News
High winds scrub SpaceX Starship SN9’s Monday launch attempt
Update (2:30 pm CST): SpaceX appears to have called off Monday’s Starship SN9 launch attempt due (primarily) to high winds along the flight corridor. Additional opportunities are available from 8 am to 6 pm CST (UTC-6) on Tuesday (Jan 26) and Wednesday (Jan 27).
Technically, lacking any official confirmation, there’s still a chance of a launch attempt or additional ground testing happening today but either possibility is extremely unlikely at this point.
Update: SpaceX has completed what is known as a Flight Readiness Review (FRR) and determined that Starship prototype SN9 is ready to attempt its first high-altitude launch as early as today.
All necessary aviation and maritime notices and restrictions are in place and the company has begun the process of closing a public highway and clearing the launch site of employees. Today’s (Jan 25) launch window lasts from noon to 6 pm CST (UTC-6) and Starship SN9 could likely be made ready to launch anytime after 2pm be ready to fly as early as 4 pm CST according to a loudspeaker announcement at the launch pad. Stay tuned for updates and, hopefully, an official SpaceX webcast.
All signs point to SpaceX’s second high-altitude Starship prototype preparing for a 12.5-kilometer (~40,000 ft) as early as Monday, January 25th in a bid to rectify a last-second bug that caused its predecessor to explode last month.
Known as Starship serial number 8 (SN8), the SpaceX-built prototype was the first to have its basic airframe (tank and nose sections) fully integrated, as well as the first Starship to attempt to break the 150m (~500 ft) ceiling set by Starhopper, SN5, and SN6. Break the ceiling SN8 most certainly did, performing a spectacularly successful 12.5 km launch that aced almost every single goal SpaceX had hoped to complete. Keyword almost.
After an impressive 280 seconds of uninterrupted operation of its Raptors, Starship SN8 shut down the last of those three engines, flipped onto its belly, and successful freefell ~12 kilometers back to Earth. The rocket then carried that success even further, reigniting two Raptors, performing a dramatic 120-degree flip, orienting itself vertically, and beginning to slow down for a soft landing.
Only then did Starship SN8’s performance deviate from virtual perfection. At T+6:38, a few seconds after beginning its crucial landing burn, one of Starship’s active Raptors shut down and the other effectively stopped generating thrust. The reason, CEO Elon Musk would later explain, was low head pressure in a smaller tank (‘header tank’) dedicated to supplying fuel during Starship’s wild flip and landing maneuver. It was never confirmed if the Raptor engine shutdown observed milliseconds prior to the other engine losing thrust was intentional.
Cause aside, the end result was unsurprising: without enough thrust to slow down, Starship SN8 accurately impacted the concrete landing zone but did so at high speed – likely around 50-60 m/s (100-150 mph). Given that Starhopper and Starships SN5 and SN6 had already successfully proven Starship’s ability to gently land from 150 meters on a single Raptor engine and that, prior to SN8, Starship’s bizarre belly-flop descent and 90-degree flip had been almost entirely theoretical, SpaceX deemed the launch a spectacular success.
Nothing better exemplifies that than the fact that a little over a month later, SpaceX quite literally began scrapping the most complex, completed section of a future Starship prototype (SN12) before it ever reached the assembly phase. Instead, SpaceX appears to be more focused than ever on a mysterious series of “major” upgrades Musk has said will debut on Starship SN15. Nearly all SN15 subsections have been completed and are simply waiting to be joined together, while parts of SN16 and SN17 are also starting to pile up in staging areas.
Starship SN10 is practically ready to move to the launch pad to prepare for flight as soon as SpaceX chooses to do so and Starship SN11 is likely no more than a week or two of work away from reaching same level of readiness.
Ultimately, despite a long and delay-ridden test campaign, Starship SN9 finally completed what looked like a full-duration static fire of all three of its Raptor engines – the rocket’s sixth static fire overall. On Saturday, January 23rd, SpaceXers installed SN9’s flight termination system (FTS) – a system of explosives designed to destroy Starship if it flies too far off course. For Starship, FTS installation all but guarantees that a launch attempt is a matter of days away. Fresh county roadblocks, Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) granted by the FAA, and Coast Guard a safety notice further imply that SN9 will attempt to launch as early as Monday morning, January 25th, with backup opportunities on Tuesday and Wednesday.
With any luck, like SN8’s high-altitude debut, SpaceX hopefully livestream Starship SN9’s own attempt at the same feat. Stay tuned for more details as they come.
Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.
Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.
Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.
Big news! SpaceX is introducing a new @Starlink for Communities program that lets you earn money by providing Starlink internet to your neighbors or people nearby, who can pay for access by the hour, day, week, or month.
Neighbors pay for the access they need, while the person… pic.twitter.com/DtOUs0Ekvt
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 1, 2026
The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.
A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.
Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.
Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.
Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.
The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.
Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.
The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.
Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.
Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.
The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.
2026.38 just dropped.
Model 3 gets Dynamic Headlight Leveling — low beams auto-aim around traffic for max visibility, less glare. Model 3 / Y (AMD HW3) also pick up sharper Tesla visuals + an enhanced park scene on the center display.
Legacy Intel cars get Supercharger Site… pic.twitter.com/45ac4AH6Vs
— Frunk To Trunk (@FrunkToTrunk) September 30, 2026
Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.
When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.
Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.
The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.
Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.
For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.
Lifestyle
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.
Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.
Halloween is coming pic.twitter.com/lM3ASUeOqX
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 1, 2026
The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.
On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a Halloween Mode.
Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing
Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update
