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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launch moves to March, risking Falcon Heavy delays

SpaceX completed a static fire of the first Falcon 9 rated for human flight on January 24th. DM-1 is now NET March 2019, clashing with Falcon Heavy's schedule. (SpaceX)

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8 years ago

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The planning date for the launch debut of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft has been pushed to no earlier than (NET) March 2019 per sources familiar with the matter, potentially creating a direct schedule conflict with the company’s planned operational debut of Falcon Heavy, also NET March 2019.

At the same time as delays to the Commercial Crew Program continue to increase the odds that NASA will lose assured access to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2020, both of SpaceX’s critical missions are entirely dependent upon the support of its Kennedy Space Center-located Launch Complex 39A (Pad 39A), creating a logistical puzzle that will likely delay Falcon Heavy’s second launch until Crew Dragon is safely in orbit.

As of the first week of December 2018, SpaceX was reportedly planning towards a mid-January 2019 launch debut for Crew Dragon. By the end of December, DM-1 was no earlier than the end of January. By the end of January, DM-1 had slipped to from late-February to NET March 2019. Put in slightly different terms, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launch debut has been more or less indefinitely postponed for the last two months, with planning dates being pushed back at roughly the same pace as the passage of time (i.e. a day’s delay every day).

Admittedly, DM’s apparently indefinite postponement may well be – and probably is – more of an artifact than a sign of any monolithic cause. While the US government’s longest-ever shutdown (35 days) undoubtedly delayed a major proportion of mission-critical work having to do with extensive NASA reviews of SpaceX and Crew Dragon’s launch readiness (known as Readiness Reviews), much of the 60+ day DM-1 delay can probably be attributed to the complexity of the tasks at hand. Being as it is the first time SpaceX has ever attempted a launch directly related to human spaceflight, as well as the first time NASA has been back at the helm (more or less) of US astronaut launch endeavors in more than 7.5 years, significant delays should come as no surprise regardless of how disappointing they may be.

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The most consequential aspect of DM-1’s two-month (at least) delay will likely be the myriad ways it feeds into delays of SpaceX’s in-flight abort (IFA) test and first crewed launch (DM-2), and thus’s NASA’s ability to once again independently launch US astronauts. Given that SpaceX’s DM-2 is expected to occur around six months after DM-1 and that the final certification of Crew Dragon for official astronaut launches will likely take another 2-3 months, these delays – barring heroics or program modifications – are pushing NASA dangerously close to the edge of losing assured US access to the International Space Station (ISS).

According to a July 2018 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) analyzed the Commercial Crew Program and NASA’s human spaceflight program more generally and concluded that NASA would lose assured access to the ISS in November 2019 if Boeing and SpaceX continued to suffer delays and were unable to reach certification status by then. This comes as a result of NASA’s reliance on Russian Soyuz launches for access both to and from the ISS, launch and return service contracts which have no replacements (aside from SpaceX and Boeing). While GAO noted that NASA could likely delay that loss of assured access until January 2020, even that might be pushing it if SpaceX’s DM-1 delay continues much further.

“[While NASA is working on potential solutions, it] has not yet developed a contingency plan to address the potential gaps that [future delays in Boeing and SpaceX schedules] could have on U.S. access to the ISS after 2019.” – GAO, July 2018

Prior to DM-1’s delay from NET January to NET March 2019, SpaceX was targeting an In-Flight Abort test roughly three months after DM-1 (it will reuse DM-1’s Crew Dragon capsule), DM-2 six months after DM-1 (NET June 2019), and NASA certification and the first operational astronaut launch (PCM-1) as few as two months after DM-2 (August 2019). It’s reasonable to assume that delays to DM-1 will impact subsequent Crew Dragon launches roughly 1:1, as DM-2 and its many associated reviews hinge directly on DM-1, while the same relationship also exists between PCM-1 and DM-2. As a result, Crew Dragon’s two-month delay probably means that SpaceX’s NASA certification will occur no earlier than October 2019, giving NASA no more than 90 days of buffer before the US presence on the ISS drops from around 50% (3 astronauts) to 0%.

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Crew Dragon and Falcon Heavy walk into a bar…

The unexpected delays to Crew Dragon’s DM-1 launch debut are likely placing SpaceX in an awkward situation with respect to the operational launch debut of Falcon Heavy, meant to place the terminally delayed Arabsat 6A satellite into orbit no earlier than March 7th, 2019 (at the absolute earliest). DM-1 is also targeting a launch sometime in March, posing a significant problem: both Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon can only launch from Pad 39A, while the on-site hangar simply doesn’t have the space to support schedule-critical Falcon Heavy prelaunch work (mainly booster integration and a static fire test) and no less critical Crew Dragon launch preparations simultaneously.

 

Much like SpaceX’s inaugural Falcon Heavy rocket spent a month and a half fully integrated and more than two weeks in a static-fire limbo (albeit due to one-of-a-kind circumstances) before its launch debut, SpaceX’s second Falcon Heavy rocket – comprised of three new Block 5 boosters and Heavy-specific hardware upgrades – is likely to take a good deal more time than a normal Falcon 9 for prelaunch processing. Almost all of that Heavy-specific testing depends on the rocket being integrated (i.e. all three boosters attached) for preflight fit and systems checks and a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) and/or static fire ignition test.

It’s entirely possible that SpaceX integration technicians are able to complete the process of swapping out Crew Dragon and Falcon 9, modifying the transport/erector (T/E), completing Falcon Heavy booster integration, and installing Falcon Heavy on the T/E quickly enough to allow for simultaneous DM-1 and Arabsat 6A processing. It’s also possible that an extremely elegant but risky alternative strategy could solve the logistical puzzle – as an example, SpaceX could roll Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 out to Pad 39A a week or more before launch to give Falcon Heavy enough space for full integration, whereby Falcon 9’s necessarily successful launch would clear the T/E and allow it to be rolled back into 39A’s hangar for Falcon Heavy installation.

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The most likely (and least risky) end result, however, is an indefinite delay for Falcon Heavy Flight 2, pending the successful launch of Crew Dragon. This is very much an instance where “wait and see” is the only route to solid answers, so wait and see we shall.

Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes!

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab

Musk says Tesla and SpaceX will build and run Terafab, with TSMC limited to renting.

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10 hours ago

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October 7, 2026

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SpaceX Terafab rendering

Elon Musk has drawn a firm line around who will be in charge of Terafab, the giant chip factory Tesla and SpaceX are planning in Texas.

Musk replied to a post on X arguing that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) would most likely end up owning and operating the plant. “No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that,” Musk wrote. “Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.”

In plain terms, a sublease means TSMC could rent a section of the complex to make chips, similar to a tenant renting one floor of an office tower. The building, the equipment decisions and the daily operation would stay with Tesla and SpaceX.

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The comment shuts down speculation that started last week. On October 2, tech journalist Tim Culpan reported that TSMC was exploring ways to help run Terafab’s factories. Musk responded the next day that it was “just discussions, but something may come of it,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That left room for a scenario where the world’s largest contract chipmaker took the wheel. Musk’s latest post closes that door.

Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner

Some background helps explain why this matters. Tesla designs its own AI chips today but pays outside companies like TSMC and Samsung to manufacture them. Musk unveiled Terafab in March as a joint project between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, arguing that existing suppliers cannot expand fast enough to meet his companies’ future demand. The goal is to produce enough chips each year to supply one terawatt of computing power, roughly 50 times what the entire global AI chip industry produces now.

Those chips are meant for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, the Cybercab and Full Self-Driving computers, along with chips for SpaceX’s planned data centers in orbit. Owning the factory means Musk’s companies would not have to compete with every other chip customer for time on someone else’s production lines.

Intel is still part of the picture. The company signed on in April to help design, build and package chips for the project, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg this week that Intel will keep working on Terafab despite the TSMC chatter.

The project moved from concept to construction planning over the summer. In August, SpaceX confirmed the Grimes County site about an hour from Houston, sent the county a $10 million payment under its tax abatement deal and said civil work would begin shortly. The first phase carries a $16.8 billion price tag, and total spending across all phases could reach as much as $119 billion.

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TSMC chairman C.C. Wei has said a new fab typically takes two to three years to build and another one to two years to reach full output. Tesla and SpaceX have never run one, which is why TSMC’s expertise drew so much attention. Musk’s answer suggests he would rather learn that process in house than hand control of a project this central to Tesla’s robotics and autonomy plans to an outside company.

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Elon Musk

Trump to hand Elon Musk a top honor that traces back to JFK

Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at Thursday’s White House summit.

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17 hours ago

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October 7, 2026

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elon musk and donald trump in front of a tesla cybertruck at the white house

Elon Musk is set to receive the highest honor the U.S. government gives to scientists and engineers.

President Donald Trump will present Musk with the National Medal of Science on Thursday at the White House’s Science: A New Golden Age Summit, Fox News Digital first reported on Wednesday. Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su will receive the same medal, while Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. A White House official later confirmed the list to Reuters.

“The Trump administration is grateful for the contributions of these incredible leaders in science and technology. These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News.

It will be the first time Trump has presented either medal in his two terms. Congress created the National Medal of Science in 1959, and the National Science Foundation, which administers it, says 529 scientists and engineers have received it since. A presidential committee reviews nominees, but the president makes the final call.

Thursday’s group of medalists run or founded companies, and three of them sit at the center of the Super Intelligence hardware race that Musk competes in. Huang’s Nvidia supplies the GB300 chips filling SpaceX’s Colossus 2 cluster, while Su’s AMD is Nvidia’s biggest rival in data center GPUs.

Worth noting that Trump’s uncle, MIT physicist John G. Trump, received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan for his work on ionizing radiation and its uses in medicine and industry.

The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future

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For Musk, the medal is the latest sign of how far his relationship with Trump has come since their 2025 split over the “Big Beautiful Bill” and his exit from DOGE. Last week, he sat at Trump’s left during a White House lunch where AI executives signed a voluntary safety accord, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named him to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare. Musk has also adopted the administration’s new vocabulary, saying on Sunday that SpaceXAI will be renamed SpaceXSI after Trump ordered federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence.”

Musk has collected science honors before, including the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in 2019.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions

SpaceX reveals plans for one million Starmind AI satellites and calls out operators hiding maneuvers.

Published

2 days ago

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October 6, 2026

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Concept rendering of SpaceX Starmind constellation via Grok
Concept rendering of SpaceX Starmind constellation via Grok

SpaceX has put the largest satellite count it has ever published into writing, and it says that plan only works if every other operator in orbit starts sharing what it knows.

In a new Space Safety page highlighted Tuesday morning by Sawyer Merritt on X, SpaceX said it “plans to operate up to 100,000 Starlink satellites and up to 1 million Starmind AI satellites to meet the growing demand for broadband and supercompute.” Starlink has a little over 11,000 satellites in orbit today, so the target alone implies roughly a ninefold expansion of the broadband network.

Starmind is SpaceX’s orbital AI compute constellation. Elon Musk confirmed the Starmind name in June after an xAI trademark filing surfaced, and in August SpaceX said it was working with Nvidia on the compute payload. The FCC accepted the filing for up to one million satellites back in February.

FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan

SpaceX also released a new render of what a full Starmind constellation could look like. Alongside it, SpaceX VP Michael Nicolls explained why the satellites will not operate on their own. “We need to operate clusters of satellites in tight formation to get enough coherent compute to run AI models efficiently,” Nicolls said. “A cluster will be 10-ish satellites connected with 10 terabits or so of bandwidth between them, and interconnected to the broader constellation.”

That is the most specific detail SpaceX has given on how Starmind will be built. Instead of a million independent servers, the network would work as tightly packed groups of about 10 satellites acting as one compute unit, with Starlink’s laser links carrying results back to Earth.

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Packing satellites that close together, at that scale, makes collision avoidance the central problem, and most of the Space Safety page is aimed at other operators. SpaceX said Starlink encountered collision risks with about 650 unique maneuvering third party satellites in 2026, and only about half of them shared data. Over six months, Starlink recorded roughly 164,000 more collision risks where the closest approach came within four hours of an unannounced maneuver.

Some operators keep maneuver plans private over proprietary concerns, while others cannot get government permission to share them. SpaceX called those policies “counterproductive,” saying they “largely only serve to create preventable collision risk between satellites.” Starlink is also offering a free ephemeris sharing and screening platform that returns risk results within a minute, backed by its Stargaze network of 30,000 optical sensors.

The push comes as the Starmind application draws opposition from astronomers and environmental groups. In a September filing with the FCC, SpaceX said each Starmind satellite could weigh up to 4,000 kg, nearly seven times the mass of a Starlink V2 Mini. Musk has brushed off crowding concerns before, telling viewers in June that “space is enormous” and that SpaceX already knows how to run very large constellations safely.

SpaceX’s Starmind page says its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, is designed to produce AI satellites at scale, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027.

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