Connect with us

News

SpaceX scrubs upgraded Starship launch debut

SpaceX appears to be gearing up for its fifth high-altitude Starship launch and landing attempt as early as Friday, April 30th. (NASASpaceflight - bocachicagal)

Published

on

Update: For unknown reasons, possibly including technical issues or subpar weather, SpaceX has scrubbed upgraded Starship prototype SN15’s planned Friday launch debut.

Weather is set to significantly improve on Sunday, with good conditions persisting until Tuesday in current forecasts. Barring a weekend launch, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in more than half a year, Starship SN15’s next available launch window will likely be sometime on Monday, May 3rd.

Right in the nick of time for a high-altitude flight test scheduled as early as Friday, April 30th, SpaceX has secured an FAA license to launch Starship prototype SN15 and simultaneously received an FCC permit to operate a Starlink dish installed on the rocket.

The two-month FCC permit is primarily a luxury that will allow SpaceX to experiment with the utility of adding Starlink satellite internet connectivity to an active launch vehicle. The FAA license, however, is an essential requirement for the company to legally attempt its fifth high-altitude Starship launch and landing. While FAA approval is the latest of several promising signs that SpaceX may able to be squeeze in a Starship launch attempt before the weekend, some ambiguity still remains.

Advertisement

As of April 29th, Starship SN15’s launch debut now has an active FAA license, a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) to clear airspace, a marine hazard notice to warn maritime operators, and a highway closure all set for Friday, April 30th. The upgraded Starship prototype has also completed two back-to-back Raptor static fires without any apparent issues and without a need to replace one or more of those engines – a first for a multi-engine Starship prototype.

On the other hand, SpaceX has yet to officially confirm plans for a Friday launch attempt on social media or SpaceX.com and the company has yet to distribute evacuation notices to the few residents that still live in Boca Chica Village. Additionally, weather conditions are likely to be poor on Friday and Starship SN15 still hasn’t been outfitted with explosive Flight Termination System (FTS) charges – a step that’s generally been performed 24+ hours before prior Starship launch attempts.

Update: SpaceX began installing Starship SN15’s FTS charges around 11pm CDT on April 29th.

Knowing SpaceX, it’s more likely than not that the company is capable of installing FTS less than 24 hours before a launch attempt, but it’s still a departure from the norm and thus noteworthy. Oddly, SpaceX has once again filed TFRs for apparent launch windows on Saturday and Sunday, though the company hasn’t so much as attempted a basic Starship tanking test on a weekend since well before high-altitude flight tests began five months ago.

Advertisement

As such, if SpaceX is unable to launch Starship SN15 tomorrow, it’s far likelier that the next window will open on Monday, May 3rd. Weather forecasts currently show a ~50% chance of thunderstorms and low visibility on Friday and Saturday, with conditions clearing up for a mostly sunny outlook from Sunday through Tuesday. Stay tuned for updates as SpaceX continues to prepare for what could be the first fully successful high-altitude Starship launch and landing.

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

Advertisement
Comments

News

Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days

Published

on

Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.

Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.

On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.

The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.

The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.

Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.

Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

SpaceX’s Elon Musk relieves worries about orbital data centers

Published

on

Rendering of Elon Musk overlooking a Starship fleet (Credit: Grok)
Rendering of Elon Musk overlooking a Starship fleet (Credit: Grok)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently confronted worries about orbital data centers and launching satellites in mass quantities in space, as some voiced concerns about crowding.

Musk’s SpaceX plans to combat the issue of needing data centers by launching them into space instead of taking up valuable real estate on Earth. It has been a major point of SpaceX’s future, including its looming IPO, which could be the largest ever.

In a recent interview filmed at SpaceX’s Starlink terminal factory in Bastrop, Texas, Elon Musk directly addressed concerns that deploying large numbers of AI satellites for orbital data centers could crowd Earth’s orbit. His message was straightforward and reassuring: space is vast beyond human intuition.

“Space is really big,” Musk said. “It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the Earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” He emphasized that even zooming in makes a satellite appear large, but from a planetary perspective, they are minuscule specks.

Musk pointed to SpaceX’s real-world experience operating roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites as evidence that large constellations can be managed safely. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of how to operate just really large constellations and do it safely,” he noted. SpaceX remains the only operator with meaningful experience at this scale, giving the company unique insight into tight orbital packing without compromising safety

The discussion highlighted SpaceX’s plans for “AI1” satellites—essentially orbiting racks of AI compute powered by massive solar arrays and cooled via radiative panels in space’s vacuum.

These satellites leverage proven Starlink V3 technology, making them simpler to design than communications satellites. A first-generation unit targets around 150 kW peak power, with a 70-meter wingspan for solar panels and radiators. Laser links will connect them to each other and the Starlink network, delivering low-latency access (on the order of a few milliseconds from low-Earth orbit).

FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan

Musk framed orbital data centers as a practical solution to Earth’s constraints on AI growth. Ground-based facilities face power shortages, water demands for cooling, and grid limitations. In space, constant sunlight (no day-night cycle), vacuum radiative cooling, and abundant solar energy offer clear advantages.

Production will ramp up at an expanded “Gigasat” factory in Bastrop, with solar manufacturing already underway and full AI satellite output expected at reasonable volume by the end of 2027. Starship’s rapid, high-volume launch capability, aiming for multiple flights per hour, will make massive deployment feasible.

Critics sometimes raise risks like space debris or Kessler syndrome, but Musk’s response underscores scale: even a million satellites would represent an imperceptible fraction of available orbital volume when viewed against Earth’s size. SpaceX’s automated collision avoidance and deorbiting designs for Starlink further mitigate concerns.

This vision ties into broader ambitions. Musk sees orbital AI compute as a step toward harnessing more of the Sun’s energy, advancing humanity on the Kardashev scale from a Type 0 civilization toward Type 1 and eventually Type 2. By moving power-hungry data centers off-planet, SpaceX aims to unlock orders-of-magnitude more compute while preserving Earth’s resources.

Musk’s comments should ease public anxiety. With proven operational expertise, incremental engineering, and the immensity of space itself, orbital data centers represent not overcrowding, but smart expansion into the final frontier.

Continue Reading

Investor's Corner

Tesla Full Self-Driving hits Level 4? One analyst says yes

Published

on

Credit: Tesla

Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.

However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.

Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.

Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.

Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.

He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.

Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.

Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.

That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.

Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.

“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.

Continue Reading