ELON CHRON: 29th of July, 2026

The Daily Chronicle of Musk's Companies

"People on Mars in roughly 5 to 7 years. Mars lander a few years sooner..." - Elon Musk (@elonmusk

■ SPACEX $SPCX ($112.55, -3.32%):

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2082340308680135085

• Elon has stated that SpaceX is sending a ship out to retrieve Starship 40. Claudius (@ClaudiusNDX) noted that S40 is in the eastern Indian Ocean near the edge of a large-scale trough and current system. If fully caught in the current, it could drift northwest, potentially toward Sri Lanka.

Elon also stated S40's "landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms." That sounds to me like the data approves a Starship 41 catch!

• Thanks to RGV Aerial Photography (@RGVaerialphotos) we now know that the new Starship Test Article is S43.1. At this point, S43.1 is most likely being prepared to roll to Massey's.

• Today Space Systems Command (SSC) announced that SpaceX was awarded $1.6 billion by the U.S. Space Force for 18 Falcon 9 launches through 2027. The missions, assigned under two task orders in the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 program, will carry Pentagon satellites for detecting and targeting airborne objects as part of the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio.

• Last night Super Heavy Boosters 22’s LOX landing tank was moved into Mega Bay 1. Pic via Avid Space (@LabPadre) live feed.

• U.S. District Judge John D. Bates of the District of Columbia has ruled that the lawsuit challenging SpaceX’s planned land swap with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service belongs in the Southern District of Texas because the key facts are tied to the state. This is the suit, filed in June 2026 by the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups, seeking to block the transfer of 715 acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge near Boca Chica to SpaceX in exchange for 683 acres of SpaceX land near the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.

• Looking at the Moon via a Crew Dragon. Pic by NASA Astronaut Anil Menon (@astro_anil).

• SpaceX has donated $1 million to the University of The Bahamas’ Centre for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning (CELEARN) to launch the region’s first Environmental and Aerospace Satellite Engineering Program. The two-year applied professional development program (120 credit hours) trains students and professionals in satellite systems engineering, aerospace technology, remote sensing, and environmental data applications. Participants will work on a real satellite mission to collect and analyze environmental and ecosystems data on The Bahamas. It starts on September 14th.

https://x.com/LabPadre/status/2081983575109570924

• This video from Avid Space (@LabPadre) reveals Starship Flight 13 produced twice the sound pressure of Flight 12. It shows a 60-year-old window, and others, taking on that pressure and not breaking. The video certainly indicates that claims of Starship damaging homes miles away in Port Isabel are, shall we say, untrue. Great video and wonderful idea!

COUNTDOWN TO 145 (88 - Falcon 9, 1 - Falcon Heavy, and 2 - Starship):

• Launch 92! Thursday, 30th of July, at 3:09 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 NROL-95 will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The booster will land on drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean.
• Launch 93! Thursday, 30th of July, at 7:00 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 17-52 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The booster will land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
• Launch 94! Monday, 3rd of August, at 7:00 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 17-53 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The booster will land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
• Launch 95! Wednesday, 5th of August, at 3:42 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 BlueBird Block 2 No.6-8 will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The booster will land on drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean.
• Launch 96! Friday, 7th of August, at 7:00 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 17-38 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The booster will land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
• Launch 97! Monday, 10th of August, at 7:00 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 Starlink 10-19 will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The booster will land on drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean.
• Launch 98! Monday, 10th of August, at 7:00 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 17-49 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The booster will land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
• Launch ??! Sunday, 30th of August, at 7:20 a.m. ET, Falcon Heavy Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will launch from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The two side boosters are will return-to-launch-site landing at Landing Zone 2 (LZ-2) and Landing Zone 40 (LZ-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The center core will likely be expended. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is an infrared observatory with a 2.4 m wide-field primary mirror. It has two instruments: the 300.8-megapixel Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) for visible and near-infrared imaging, and the Coronagraphic Instrument (CGI) for high-contrast visible and near-infrared observations using starlight-suppression technology. Objectives include exoplanet searches via gravitational microlensing and measuring dark energy, general relativity, and spacetime curvature through cosmic expansion and structure studies.

■ TESLA $TSLA ($298.32, -2.97%):

Per Elon,

"Humans drive using neural nets and optical sensors. Same is true for robot cars."

• Tesla Center Dortmund Holzwickede, Germany, held a Power Your Summer event at Cafe Seepark Lünen featuring Cybertruck on the beach. Attendees got a lake view, test drives of the Model 3 and Y, children activities, snacks and drinks, and information on a current €2,000 Tesla Bonus for the Model Y RWD. Store Manager Cansu Sülüsoglu shared that the event also featured a shuttle service. Summer atmosphere with electromobility!

• Tesla Japan (@teslajapan) expanded its free Supercharger access in the Kyushu area for one week following the Kumamoto Earthquake of Reiwa 8. The free period runs from July 29th to August 4th.

• Australia and New Zealand are the first markets Tesla has enabled Powerwall 3 compatibility with existing Powerwall 2 systems through a new firmware update. Homeowners can now add Powerwall 3 units to Powerwall 2 setups to increase storage capacity and backup duration. Official firmware is rolling out and becomes standard at commissioning starting mid-August; pilot firmware remains available in the meantime. Supported configurations include up to 4x Powerwall 2, 1x Powerwall 3, and 3x Powerwall 3 expansion units and requires no hardware retrofit.-

• Powerwall 3 is now available in Northern Ireland

• Neoen (@NEOEN_Energy, @NEOEN_AU) has launched construction of Goyder Battery Stage 2 (227 MW / 907 MWh) in South Australia’s Mid North. Combined with Stage 1, the project now totals 454 MW / 1,814 MWh. It is being built by Tesla and UGL using the new Megablock. The full battery holds two 15-year capacity contracts awarded under the South Australian Government’s inaugural Firm Energy Reliability Mechanism (FERM). This takes Neoen’s total global battery storage capacity past 10 GWh in operation or under construction.

• Superior Propane’s CML team completed a project installing a 2,000 USWG propane tank and an ALGAS 80/40 direct-fired vaporizer. This supplies a generator that provides backup power to a control center for a 250 Megapacks site. I tried to find the location, but was unable to. Pics by Gareth Martin, G1/LP CML Gas Technician at Superior Propane.

• Tesla has received Texas state approval to operate a cleaning robot at its Robotaxi hub at 5900 E Ben White Blvd in Austin. The robot will autonomously clean Cybercabs at the facility where vehicles are charged, maintained, and cleaned. The permit (TABS2025022006) lists the cleaning robot alongside Supercharger cabinets and an equipment inspection system.

FLYOVERS:

https://x.com/JoeTegtmeyer/status/2082575836977233976

• Giga Texas: Joe Tegtmeyer (@JoeTegtmeyer), 29th of July, '26. "From the North Campus where the new Optimus Factory is under construction, to the Central Support Campus where Cortex 2 phase II construction..." Let's Go!

■ THE BORING COMPANY:

• TBC Director of Production Electrical & Software Engineering, Mike Baier (@Mike__Baier), explained how Prufrock-built tunnels turn. Prufrock uses its active articulation system and thrust vectoring to steer, while the tunnel itself curves through trapezoidal precast concrete ring segments. Each assembled ring is rotated, or “clocked,” into one of 12 or 16 valid positions. Clocking consecutive rings 180 degrees apart produces a straight tunnel; matching the clocking angle produces a tighter curve. The radius of curvature is controlled from infinite (straight) to the maximum allowed by the ring geometry. These clocking angles are calculated automatically by the company’s SNaILS navigation system.

■ NEURALINK:

https://x.com/NeuraPod/status/2081873918051393727

• Great article by Ryan Tanaka (@RyanTanaka) for Neura Pod (@NeuraPod) about CJ (@SCI_Borg24), NP24. From his 2020 tree accident, receiving his N1 in mid-March, to collaborating with Neuralink engineers on mind-controlled Revit work. Great article and worth the read!

■ STARLINK:

Per Rebecca Slick Hunter, SpaceX Director of Starlink Global Licensing and Market Activation,

"It is an incredibly great morning to be able to share Starlink has activated service in Iraq! This is the result of dedicated work and effort of so many, both at SpaceX, and within Iraq. With a common objective to improve connectivity and a shared mission to bring solutions to people, business and the government, anything is possible."

• We now have details on Argentine President Javier Milei's (@JMilei) project with SpaceX to connect 6,000 schools. SpaceX and Argentina’s telecom regulator Enacom will do it via a nearly $22 million public-private agreement. SpaceX will contribute $9.9 million for Starlink kits, accessories, and the first 24 months of service. Enacom will provide $11.8 million for installation, operations, technical support, a monitoring platform, and the third year of service. The program will be coordinated with the Education Secretariat, provinces, and municipalities.

• CMC Global Shipping completed the import and delivery of 14 x 40’ flat rack containers from South Korea. The cargo arrived at its Houston CFS warehouse, where the team handled transloading before final delivery to SpaceX in Bastrop, Texas.

Per Will Kim, Director of Sales & Operations at CMC Global Shipping,

"Our data center biz keeps growing with another meaningful project delivered for SpaceX. We don't just follow the book only, we rely on experience and flexibility to get the job done, no matter what comes up."

• Tech Bridges To Malawi (@TechK252452) donated 24 laptops and a Starlink kit to Mkhota Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) in Malawi. For the first time, students there were able to touch, power on, and use a laptop, connecting a previously offline classroom to high-speed internet.

• The SpaceX Starlink facility in Redmond, Washington. Pic by Nathan Hedlund, SpaceX Starlink Production Technician.

• Ookla (@Speedtest) published a performance audit of Starlink in Brazil. As of May, Starlink had 791,000 fixed broadband subscriptions at 1.4% market share, ranking as the country’s 13th-largest provider. Median download speeds in Q1 2026 peaked at 149.5 Mbps overnight and fell to 90.6 Mbps by 1 p.m.; the peak-to-trough gap improved from 48.9% in Q3 2025 to 29.6% in Q2 2026. Starlink has more subscriptions in highly urbanized areas (347,990) than low-urbanization areas (213,291). Its rural market share is nearing 10%, with an 8.3% net user increase in rural areas for May YoY.

• KDDI (@official_kddi) is using Starlink to restore base stations that went offline after the Kumamoto Prefecture earthquake. Recovery work has begun at sites in Hitoyoshi City and the Tagura area, with efforts focused on restoring communications as quickly as possible.

■ 𝕏:

• Today X Corp. and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA, @wfamarketers) issued a joint statement putting the litigation involving the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) behind them and resetting their relationship. WFA reiterated its commitment to freedom of speech, a principle in its 1953 founding constitution that it shares with X. WFA discontinued GARM on August 9th, 2024, and will not restart it or any similar initiative. Both sides agree that brands, platforms, and consumers benefit from brand-safety innovation.

■ SPACEXAI:

• This is the newest image of Colossus 2 (MACROHARD & MACROHARDRR). There are 6 blocks of Megapacks with 120 units each. That's 720 Megapacks on site! To the right of the Megapacks you can see construction of the large warehouse continues. To the far right, along Tulane Rd, we can see the build site for what I thought was going to be an office building. Does not look like an office at this point.

• SpaceXAI announced Grok Voice Think Fast 2.0, its next-generation voice model with improved intelligence, transcription accuracy, and conversational capabilities. The model is designed for real-world voice agents, performing better in noisy conditions, reasoning through complex workflows while speaking, and sounding more natural. It is available now in the API and Voice Agent Builder at $0.08 per minute. On August 5th the default \grok-voice-latest\ will switch to this version.

Artificial Analysis (@ArtificialAnlys) reports that xAI’s Grok Voice Think Fast 2.0 High debuts at #2 on the Speech to Speech Index with a score of 82.9%, up from 75.7% for version 1.0. It ranks #1 on the Tau Voice agentic performance benchmark at 56.5% and records a Time to First Audio of 0.70 seconds, the fastest among top models. On Full Duplex Bench it scores 95.1% (up from 77.8%). The model is priced at $4.80 per hour of input audio.

https://x.com/Tiny_Fish/status/2082512237122793478

• TinyFish (@Tiny_Fish) is a service that gives AI agents access to the live web through a single API. It released a plugin for Grok Build that packages Search, Fetch, Agent, and Browser tools together, allowing xAI’s coding agent to search the web, retrieve content, and interact with websites. To activate,

• Run grok, then open the marketplace: /marketplace
• Find TinyFish in the list and press i to install it.
• Open the MCP servers tab with /mcps, select TinyFish, and press i to sign in.
• Your browser opens the TinyFish sign-in page: http://agent.tinyfish.ai. Once it shows ready, ask Grok anything that needs the web.

• Eico announced that Grok 4.5 has been added to the Founder Bench, a live evaluation platform. It gives several frontier AI models, including Grok 4.5, four identical businesses each. All companies are created and funded through Autonomous Company Company and then left to operate on their own. The AIs handle day-to-day decisions such as marketing, advertising, operations, and growth without human intervention. Performance is tracked over time to compare how well different models can run real businesses autonomously. Grok 4.5 is now in the current cohort running 4 companies autonomously. Early observation of its Meta ads suggests its companies are already generating noticeable activity. Results are expected soon.

■ ELON NEWS:

• X Freeze (@XFreeze) hopes future computers run an AI agent straight on the silicon with no traditional operating system or apps. You just talk to it, state what you need, and the agent does the work locally using all the device’s power. Most tasks stay private on the device; it only connects to the cloud when extra intelligence is required. The goal is computing with just the human, the AI agent, and the hardware—no apps.

Elon Musk replied,

"That’s what will happen."

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■ SOURCES:

SpaceX:

• https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/spacex-wins-1-6b-to-launch-space-force-sensing-and-targeting-sats/
• https://www.ub.edu.bs/ease-programme/
• https://www.law360.com/articles/2506955

Starlink:

• https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/starlink-enacom-to-connect-6000-argentine-schools-via-satellite
• https://www.ookla.com/articles/satellites-at-scale-a-performance-audit-of-starlink-in-brazil

SpaceXAI:

• https://x.ai/news/grok-voice-think-fast-2
• https://www.tinyfish.ai/?from=mino&ref=ms6dj1tlkzzifeiatok
• https://eico.so/founder-bench

Elon News:

• Elon Quote: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2082347505099128899?s=20

@SpaceX, @Tesla, @BoringCompany, @Neuralink, @Starlink, @X, @xAI, @SpaceXAI, @Grok