly awarded Crew-15 through Crew-17 missions extend SpaceX’s role as NASA’s primary way of getting astronauts to and from orbit well into the back half of the decade, regardless of what happens with Starliner or Starship in the meantime.
Investor's Corner
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
New drone footage shows Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory steel frame nearing completion at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, according to drone footage posted Thursday afternoon by longtime site observer Joe Tegtmeyer. In the video, Tegtmeyer said structural steel assembly is now about five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam, putting the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
The Giga Texas Optimus Factory latest update … construction keeps moving fast!
Steel assembly is now only about 5 column grids from the north perimeter beam. Concrete is going in on the three upper floors, rebar is still being laid for more pours, and footing / grade-beam work… pic.twitter.com/qvFPvwnYzW
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 17, 2026
Tegtmeyer’s footage shows concrete already going in on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. That kind of parallel work, steel rising at one end of the site while concrete sets at the other, is a scheduling approach Tesla used at the original Giga Texas building and appears to be repeating here to save time before the plant’s targeted 2027 production start.
Teslarati has tracked the building’s progress since Tesla confirmed construction was officially underway in May, when the first steel structure went up on what was then bare, reclaimed land. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion of Giga Texas’s North Campus that Tesla has said will eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory, over 4,000 feet, while sitting somewhat narrower. Musk has pegged the long term output target at 10 million Optimus units a year once the line is running at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line Tesla is standing up separately at its Fremont, California factory.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The Texas facility sits alongside another major buildout on the same campus. Terafab, the joint Tesla and SpaceX chip fabrication plant that will eventually supply the silicon running Optimus units in the field. Housing robot assembly and chip production on the same grounds is a deliberate supply chain decision, cutting down on the shipping and lead time that would otherwise sit between the two.
Tesla has not given an updated timeline beyond its previously stated goal of bringing high volume Optimus production online at the site in the summer of 2027. Fremont’s smaller pilot line began mass producing the current Gen 3 robot in January, with that plant expected to build tens of thousands of units this year primarily to generate the real world data Tesla needs to refine the robot’s software before Giga Texas ramps up. Six months of visible construction progress, tracked almost entirely through Tegtmeyer’s recurring drone flights, gives the clearest outside look yet at how seriously Tesla is treating that 2027 deadline.
Investor's Corner
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
Tesla and SpaceX sue a small Illinois firm after cease and desist letters over Terafab.
Tesla and SpaceX are asking a federal judge to rule that their planned Terafab chip factory does not infringe a small Illinois company’s trademark, a request that arrives only after months of quiet negotiation broke down this summer.
The dispute traces to May 18, when Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for “Terafab” and “Tesla Terafab,” covering semiconductor chips and related chip making services. TERA-print LLC, a nanotechnology company that has held a federal trademark for “Tera-Fab” since 2021, responded five days later with a cease and desist letter. According to the lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, TERA-print argued that Tesla and SpaceX’s use of “Terafab” would confuse consumers familiar with its own trademark, which covers a desktop photolithography printer sold to researchers for sensor and bioengineering work.
What stands out in the filing is the timing of TERA-print’s own paperwork. One day before sending that cease and desist letter, on May 22, TERA-print applied to expand its existing registration to cover semiconductor materials, silicon chips, nanoelectronic devices and AI design services, categories it had not previously claimed. Tesla and SpaceX call that filing opportunistic in their complaint, noting it arrived two months after Tesla’s public Terafab announcement and just days after Tesla’s own trademark applications went in.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, the complaint states. Rather than wait to be sued, Tesla, SpaceX and SpaceXAI met with TERA-print six separate times between June and August trying to resolve the dispute directly. Those talks collapsed, and the companies filed for declaratory judgment this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking a judge to find that “Terafab” does not infringe TERA-print’s mark before TERA-print can file a claim of its own.
TERA-print isn’t backing down. The company told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2 and feels misled by what it called Tesla’s professed interest in settling. Its CTO, Andrey Ivankin, said TERA-print holds a Defense Department contract to fabricate semiconductors and partially owns Mattiq Inc., an AI company built on TERA-print’s products, and that the company will vigorously defend its rights.
Tesla and SpaceX argue the overlap is superficial. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at the Grimes County site SpaceX confirmed last month, built to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions, a scale and purpose the companies say no reasonable consumer would confuse with a tabletop lab printer. TERA-print’s product line has stayed focused on lithography tools for biological and sensor research since it registered its mark in 2021.
The trademark fight is the second legal dispute tied to the Terafab project in the past week, following a separate SpaceX suit aimed at keeping company records about the facility out of public view, as KBTX reported. Whether construction proceeds under the Terafab name now depends on a federal judge in Austin.
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
