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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's latest Starship photos reveal surprise landing legs [confirmed]
Update: In a Twitter response to Teslarati’s report, Musk confirmed that SpaceX has already installed six telescoping landing legs on the Starship SN3 prototype.
CEO Elon Musk published new photos of a Starship prototype shortly after it was moved to SpaceX’s South Texas launch pad, revealing the surprise inclusion of already-installed landing legs and hinting at the growing maturity of the rocket’s design.
Published on March 30th and likely taken late on March 29th, Musk’s latest Starship photos offer the best look yet at the massive vehicle’s engine section, where Raptor engines may soon be installed for historic static fire and hop test attempts. First captured in photos taken by local photographer and resident Mary (bocachicagal) on March 28th, speculation about what appeared to be six odd legs immediately kicked off on spaceflight forums. Due to limited publicly-available perspectives and the appendages’ locations inside Starship’s cavernous engine section, there was some limited ambiguity as to whether the steel pieces were truly legs or something closer to general structural support.
Thankfully, Musk’s new photos all but confirmed the former theory, revealing a sextet of hinged legs with a curious stubby appearance and what appears to be a rather simple and elegant design. Most importantly, the unexpected presence of landing legs – while likely cheap to implement – suggests that SpaceX is growing increasingly confident in each subsequent Starship prototype, an encouraging sign for imminent static fire and hop test plans.
In fact, SpaceX filed a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on March 30th — the biggest confirmation yet that the company is seriously working to prepare Starship SN3 for a Raptor engine static fire test as early as April 1st. Backup dates on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th are included, leaving a decent amount of breathing room for SpaceX’s Texas team to (hopefully) successfully complete the rocket’s proof test in the next few days.
Possibly preceded by a water pressure test to check for leaks and verify general structural integrity, Starship SN3’s proof test will see the rocket’s methane and oxygen tanks fully filled with cryogenic liquid nitrogen. The tank pressure would then be increased to around 6-8 bar (90-115 psi) to ensure that Starship can handle the thermal and pressure stresses it will experience during launches. Given SpaceX’s recent history, including a partially unintentional Starship Mk1 tank failure in November 2019, the intentional destruction of two Starship test tanks in January 2020, and Starship SN1’s unintentional February 2020 failure, success is still far from guaranteed for Starship SN3.
Nevertheless, SpaceX seems more confident in Starship SN3 than it was in Starships Mk1 and SN1 – the only other full-scale prototypes to have reached the testing phase. It’s possible that including leg prototypes were cheap and easy enough to be worth installing regardless of SpaceX’s broader confidence in Starship SN3 as a whole. However, it would still be a clear waste of time and resources to install all six landing legs if the internal consensus was to expect a failure in the early phases of SN3 testing.
SpaceX, in other words, seems to believe that Starship SN3 will pass its imminent tank proof test without any major issues. Additionally, the company must be confident in the outcome of the Starship SN3 Raptor static fire(s) expected to immediately follow any successful proof test. SpaceX has successfully demonstrated Raptor several times on flight hardware with the help of the Starhopper development vehicle, but a full-scale Starship is arguably a different animal.
Regardless, it’s now clearer than ever that SpaceX is confident enough to put a few eggs in the Starship SN3 basket. With landing legs installed, the massive rocket prototype could be ready for a Starhopper-style 150m (500 ft) hop test just a week or so from now. For now, though, Starship SN3 needs to pass a tank proof test, perform a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) with real propellant, and complete one or several Raptor static fires before a flight test will be in its cards. Stay tuned!
Elon Musk
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.
SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.
There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.
We’ve unified plans across Grok, Cursor, and X Premium.
Introducing The X Subscription. https://t.co/SvkrVvBa0p
— SpaceX Super Intelligence (@SpaceXSI) October 12, 2026
The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.
That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.
The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.
The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.
Energy
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.
A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.
The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.
Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.
Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.
Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.
The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.
Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
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