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SpaceX delivers 59 spacecraft to orbit on fifth flawless rideshare launch
Update: After a slight eight-minute delay, SpaceX has successfully launched its fifth dedicated ‘Transporter’ rideshare mission, carrying 59 different spacecraft into a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).
Following the Falcon 9 upper stage’s initial deployment of 39 different spacecraft, two of the deployed spacecraft will deploy another 20 or so small satellites over the next several weeks. Around an hour and a half after liftoff, SpaceX finally announced that the final Transporter-5 payload deployment was complete, confirming that the mission was a total success.
Falcon 9 booster B1061 performed as expected, acing its second Transporter launch in a row and eighth launch and landing overall since November 2020. Transporter-5 was SpaceX’s fifth launch this month and 22nd launch this year, representing an average of one launch every 6.5 days since the start of 2022. If SpaceX is able to complete four launches in June, it will be exactly half of the way to achieving 52 launches – an average of one launch per week – in a single calendar year.
SpaceX appears to be on track to launch its fifth dedicated Falcon 9 rideshare mission as early as 2:27 pm EDT (18:27 UTC) on Wednesday, May 25th, carrying a wide variety of interesting payloads into Earth orbit.
SpaceX has reportedly assigned Falcon 9 B1061 to the mission and Transporter-5 will be its eight launch and landing attempt since November 2020 and third launch this year. While of no particular consequence, B1061 will also become the first Falcon 9 booster to launch two Transporter missions back to back after supporting Transporter-4 less than two months ago. Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) LC-40 facilities and boost the Transporter-5 payload and upper stage most of the way out of the atmosphere, while the booster will return back to the Florida coast to land on a concrete pad just a few miles to the south.
Like Transporter-4, which launched with just 40 deployable payloads on April 1st, Transporter-5 appears to be another very small rideshare mission relative to SpaceX’s first three Transporter launches, demonstrating the company’s continued commitment to operating the service a bit like public transit. A public bus will still happily carry just a single passenger – efficiency, while important, comes second to dependability. For many of SpaceX’s individual Smallsat Program customers, that may help to alleviate some of the downsides of massive multi-dozen-satellite rideshares, which can often make individual customers feel forgotten and unimportant when they’re forced to swallow delays caused by payloads other than their own.
Based on official information provided by SpaceX on May 24th, Falcon 9 is scheduled to deploy only 39 payloads during Transporter-5. However, the real number of satellites deployed during the mission will likely be a bit higher due to the presence of three or four different vehicles that are designed to host or carry some of those payloads to different orbits. Spaceflight’s ‘Sherpa-AC1’ won’t have significant propulsion but it will carry several hosted payloads (‘hosted’ in the sense that the payload is not a free-flying satellite of its own) after deploying from Falcon 9.
The other two or three are true orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs), meaning that they have some kind of propulsion and are designed to deploy smaller satellites in customized orbits. The ultimate goal of the many startups trying to develop high-performance OTVs is to extract the best of both worlds from large rideshare missions and small rockets, combining ultra-cheap prices and orbits that are heavily optimized for each payload. Transporter-5 may carry Exolaunch’s “Reliant” OTV (unconfirmed) but is definitively scheduled to launch with D-Orbit’s “ION SCV-006” OTV and startup Momentus Space’s first ‘Vigoride’ OTV. Vigoride carries the unique distinction of being propelled by a first-of-its-kind “microwave electrothermal thruster” that turns water into a superheated plasma propellant.
Vigoride’s first true launch will be treated mainly as a test flight but it will also carry up to eight different small satellites. D-Orbit’s ION OTV only has one confirmed satellite on its manifest but will likely launch with at least a few more. All told, the number of satellites deployed as a result of Transporter-5 will likely be closer to 50 – a decent improvement over Transporter-4.
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Several of those 50 or so payloads are particularly intriguing. Momentus Space’s first Vigoride OTV, if successful, could pave the way for the most capable commercial space tug currently available, with up to 2000 meters per second of delta V (dV) – a way to measure the stamina of rocket propulsion. NASA has also manifested its small Terabyte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) technology demonstrater satellite on Transporter-5 and will attempt to prove that it’s possible to use small, high-power lasers as extremely high-bandwidth downlinks. NASA hopes the tiny satellite will be able to transmit at up to 200 gigabits per second (Gbps), allowing it to downlink terabytes of data during a single pass over an Earth-based ground station.
AISTECH Space will launch an Earth observation satellite prototype outfitted with a first-of-its-kind high-resolution thermal imager. Last but certainly not least, Nanoracks and Maxar are scheduled to launch the first of multiple planned demonstrations and technology maturation missions for in-space manufacturing and construction technologies. The hosted payload is relatively simple by many measures and will only operate for about an hour, but it aims to demonstrate the first structural metal cutting in space.
Parent company Voyager Space ultimately wants to use the expertise it gains from the ‘Outpost Program’ to convert expended rocket upper stages into orbital ‘Outposts’ that will host customer payloads and support the continued development of in-space harvesting, recycling, construction, and more.
As of 5 am EDT (09:00 UTC), SpaceX still hasn’t officially confirmed via Tweet or website update that Transporter-5 is ‘go’ for launch. If it is, an official webcast available here will likely begin around 2:10 pm EDT (18:10 UTC).
SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.
The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.
Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.
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Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.
The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.
As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo
SpaceX released new footage of Starship in space captured by the Starlink satellites it deployed.
SpaceX released a new video Friday evening showing Starship from an angle showcased by its own Starlink satellites, watching the rocket drift away in orbit.
The 65 second clip, posted on X, stitches together footage from four cameras mounted on a single Starlink V3 satellite. It opens with a close view of Starship’s 171 foot upper stage, still catching sunlight, then pulls back as the two spacecraft separate.
The footage comes from Starship’s 13th flight test, which launched July 24 from Starbase after a scrubbed attempt and an abort caused by an engine issue the week before. When Flight 13 finally flew, it carried the first batch of functional Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever deployed, twenty of them, with six equipped with cameras meant to scan the ship’s heat shield during reentry.
View of Starship in space from a Starlink V3 satellite on Flight 13.
This composite is made of imagery from four separate cameras on a single satellite. Six of the satellites were equipped with cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to… pic.twitter.com/sNTHHz5vLr
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 31, 2026
Flight 13 checked most of its boxes. Starship deployed all 20 satellites, relit a Raptor engine in space, and splashed down softly in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia. Musk’s longer term plan calls for a Starlink V3 constellation of 100,000 satellites, according to a recent FCC filing, with Starship as the only vehicle capable of launching them at the volume that requires. Each Starship flight is designed to carry up to 60 V3 satellites once the vehicle reaches routine service, well beyond what Falcon 9 can carry in a single mission.
Starship is next expected to fly with an attempt at catching the ship itself with the launch tower’s mechanical arms, a maneuver SpaceX has so far reserved for the Super Heavy booster.
Tesla flexed the new features of the Model Y L with a dedicated media event at the company’s Diner on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The Model Y L is the extended-wheelbase version of the all-electric crossover, which has been voted the best-selling car in the world on three occasions. The vehicle is already rolling off production lines at Gigafactory Texas, and first deliveries are slated to take place later this year.
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Teslarati was invited to the event, but due to some scheduling conflicts, we could not make it to Los Angeles. Instead, we will have our hands on a media unit sometime in August, so we’ll be able to spend some more extended time with the Model Y L.
However, plenty of those who made it to LA shared some cool features that set the Model Y L apart from the Model Y.
Multi-Row Climate Control
Tesla fitted the Model Y L with full climate control on all three rows on the front screen. It can be adjusted by selecting which row you’d like to modify on the right-hand side of the touch screen:
The Model Y L has a little row of icons on the right side of the climate screen so the front passenger can more quickly jump to whatever row they want to control. pic.twitter.com/uJS44mgCvk
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 30, 2026
Better Rear Window Visibility
One of the strangest things about the Model Y, especially the Juniper iteration, is the rear window has extremely limited visibility when looking into the rearview mirror.
Tesla has improved upon this with the Model Y L:
This is a drastic difference. https://t.co/wTdhitD5aA pic.twitter.com/z6hFs0Jkss
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 30, 2026
PowerShare will be included
Model Y L will come with PowerShare in North America, with an 11.5kW output to your home. Tesla said it would require Powerwall 3 for operation.
Wireless Charging Pad
There has been some speculation that Tesla would upgrade the wireless charging pads in the United States, but this is not the case.
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Tesla confirmed that it does not come with the cooled pads as the Y L in China does. This is because North America has not adopted Qi charging yet.
Thermal Management Improvements
These improvements in the Model Y L were seen with thermal management:
- Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
- +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather, 7 miles of real-world range gained
- 8x more solar energy reflection off of glass roof
- 30% reduction in solar energy entering the cabin
Some of the thermal management improvements in the new Model Y L Premium:
• Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
• Up to 15 min faster cabin cooling in sunny conditions
• +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather +7 miles of real-world range gained
• +10 miles recovered after… pic.twitter.com/jZirFWFdtO— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 31, 2026
Demand
Tesla said the Model Y L is almost sold out in the U.S. It comes with
- 1 year of FSD Supervised
- 1 year of Supercharging
- 1 year of Premium Connectivity
- Free exterior paint color, interior, and wheel option at no additional cost
SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch
SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo
