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SpaceX’s upgraded Starship completes second Raptor engine test in ~24 hours
SpaceX Starship prototype SN15 has completed a second ‘static fire’ test of its Raptor engines in the last 24 hours, hopefully setting up the rocket for a launch and landing attempt on Thursday or Friday.
While Monday’s test was a total success, it’s unclear if April 27th’s static fire went according to plan. Notably, it was much shorter than the Monday engine test and involved either one or two – but not all three – of Starship SN15’s Raptor engines. Historically, unusually brief static fires (~2-3 seconds) aren’t unprecedented, but they’ve generally been part of a process of troubleshooting after a prototype runs into technical issues during earlier testing.
According to Musk, SpaceX also moved to reigniting all three sea level Raptors for landing burns from Starship SN10 onwards, meaning that an intentional two-engine SN15 static fire is either a reversion to earlier two-engine landing burns or a sign of a static fire abort or engine ignition failure. If SpaceX needs to perform another test, particularly if one or more Raptors need to be replaced, Starship SN15’s launch will likely slip into early May. Stay tuned for updates.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the next Starship launch could happen “later this week” after the company’s first ‘upgraded’ prototype aced a three-engine static fire test on the first try.
While substantially delayed from optimistic initial targets just a week or two after the rocket rolled from factory to launch pad, upgraded Starship prototype serial number 15 (SN15) – outfitted with “hundreds of improvements” – fired up its three Raptor engines for a few seconds around 5pm CDT on Monday, April 26th. Also upgraded, the rocket’s engines seemed to perform nominally and SpaceX ultimately closed out the evening’s testing a few hours early.
Around the same time as SN15’s first static fire attempt was wrapping up, SpaceX distributed safety notices to Boca Chica Village residents, indicating that a second static fire test may be planned on Tuesday. Musk didn’t mention plans for a second static fire, but he did imply that the first test was completed successfully enough to enable Starship SN15 to launch just a few days from now.
Like four other “high-altitude” flight tests before it, Starship SN15 is expected to target a similar ~10-12 kilometer (6-8 mi) apogee and once again attempt to perform a complete ascent, controlled bellyflop, landing flip maneuver, and soft touchdown. Between December 2020 and April 2021, Starships SN8 through SN11 tried and failed to survive that challenge intact, though prototype SN10 did manage to survive for around ten minutes on the ground before its still-hard landing led to an explosion.
All four failures ultimately had different causes. Starship SN8 lost fuel tank pressure, starving its Raptors and causing a near-total loss of thrust seconds before touchdown. One of SN9’s Raptors failed to ignite for a landing burn, triggering an even more aggressive impact with the ground. Starship SN10 landed in one piece but its lone landing engine underperformed when it began to ingest helium ullage gas – a quick-fix implemented after SN8’s pressurization issue. SN11 exploded almost immediately after attempting to ignite its three engines for landing, failing even earlier than its predecessors.
All four flight tests saw each respective Starship prototypes narrowly miss a fully successful and survivable landing, providing SpaceX a great deal of data and direct experience to improve the rocket’s design and operations with. Two of the four failures – SN9 and SN11 – appear to have been the fault of one or more of Starship’s three Raptor engines. Beginning with Starship SN15, SpaceX has moved to an upgraded iteration of the next-generation engine, raising hopes that whatever changes the company has implemented will substantially improve reliability and thus the odds of a successful high-altitude launch and landing test.
As of April 26th and in spite of one or two weeks of delays, the fact that Starship SN15 managed to complete a three-Raptor static fire test on its first true attempt is a great sign that the rocket’s many “improvements” may already be paying dividends. A launch “later this week” would make the effects of those improvements even harder to deny. A successful launch and landing in the next few days would all but guarantee that SpaceX’s process of iterative development is working like a charm. Regardless of whether SN15 survives its first flight, Starship SN16 will likely be ready to take over a matter of days later.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk spotlights the Starlink rescue that got through where no cell tower could
Elon Musk spotlighted how Starlink helped rescuers reach five people stranded in Kazakhstan’s snowy mountains.
Elon Musk put a spotlight on a mountain rescue in eastern Kazakhstan on Sunday, writing “Starlink saves lives” in response to a post describing how SpaceX’s satellite internet helped five stranded people reach emergency crews.
The post from DogeDesigner, which had been viewed more than 500,000 times by Sunday afternoon, said the group’s SUV broke down about 15 kilometers from the village of Kystau Kurchum in an area with no usable mobile network. Starlink carried their call for help and kept them in contact with rescuers, who used the connection to locate them.
The rescue itself took place in October. Local outlet YK.kz reported on October 22 that Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Emergency Situations responded to the breakdown in the Kurchum district of East Kazakhstan region and noted that the group stayed in touch through Starlink. Rescuers covered roughly 100 kilometers in a Trekol, a low pressure tire vehicle built for snow and marshland, then escorted the disabled SUV back to Kystau Kurchum. Nobody needed medical attention.
Starlink saves lives
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 8, 2026
Conditions in the region were rough at the time. Kazakh broadcaster Channel 7 identified the five as hunters caught in a snow trap and said satellite communication allowed rescuers to pinpoint where they were. A spokesperson for the East Kazakhstan emergency department said a storm warning was in effect and urged residents not to leave populated areas unless necessary. The same weather stranded seven utility workers repairing power lines in the nearby Kuygan rural district, according to Tengrinews.
Kazakhstan has been one of Starlink’s more notable markets in Central Asia. Teslarati reported in 2024 that Starlink was serving 1,731 of the country’s 1,879 schools, with the country’s Education Minister saying it had set a new standard for internet service in schools.
Rescue stories like this one have followed Starlink for years, usually in places where ground networks fail or never existed in the first place. Then Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis called Starlink a “game changer” for search and rescue crews during Hurricane Milton, and SpaceX and T-Mobile switched on Starlink Direct to Cell in North Carolina to push emergency alerts to phones after Hurricane Helene.
The next target is dead zones for people who do not carry a dish at all. SpaceX is building out Starlink Mobile and earlier this week selected Qualcomm to supply core infrastructure for a planned terrestrial 5G network in the United States, which it intends to pair with its next generation satellite constellation.
Sunday’s post is at least the third time Musk has written “Starlink saves lives” on X this week, following identical posts on November 5 and November 7.
SpaceX plans to attempt what will be a defining moment in rocket reusability on Starship Flight 15.
As Elon Musk announced in a recent X post, SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy Booster and the Starship upper stage during the upcoming orbital flight. If successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact, a breakthrough Musk has called essential to making life multiplanetary.
SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and Starship on the upcoming flight.
If both are successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact.
This is the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2026
Previous flights have demonstrated the tower-catch technique with Super Heavy. SpaceX has successfully caught V1 boosters three times (on Flights 5, 7, and 8), with some even reflown. The Ship upper stage has never been caught.
Returning from orbital velocity after deploying payload makes it a significantly harder challenge due to higher energy, heat loads, and the need for precise belly-flop reentry, a flip maneuver, and a final landing burn to settle between the Mechazilla tower’s chopstick arms.
Flight 15, using Booster 22 and Ship 42 (both Block 3 vehicles), is targeted for no earlier than Friday, November 13, 2026, from Orbital Launch Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas. The 75-minute window opens at 4:45 p.m. CT, pending regulatory approval. After hot staging and separation, the booster is planned to return for a catch roughly 6 minutes and 35 seconds after liftoff.
The Ship will insert into a roughly 275 km orbit, deploy 26 advanced Starlink V3 satellites, complete about 14 orbits over more than 22 hours, and—if systems check out—perform a deorbit burn, reentry, flip, and landing burn for a tower catch at approximately T+22 hours 32 minutes.
SpaceX confirms Starship 15 launch window with massive ambitions
A simulation shown during SpaceX’s October earnings call depicted the Ship descending in a belly-flop attitude, flipping upright with a short engine burn, and being captured by the arms:
From simulation to reality
SpaceX is just ONE WEEK away from attempting its most ambitious Starship catch yet https://t.co/nHrxSX6DSz
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) November 6, 2026
Contingency splashdown zones exist in the Gulf of Mexico (booster) and Pacific (Ship) if a catch is not viable. SpaceX has stressed rigorous health checks before committing the Ship to a return-to-launch-site trajectory.
Musk has described the odds of success on this first dual-catch attempt as “more likely than not,” noting a steady stream of additional flights is already scheduled if needed. Full recovery would enable rapid inspection, refurbishment, and reflight—slashing costs and supporting the high launch cadence required for Starlink expansion, lunar missions, and eventual Mars settlement.
As Musk put it, this is “the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary.”
Tesla Cybercab is going to get some pretty substantial updates, including improvements to efficiency and a new color.
CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X on Saturday that Tesla would be working to refine the Cybercab even more, following the announcement during the week that the company would eliminate the Cybertruck lines within Giga Texas for more Cybercab manufacturing capacity.
“There are efficiency improvements coming that will allow for a 40kWh Cybercab pack,” Musk posted on X. “We will make this in liquid silver, so the colors are not too monotonous.”
There are efficiency improvements coming that will allow for a 40kWh Cybercab pack. We will make this in liquid silver, so the colors are not too monotonous.
The biggest thing most people fail to understand is that there are a very limited number of smart, dedicated people! They can only do so many things.
If we have to maintain a complex production line, supply chain and allocate engineering for Cybertruck, we can’t use those people or factory space and machinery for scaling Cybercab, which is the vehicle that will PROFOUNDLY transform the world of terrestrial transport!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2026
A new, more efficient model of the Cybercab will be engineered, which will only help Tesla’s profitability and margins, and it also boosts the argument for why the Cybertruck should be discontinued, at least from a business perspective.
The current Cybercab that operates in the Robotaxi platform in Austin, Texas, has a 48 kWh pack, and it sounds like Musk believes Tesla is on its way to introducing a version that has fewer cells but can manage the same workload thanks to engineering efficiencies.
Credit: Tesla
Musk also doubled down on the decision to prioritize Cybercab production over Cybertruck, which is a decision that has been extremely polarizing within the community, and many fans have made it abundantly clear that they are not particularly pleased with the plans.
“If we have to maintain a complex production line, supply chain, and allocate engineering for Cybertruck, we can’t use those people or factory space and machinery for scaling Cybercab, which is the vehicle that will PROFOUNDLY transform the world of terrestrial transport,” Musk said.
A good look at Tesla’s new Liquid Silver Cybercab, planned with a 40 kWh battery pack following new improvements
😍 https://t.co/IUYsUcCBMs
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 8, 2026
Cybercab is obviously Tesla’s path forward in an automotive sense. It seems that Tesla is less concerned about catering to the passenger vehicle market and is more prone to focus on transforming passenger transportation in a way that prioritizes autonomy. However, this requires some sacrifice on Tesla’s end, and the Cybertruck is unfortunately a victim of this.
Cybercab holds an extremely crucial part of Tesla’s future. With the company already revolutionizing passenger transportation once, this is the next phase, and Cybercab is the path forward.
Elon Musk spotlights the Starlink rescue that got through where no cell tower could
SpaceX will perform Starship double catch attempt with Flight 15
