News
SpaceX wins US Air Force contract for Falcon Heavy launch
In an unexpected bode of confidence in the nascent vehicle, SpaceX has competed for and won a $130 million US Air Force launch contract for the massive Falcon Heavy rocket. While not planned to occur until September 2020 at the earliest, the most critical aspect of this development is the fact that the USAF has apparently already certified Falcon Heavy for high-value military launches.
The almost knee-jerk certification of Falcon Heavy for USAF launches makes for an extraordinary contrast when compared with the certification of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 workhorse rocket, a tedious political minefield that took more than two years, led SpaceX to (successfully) sue the federal government, and forced the Air Force to critically reexamine its internal processes after they delayed SpaceX’s certification by six or more months. For that particular endeavor, the USAF required SpaceX to complete three successful Falcon 9 launches, while also preventing SpaceX from engaging in launch contract competitions until their launch vehicle was certified in May 2015.
#SpaceX has won a competitively-awarded #AirForce launch contract for the AFSPC-52 flight. The mission will utilize a #FalconHeavy rocket. Mission will launch by Sept. 2020 from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. Statement from Gwynne Shotwell below… pic.twitter.com/a5ka2ov20L
— Chris G (@ChrisG_SpX) June 21, 2018
Jump ahead to 2018 and SpaceX appears to have been allowed to compete for this particular mission – known cryptically as AFSPC-52 – before Falcon Heavy had so much as completed an integrated static fire test. The awe-inspiring rocket did, however, complete a nearly-flawless debut launch in February 2018, a mission that required the company’s Falcon upper stage to survive a lengthy (6+ hour) coast in orbit before igniting its Merlin vacuum engine for one final burn. Regardless of the specifics, many of which have likely been kept under wraps, the Air Force must have been quite impressed with the rocket’s debut performance, and Falcon Heavy has now – according to President and COO Gwynne Shotwell – been certified for USAF missions just four months later.
- Falcon 9 Block 5 completed its first launch on May 11, carrying the Bangabandhu-1 communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. (Tom Cross)
- Falcon Heavy clears the top of the strongback in a spectacular fashion. Two of the rocket’s three manifested missions are now for the USAF. (Tom Cross)
It’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to accurately compare the different payloads and launches of the Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), but SpaceX’s only competitor ULA was awarded a contract for the launch of two relatively different AFSPC payloads at an average (fixed) cost of $175 million per mission. Those satellites were likely much smaller than AFSPC-52 but they require direct insertion into geostationary orbit (GEO), whereas AFSPC-52 may instead be sent to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) before circularizing the orbit under its own power.
Still, SpaceX’s triple-booster Falcon Heavy launch contract will cost the USAF a slim $130m. It’s worth noting that the 2018 AFSPC-8 and -12 contracts awarded to ULA were for the company’s single-booster Atlas 5 rocket, with most of the draw coming from its admittedly advanced, efficient, and extraordinarily reliable Centaur upper stage, tasked with reigniting repeatedly to circularize the orbit of its valuable satellite payloads once in space.
While it requires far less rigor than the Air Force’s more secretive, national security-sensitive satellite launches, SpaceX’s second Falcon Heavy launch – this time with three highly-reusable Block 5 boosters – will also be conducted with the military branch as the primary customer. Known as Space Test Mission-2 (STP-2), Falcon Heavy will be tasked with carrying a stack of dozens of different smallsats to a variety of orbits. Of note, the vast majority of that mission’s payload comes in the form of a 5000-kilogram ballast mass, included because the mission was manifested on Falcon Heavy (instead of the operational Falcon 9) for the sole purpose of facilitating the rocket’s rapid certification for critical Air Force missions.
- Falcon Heavy may look for more condensed than Delta Heavy, but its performance dramatically outclasses the ULA rocket in all but the highest-energy mission profiles. (SpaceX)
- The fully-integrated Falcon Heavy rolls out to Pad 39A. For vertical integration, think of this… but vertical. (SpaceX)
STP-2 is currently scheduled for no earlier than (NET) November 2018, while the third launch of Falcon Heavy – the commercial Arabsat 6A communications satellite – is tentatively targeted for December, although it’s almost guaranteed to slip into Q1 2019.
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Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
News
Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s Elon Musk relieves worries about orbital data centers
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently confronted worries about orbital data centers and launching satellites in mass quantities in space, as some voiced concerns about crowding.
Musk’s SpaceX plans to combat the issue of needing data centers by launching them into space instead of taking up valuable real estate on Earth. It has been a major point of SpaceX’s future, including its looming IPO, which could be the largest ever.
In a recent interview filmed at SpaceX’s Starlink terminal factory in Bastrop, Texas, Elon Musk directly addressed concerns that deploying large numbers of AI satellites for orbital data centers could crowd Earth’s orbit. His message was straightforward and reassuring: space is vast beyond human intuition.
“Space is really big,” Musk said. “It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the Earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” He emphasized that even zooming in makes a satellite appear large, but from a planetary perspective, they are minuscule specks.
Elon on concerns that AI satellites will crowd space:
“Space is really big. It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” https://t.co/Mvr7NpL25Q pic.twitter.com/5Fi629Rii7
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 8, 2026
Musk pointed to SpaceX’s real-world experience operating roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites as evidence that large constellations can be managed safely. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of how to operate just really large constellations and do it safely,” he noted. SpaceX remains the only operator with meaningful experience at this scale, giving the company unique insight into tight orbital packing without compromising safety
The discussion highlighted SpaceX’s plans for “AI1” satellites—essentially orbiting racks of AI compute powered by massive solar arrays and cooled via radiative panels in space’s vacuum.
These satellites leverage proven Starlink V3 technology, making them simpler to design than communications satellites. A first-generation unit targets around 150 kW peak power, with a 70-meter wingspan for solar panels and radiators. Laser links will connect them to each other and the Starlink network, delivering low-latency access (on the order of a few milliseconds from low-Earth orbit).
FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan
Musk framed orbital data centers as a practical solution to Earth’s constraints on AI growth. Ground-based facilities face power shortages, water demands for cooling, and grid limitations. In space, constant sunlight (no day-night cycle), vacuum radiative cooling, and abundant solar energy offer clear advantages.
Production will ramp up at an expanded “Gigasat” factory in Bastrop, with solar manufacturing already underway and full AI satellite output expected at reasonable volume by the end of 2027. Starship’s rapid, high-volume launch capability, aiming for multiple flights per hour, will make massive deployment feasible.
Critics sometimes raise risks like space debris or Kessler syndrome, but Musk’s response underscores scale: even a million satellites would represent an imperceptible fraction of available orbital volume when viewed against Earth’s size. SpaceX’s automated collision avoidance and deorbiting designs for Starlink further mitigate concerns.
This vision ties into broader ambitions. Musk sees orbital AI compute as a step toward harnessing more of the Sun’s energy, advancing humanity on the Kardashev scale from a Type 0 civilization toward Type 1 and eventually Type 2. By moving power-hungry data centers off-planet, SpaceX aims to unlock orders-of-magnitude more compute while preserving Earth’s resources.
Musk’s comments should ease public anxiety. With proven operational expertise, incremental engineering, and the immensity of space itself, orbital data centers represent not overcrowding, but smart expansion into the final frontier.



