SpaceX is in the final stages of preparing a trio of Falcon 9 rockets for a set of launches scheduled less than two days apart.
The potential hat trick will likely be the last opportunity for a salvo of Falcon launches before the end of 2022. As a disclaimer, while unofficial launch dates (derived from regulatory documents or well-sourced public manifests) were consistently close to actual launch dates for most of 2022, that ceased to be the case when SpaceX began experiencing an abrupt uptick in launch delays over the last two months. As a result, Falcon launch dates – even once confirmed by SpaceX – should be assumed to be a bit more uncertain than usual until it’s clear that that trend has died down.
Nonetheless, all available signs indicate that SpaceX and its customers are moving forward with plans for three back-to-back launches before the end of the week.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
Set to kick off the diverse trio is the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) spacecraft, a roughly $1.2 billion joint mission between NASA and French space agency CNES. Thanks in part to the COVID pandemic, which has and continues to impact large swaths of NASA and the aerospace industry, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory completed its portion of SWOT around 9% over budget and eight months behind schedule [PDF] since mission formulation began in 2012. Over a similar time scale, several other NASA missions have experienced cost increases of 10-100%, generally reflecting well on SWOT’s management.
SWOT, a roughly two-ton (~4400 lb) satellite, is designed to conduct the first global survey of all surface water on Earth using two large synthetic aperture radar (SAR) antennas and a conventional radar altimeter. At a cost of roughly $112 million, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch SWOT to low Earth orbit (LEO) no earlier than (NET) 3:46 am PST (11:46 UTC) on Thursday, December 15th. SpaceX successfully tested SWOT’s Falcon 9 well in advance on December 10th. The rocket was then returned to the company’s hangar at Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) Space Launch Complex 4E for payload installation before rolling back to the pad on December 13th.
The light satellite and low target orbit will allow Falcon 9’s booster to return to the launch site and land at SpaceX’s LZ-4 landing zone, precluding the need for a drone ship recovery.
Up next, another Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch the first two of eleven Boeing-built O3b mPOWER communication satellites for operator SES as early as 4:21 pm EST (21:21 UTC), Friday, December 16th. After lifting off from SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) LC-40 pad, Falcon 9 is set to launch the roughly 3.4-ton (~7500 lb) pair of satellites to a medium Earth orbit (MEO) with an altitude of 7825 kilometers (4862 mi).
It’s unclear what orbit Falcon 9 will launch the satellites to, but the rocket’s booster will land on drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG) some 700 kilometers (~435 mi) downrange, indicating that it will need as much performance as the rocket can give. ASOG departed Port Canaveral on December 11th, confirming that launch preparations are well underway.
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Finally, a third Falcon 9 rocket could launch SpaceX’s first Starlink mission since October 28th as early as 4:54 or 5:13 pm EST (21:54 or 22:13) on December 16th, potentially just 33 or 52 minutes after O3b mPOWER 1&2. If the two missions do launch on December 16th, which a reliable source of unofficial information has indicated is not guaranteed, it will smash the US record for back-to-back launches of the same rocket family. Russia’s R-7 rocket family will retain the international crown, however, having launched twice in 25 minutes in 1969.
Starlink 4-37 will lift off from SpaceX’s NASA Kennedy Space Center LC-39A pad, and its Falcon 9 booster will attempt to launch on drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI). JRTI departed Port Canaveral on December 12th.
Following Starlink 4-37, SpaceX has at least two more launches tentatively scheduled before the end of 2022. NextSpaceflight.com reports that SpaceX could launch its sixth Transporter rideshare mission from Florida on December 27th, and two Israeli EROS-C3 Earth observation satellites out of California on December 29th. However, it’s worth noting that in the almost 17-year history of SpaceX Falcon operations, the company has never launched a rocket after December 23rd or before January 6th. Transporter-6 and EROS-C3 – SpaceX’s 60th and 61st launches of the year – would have to break through that apparent firewall to launch when they are currently scheduled.
SpaceX performed a secret test on a specific portion of Starship with its recent 13th test flight last week, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
Starship’s 13th test flight took place last Friday, and in many aspects, it was one of the most overwhelmingly successful launches in the project’s history.
All of the mission objectives were met without incident, both the Super Heavy Booster and Ship managed to perform safe splashdowns in the Gulf of America and the Indian Ocean, respectively, and the deployment of Starlink satellites came and went without any complications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
However, there was more on the agenda for SpaceX with Flight 13. Musk revealed an internal test of the ship’s heat shield tiles, as the space exploration company wanted to push them to the limits after previous issues.
Many noticed that Starship’s initial launch seemed to be more accelerated than normal, and that was not a mistake. Musk revealed that SpaceX decided to give Flight 13 an intentionally aggressive acceleration rate in an effort to test how well the tiles would remain attached to the ship:
This flight intentionally had much higher acceleration to test how well the heat shield tiles would remain attached at high dynamic pressure.
Test was successful.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
SpaceX had issues with some of the heat shield tiles remaining attached early on in the Starship program. The first six test flights presented some kind of anomaly with them, so the company’s big focus with them was to figure out a way to keep them intact through the duration of the flight.
Things truly improved as Flight 10 showed that ceramic tiles generally stayed attached to the ship far better due to refined attachment, as SpaceX utilized pins instead of adhesives. Flights 10 through 13 truly showed some clear progress with the heat shield tiles, and this latest test seems to be where some real progress was noticed, especially by Musk.
The 13th Starship launch last Friday was the second with Starship V3, SpaceX’s latest and greatest iteration of the spacecraft. Goals and ambitions are getting even grander as the project continues to progress. Musk has already hinted that SpaceX will likely try to catch Starship with Flight 14.
Elon Musk
Tesla FSD takes owner on a 20,000+ mile joy ride
Tesla owner David Moss just pushed his intervention free FSD streak past 20,000 miles total.
Tesla Model 3 owner David Moss has spent the better part of eight months turning his vehicle into a rolling stress test for Full Self-Driving, and this week he pushed his single, continuous FSD streak past 20,000 miles without a human intervening.
Moss, a Tacoma, Washington resident who sells LiDAR scanning equipment for a living, first drew wide attention in December 2025 when he logged 10,000 consecutive miles on FSD v14.2. Days later he drove from the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, covering 2,732 miles in two days and 20 hours with zero disengagements, the first verified coast to coast autonomous drive in Tesla’s history. Tesla even featured the trip as an official customer story in March. That original streak eventually reached 12,961 miles across 30 states before ending in rural Wisconsin in January, when snow and single digit temperatures forced Moss to take over.
Tesla FSD successfully completes full coast-to-coast drive with zero interventions
He started over, and this run has gone further. In late May, Moss drove 3,760 miles across Canada with two companions, from Horseshoe Bay in Vancouver to a Tesla showroom in Halifax, again without a single intervention, a trip Tesla AI software VP Ashok Elluswamy publicly congratulated him for on X. In June, he pushed the same unbroken streak south, aiming to link the Canadian border to the Mexican border, and crossed 10,000 miles on Tesla’s newly added in car streak counter along the way, the first driver to do so since Tesla began showing confetti animations for the feature.
20,000 Mile Tesla FSD Screen Streak!
Special thank you to @DevinOlsenn, @scotsrule08, & @OwenSparks for helping co drive during all these fun adventures these last couple of months
Also thank you to @wholemars for always tracking me along the journey verifying it all with his… pic.twitter.com/CZ2yO6Ev0X
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) July 27, 2026
It’s worth noting that every mile is logged through the FSD Database, a community run tracker built by Tesla influencer Omar Qazi, well known as @WholeMars on X, that pulls telemetry straight from the car and records disengagements down to a tenth of a mile. That verification is what separates Moss’s numbers from casual claims on social media.
The streak itself is a fairly recent addition to Tesla’s software. FSD v14.2 introduced a Self Driving Stats panel tracking the ratio of autonomous to manual miles, and v14.3.4 added the live streak counter in June, which resets the moment a driver brakes, wrenches the wheel or cancels navigation. Reaching 20,000 miles on that counter means a single Tesla drove itself through countless highways, city grids, construction zones and Supercharger stalls without a single reset.
Moss has said the goal was never to set a record for its own sake, but to show, mile by verified mile, what the software can already do.
Elon Musk told The Economist that artificial intelligence will likely surpass the combined intelligence of every human on Earth within about five years, and that humans may not remain in charge once that happens. In a wide-ranging interview with editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, recorded at Giga Texas for the outlet’s Insider series, Musk compared the widening gap between AI and human intelligence to the gap between humans and chimpanzees.
“It’s hard to imagine that the chimpanzee would be in charge,” he said, addressing what happens to human authority once AI moves far beyond us.
Elon Musk reiterates his most optimistic prediction yet with “UHI” forecast
Musk’s timeline stretches out from there. Five years for AI to out-think humanity combined, ten years before humans lose meaningful control, and by 2036, he says, money itself may stop mattering.
Musk notes that if robots and AI produce more goods and services than people could ever consume, currency loses its purpose. He told Beddoes that governments could respond with direct payments, what he called “universal high income,” a term he first used in an X post last August describing a future where “everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else.”
There will be universal high income (not merely basic income).
Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else.
Sustainable abundance.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2025
He also floated a more surprising prediction that deflation, and not inflation, would become the bigger economic problem, since expanding the supply of goods and services faster than the money supply grows would push prices down rather than up.
None of this is new territory for Musk, who has spent years describing an “age of abundance” built on Optimus and autonomous vehicles. What’s notable is the timing. The interview landed the same week Tesla shares dropped roughly 19 percent following a second quarter earnings report that beat on revenue but missed badly on profit, and as SpaceX stock continues to slide from its post-IPO peak.
Musk’s own net worth has fallen close to $700 billion since mid-June, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, even as he describes a future where personal wealth stops being the point.
Musk did not dodge the risk side of the equation either. He put the odds of AI contributing to human extinction somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range, then arrived at what he called his “philosophical conclusion” since the technology cannot realistically be stopped and the arguably better response is to keep building it and hope the outcome leans toward abundance rather than catastrophe. “I’ve gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI,” he told Beddoes, “even intraday.”
Elon Musk reveals SpaceX performed secret Starship test on Flight 13
Tesla FSD takes owner on a 20,000+ mile joy ride
