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SpaceX, NASA practice astronaut recovery ahead of Crew Dragon’s crewed launch debut
SpaceX and NASA teams continue to prepare for Crew Dragon’s inaugural crewed launch (Demo-2) to the International Space Station (ISS) slated to possibly – but not likely – occur by year’s end.
On Tuesday, an official NASA Twitter account published images of teams from SpaceX and the space agency performing a full rehearsal of crew recovery and extraction procedures, including the duo of NASA astronauts scheduled to fly first on SpaceX’s next-generation spacecraft.
The rehearsal took place at the Trident Basin in Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard GO Searcher, one of two East Coast recovery vessels SpaceX uses for Crew Dragon recoveries.
A high-fidelity mockup of Crew Dragon was used to better familiarize all members involved with the process of safely extricating astronauts from the SpaceX spacecraft. This is the first time that multiple SpaceX and NASA teams have fully integrated to work aboard the ship and simulate the recovery process. The teams practiced helping the astronauts exit the capsule and simulated receiving medical attention that may be necessary when in a hypothetical emergency return from the ISS.
This practice run follows a recent full dress rehearsal of suit-up and pre-flight procedures that were conducted at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Following that dress rehearsal, SpaceflightNow.com reported that a newly installed slide wire emergency egress system was tested at Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida where the crewed DM-2 Mission will be launching from.
Crew Dragon’s Demonstration Mission 1 (Demo-1) launch presented SpaceX with a full-fidelity opportunity to hone capsule retrieval practices, but SpaceX teams did not practice astronaut extraction from the capsule – Demo-1 flight was uncrewed aside from an Anthropomorphic Test Device (i.e. dummy) nicknamed Ripley. The rehearsal on Tuesday served as familiarization for teams to extract astronauts from the capsule once it has been recovered aboard GO Searcher while still docked.
On Thursday, August 15th, two days after the above capsule extraction rehearsal, NASA once more posted photos of GO Searcher-related rehearsal operations, this time involving a drill in which astronauts needed to be airlifted immediately to land-based medical facilities. According to local observers and confirmed by the official NASA photos, a helicopter did indeed land on GO Searcher’s dedicated helipad before quickly departing with medically sensitive cargo. Searcher has its own simple medical facilities onboard but they are only capable of dealing with fairly routine concerns, focused primarily on aiding astronauts who are going from half a year in microgravity to full Earth gravity.
While there are still many milestones to get through before Crew Dragon can take flight for the second time, these numerous rehearsals of critical launch and recovery procedures are incredibly important, helping SpaceX and NASA teams hone their working relationship as both prepare to enter a new stage of the Commercial Crew Program. Demo-1 astronaut Col. Bob Behnken summarized it nicely, stating that, “each of these exercises puts us one step closer to fulfilling NASA’s mission of returning astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil.”
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Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
