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SpaceX reusability may soon be in good company as Rocket Lab catches rocket with a helicopter
Rocket Lab, the world’s most prominent dedicated small satellite launcher, has made significant headway on plans to recover and reuse the booster stage of its Electron rocket, meaning that SpaceX’s reusable Falcon rockets could finally have company.
Recovering a booster is perhaps where all similarities end, however. While the SpaceX Falcon 9 gracefully guides itself back for a controlled landing on an ocean-going drone ship or land-based landing zone, Rocket Lab’s Electron booster will be snagged straight out of the air by a helicopter with a grappling hook.
Recently, Rocket Lab completed what the company called “a major step forward” in plans to achieve full booster recoverability with the successful completion of a “mid-air recovery” test. The test occurred over the open ocean near New Zealand and featured what was identified as an “Electron first stage test article.” One helicopter released the test article at a low altitude – around 2.5km (8,000ft) – and a nearby second helicopter, outfitted with a specially designed grappling hook, swooped in and snatched it out of the sky as it plummeted toward the ocean.
Rocket Lab’s recovery efforts did not simply begin with dropping a rocket-shaped test article from a helicopter. Long before ever attempting to catch a test article falling through the sky, the company had to ensure that the first stage of the Electron booster could even survive the return trip. Rocket Lab CEO and founder, Peter Beck, referred to it as punching through the wall which best summarizes the conditions that the first stage encounters upon re-entry through on the Earth’s dense atmosphere.
The company’s tenth successful launch dubbed “Running Out of Fingers” in December of 2019 was not only successful because it delivered and deployed the payload, but it was also the first time that Electron’s first stage first made it safely through the wall intact. Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 that slows during descent with a series of engine burns, Rocket Lab’s Electron orients itself for the right “angle of attack” to slow down during re-entry.
The first stage of Electron has undergone a number of block upgrades to enable re-entry in one piece. The tenth mission featured the use of the upgraded Electron booster equipped with guidance and navigation hardware, as well as, a reaction control system (RCS) to gently control and reorient the first-stage during re-entry. The RCS was able to keep the booster adequately oriented and slowed it to under 900 kilometers per hour (560mph) for a controlled sea-level impact. The following eleventh mission dubbed “Birds of a Feather” in February 2020, also featured a successful controlled descent of the upgraded Electron first stage.
The final step in slowing the Electron down enough to be recovered by a grappling hook suspended by a helicopter was to develop and test a parachute system. Beck posted a teaser of the prototype parachute on Twitter in early February promising low altitude drop tests to follow soon after. Rocket Lab stated that the successful “mid-air recovery” test occurred weeks prior to the now mandated “Safer at Home” orders given in New Zealand amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
As reported by Michael Sheetz of CNBC, Rocket Lab will continue to test recovery efforts on an undisclosed mission scheduled for later this year. That test will exercise Electron’s RCS block upgrades and parachute system to a greater extent to slow the booster to a point of survivability upon impact with the water – a speed of about 8kilometers per hour (5mph).
Like SpaceX, Rocket Lab targets a reduction of launch costs and an increase in launch capabilities with full first-stage reusability. The dedicated launcher of small satellites also strives to further open access to space for the rapidly expanding small satellite market.
Currently, Rocket Lab has two operational launch pads, one on New Zealand’s Mahia Penninsula and another at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Later this year a second location on New Zealand’s Mahia Penninsula will come online drastically increasing Rocket Lab’s launching capabilities.
Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes.
Tesla has officially launched public Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a Safety Monitor in the vehicle, marking the first time the company has removed anyone from the vehicle other than the rider.
The Safety Monitor has been present in Tesla Robotaxis in Austin since its launch last June, maintaining safety for passengers and other vehicles, and was placed in the passenger’s seat.
Tesla planned to remove the Safety Monitor at the end of 2025, but it was not quite ready to do so. Now, in January, riders are officially reporting that they are able to hail a ride from a Model Y Robotaxi without anyone in the vehicle:
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla started testing this internally late last year and had several employees show that they were riding in the vehicle without anyone else there to intervene in case of an emergency.
Tesla has now expanded that program to the public. It is not active in the entire fleet, but there are a “few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors,” Ashok Elluswamy said:
Robotaxi rides without any safety monitors are now publicly available in Austin.
Starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time. https://t.co/ShMpZjefwB
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) January 22, 2026
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
The Robotaxi program also operates in the California Bay Area, where the fleet is much larger, but Safety Monitors are placed in the driver’s seat and utilize Full Self-Driving, so it is essentially the same as an Uber driver using a Tesla with FSD.
In Austin, the removal of Safety Monitors marks a substantial achievement for Tesla moving forward. Now that it has enough confidence to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis altogether, there are nearly unlimited options for the company in terms of expansion.
While it is hoping to launch the ride-hailing service in more cities across the U.S. this year, this is a much larger development than expansion, at least for now, as it is the first time it is performing driverless rides in Robotaxi anywhere in the world for the public to enjoy.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk shared an incredible detail about Tesla Cybercab’s potential efficiency, as the company has hinted in the past that it could be one of the most affordable vehicles to operate from a per-mile basis.
ARK Invest released a report recently that shed some light on the potential incremental cost per mile of various Robotaxis that will be available on the market in the coming years.
The Cybercab, which is detailed for the year 2030, has an exceptionally low cost of operation, which is something Tesla revealed when it unveiled the vehicle a year and a half ago at the “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles.
Musk said on numerous occasions that Tesla plans to hit the $0.20 cents per mile mark with the Cybercab, describing a “clear path” to achieving that figure and emphasizing it is the “full considered” cost, which would include energy, maintenance, cleaning, depreciation, and insurance.
Probably true
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026
ARK’s report showed that the Cybercab would be roughly half the cost of the Waymo 6th Gen Robotaxi in 2030, as that would come in at around $0.40 per mile all in. Cybercab, at scale, would be at $0.20.
Credit: ARK Invest
This would be a dramatic decrease in the cost of operation for Tesla, and the savings would then be passed on to customers who choose to utilize the ride-sharing service for their own transportation needs.
The U.S. average cost of new vehicle ownership is about $0.77 per mile, according to AAA. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft rideshares often cost between $1 and $4 per mile, while Waymo can cost between $0.60 and $1 or more per mile, according to some estimates.
Tesla’s engineering has been the true driver of these cost efficiencies, and its focus on creating a vehicle that is as cost-effective to operate as possible is truly going to pay off as the vehicle begins to scale. Tesla wants to get the Cybercab to about 5.5-6 miles per kWh, which has been discussed with prototypes.
Additionally, fewer parts due to the umboxed manufacturing process, a lower initial cost, and eliminating the need to pay humans for their labor would also contribute to a cheaper operational cost overall. While aspirational, all of the ingredients for this to be a real goal are there.
It may take some time as Tesla needs to hammer the manufacturing processes, and Musk has said there will be growing pains early. This week, he said regarding the early production efforts:
“…initial production is always very slow and follows an S-curve. The speed of production ramp is inversely proportionate to how many new parts and steps there are. For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow, but eventually end up being insanely fast.”
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla Earnings Call: Top 5 questions investors are asking
