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SpaceX Starship rocket set to reach full height for the second time ever
A SpaceX Starship prototype is on track to become the first to reach its full, operational height in a permanent fashion, following in the footsteps of a much earlier prototype that had its nose section temporarily installed last year.
Known as Starship Mk1, that prototype served as more of a learning experience, pathfinder, and mockup over the ~8 months it took to build it and the few weeks it took to destroy it. While its conical nose section was partially outfitted with smaller ‘header’ propellant tanks, it was never fully installed, with SpaceX only temporarily stacking it on top of Starship Mk1’s tank section to serve as the centerpiece of CEO Elon Musk’s October 2019 update event. Mk1’s nosecone was removed shortly after the event was over, while the rocket’s more important tank section was rolled to a nearby launch pad for testing.
More than six months later, Starship SN5 appears to be firmly on its way to becoming the first of SpaceX’s next-generation launch vehicle prototypes to have a (mostly) functional nose section permanently installed. If that ends up being the case, SpaceX’s fifth full-scale Starship prototype may become the first to have multiple Raptor engines installed and the first to perform a high-altitude flight test. Of course, that will depend quite heavily on the fate of Starship SN4, currently trapped in limbo after a May 19th static fire caused SpaceX to partially lose control of the rocket.
While not immediately clear, comments made by CEO Elon Musk and SpaceX officials suggested that the company was aiming to perform low-altitude hops with Starship SN4 and graduate to high-altitude testing with the next prototype off the assembly line (SN5). With a development program as agile as SpaceX’s Starship effort, however, plans are liable to change at almost any moment.
On May 17th, however, it became clear that – at least for the time being – SpaceX fully intends for Starship SN5 to become the first serially-produced ship to have a nosecone installed. On that Sunday, a brand new steel nose section – the fourth built by SpaceX in the last few months – was rolled out of a massive factory tent, revealing labels that rather unambiguously read “SN5”.
SN5 refers to Starship serial number 5, the fifth full-scale rocket prototype overall and fourth built since the start of 2020. Over the last six or so months, SpaceX has dramatically expanded its production footprint in South Texas, reaching a point now where it’s churning out a rough Starship prototype every month, on average. Starship SN5 is no different, with its tank section largely completed as of May 15th, give or take a day or two.
Now, on May 19th, a new collection of five stacked steel rings appeared alongside Starship SN5’s largely completed tank and engine section. Combined with the new nosecone labeled “SN5”, it’s now readily and unequivocally apparent that the prototype is probably a matter of days away from having a nosecone installed. Unless SpaceX has adopted different methods for Starship SN6 production and assembly, a stack of five steel rings – lacking any sign of a tank dome welded inside it – will serve as the base that SN5’s nosecone can be stacked on top of. Once stacked with its nose section, Starship SN5 will measure some 50m (~165 ft) tall – at least several meters taller than a Falcon 9 booster.
The nosecone itself is also quite interesting, featuring two sets of four mysterious thruster nozzles, signs of interior components and reinforcements, and two recessed struts presumably meant to attach to Starship’s forward flaps.
While exciting, there is certainly still a chance that Starship SN4 – trapped at the launch pad – will have to be destroyed or will be unsalvageable even if SpaceX is able to finally access and safe the prototype. If so, Starship SN5 will likely take its place, performing a Raptor static fire, a ~150m (~500 ft) hop test, and an additional ~3 km (~1.9 mi) flight test before potentially moving on to triple Raptor operations and high-altitude flights. Stay tuned for updates on SN4’s fate and SN5’s production status.
Tesla is looking to expand into a new Asian market, strengthening its presence in a region that has been bullish on electric vehicles as a whole.
Tesla officially filed to establish a subsidiary of its business in Vietnam, a report from Reuters suggests. Tesla named the entity “Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company.”
The planned entrance into the Vietnamese market is a good sign and move for Tesla, as it has become one of the fastest-growing EV markets in Southeast Asia. It is already among the leaders in the region in both volume and electrification rate. In the first half of this year, Vietnam led Southeast Asia in battery-electric passenger car sales at about 116,000 units, up about 71 percent year over year.
Currently, Vietnamese EV drivers rely on VinFast’s V-Green network, which has about 150,000 ports, but these are primarily reserved for VinFast vehicles. Public third-party charging is fragmented and unreliable for those who do not own chargers that are dedicated to a certain manufacturer’s vehicles.
Tesla has had mixed results in Asia as a whole, and as China remains the core part of its story in Asia, the company is evidently working on expanding its footprint on the continent. Tesla’s domestic retail deliveries fell about 12 percent year over year through the first eight months of 2026.
Model Y remains a standout individual product, holding its position as one of, if not the, best-selling vehicles in the world. However, Model 3 has been weaker than it has been in past years.
Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s Chinese production facility, still performs very well. Wholesale volumes in terms of exports have more than doubled and now exceed domestic retail sales; Giga Shanghai builds vehicles for Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other markets. South Korea has been an explicit bright spot, with registrations doubling year-to-date and Tesla frequently appearing as the top imported brand.
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s entrance into Vietnam signals a broader effort to take over the Asian market and grab more market share from rivals.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
News
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
SpaceX launched three final O3b mPower satellites Sunday, finishing a lesser known SES satellite network.
SpaceX had an 87 minute window opening at 2:49 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to fly a Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral carrying the final three satellites for SES’s O3b mPower constellation, a project that has taken more than a decade to finish since Boeing and SES first signed SpaceX on for the work.
Unlike the thousands of Starlink satellites SpaceX has stacked into orbit over the years, O3b mPower flies in a different neighborhood entirely. The three new satellites, tagged F11, F12 and F13, are headed for medium Earth orbit at roughly 5,000 miles up, more than ten times higher than Starlink’s shell around 340 miles but still a small fraction of the 22,000 miles where old school geostationary satellites sit. That middle position is the whole point, because a satellite that far out needs far fewer siblings to blanket the globe than a low orbit constellation does. Essentially, SES only needed 13 satellites total to build a network offering quick, steady service that used to require thousands of spacecraft.
With most people having heard plenty about Starlink and almost nothing about O3b mPower, SES and SpaceX already blend the two networks for some customers. Both SpaceX and SES sell satellite broadband, but they’re aimed at different buyers. Starlink is built for volume, direct to consumers, RVs, homes, small businesses, plus a growing aviation and maritime business. O3b mPower skips consumers entirely and sells enterprise grade connectivity to airlines, cruise lines, offshore energy operators, telecoms needing backhaul, and governments, priced and provisioned more like a dedicated circuit.
A 2023 partnership lets cruise ships combine Starlink’s speed with O3b mPower’s steady capacity depending on what a ship needs at a given moment. Sunday’s completed 13 satellite constellation effectively finishes the medium orbit half of that pairing, years after.
Sunday’s mission was already a something on SpaceX’s manifest well before O3b mPower entered the picture. This flight marked its 29th trip to orbit, a history that includes two crewed Axiom missions, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and 22 separate Starlink batches. SpaceX has landed boosters on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas so often that Sunday’s touchdown attempt, if it went as planned, was set to be the 661st successful Falcon booster landing to date.
For a company that pushed the Starlink constellation past 11,000 satellites back in August, almost entirely through bulk launches from California, Sunday’s flight was a reminder that SpaceX’s schedule still has room for someone else’s satellites too. SES gets a finished network built for a narrower set of customers, and Falcon 9 gets one more line on an already long resume.
Tesla looks to expand into new Asian market, strengthening presence
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
