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How SpaceX is able to achieve its amazing rocket landing accuracy
After SpaceX’s successful and uniquely exciting launch of Taiwan’s Formosat-5 remote sensing satellite, Elon Musk took to Twitter to reveal some fascinating details about the launch and recovery of the Falcon 9 first stage.
Unabashedly technical, the details Musk revealed demonstrate the truly incredible accuracy of Falcon 9’s recovery, honed over 20 landing attempts and numerous modifications to the launch vehicle. The accuracy is best understood within the context of Falcon 9’s scale and the general scope of orbital rocketry.
Touchdown:
Vertical Velocity (m/s): -1.47
Lateral Velocity (m/s): -0.15
Tilt (deg): 0.40
Lateral position: 0.7m from target center— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2017
The first stage of Falcon 9 Full Thrust, currently the active version of Falcon 9, stands 140 feet tall and 12 feet in diameter. If you can, for a moment, picture a 737 airliner, the plane most people have likely flown aboard on domestic flights. The first stage of Falcon 9 is the same length or greater and the same diameter as Boeing’s workhorse airliner. If you are now imagining a 737 landing on its tail aboard an ocean-going barge, that is a great start. The most common version of the 737, the -800, has an empty weight of 91,000 lb, while Falcon 9’s empty first stage is a bit more than half as heavy. With a full load of fuel, Falcon 9 S1 (first stage) weighs nearly three times as much as the 737-800. A single Merlin 1D engine out of Falcon 9’s namesake nine rocket engines has nearly ten times the thrust of the airliner. In short, Falcon 9’s first stage is massive, both extremely light and extremely heavy, and has a mind-boggling amount of thrust.
Falcon 9’s ability to land as accurately as it does is due to a combination of multiple technologies and vehicle modifications. Most visible are S1’s cold gas maneuvering thrusters and aluminum or titanium grid fins, both of which are designed to provide some level of control authority and maneuverability to the first stage during its trip within and without Earth’s atmosphere. At the peak of its trips, the first stage is often completely outside of the vast majority of the atmosphere, meaning that aerodynamic forces are no longer relevant or useful for the vehicle. This is where the cold gas thrusters come in: by carrying their reaction mass with them (the gas), Falcon 9 can maneuver outside of the atmosphere. Once the stage descends into thicker atmospheric conditions, the grid fins deploy and are used like wings to guide the stage down to its landing location, be that on land or at sea. While the gas thrusters lose a lot of their utility once in the atmosphere, they can still be used to add a small amount of control authority when needed. They were famously seen fighting a futile battle to save a first stage aboard OCISLY in 2015.
With this in mind, we can take a closer look at Musk’s technical details. First off, we have a photo of the landed booster, Falcon 9 1038, clearly almost dead center on the droneship Just Read The Instructions. More specifically, Musk reports that 1038 landed less than a single meter off the center of the target, and it landed with less than a single meter per second of latent velocity. The first stage thus managed both a soft and deadly accurate landing after traveling to a height of 150 miles – well into what is technically “space” – at a maximum speed of 1.5 miles per second. Without delving further into the details, this is best summarized as “insanely fast”, and is a bit faster than the X-15 rocketplane’s fastest recorded speed. To better put this into context, Falcon 9 1038 traveled to an altitude of 240,000 meters at a top speed of 2,400 meters per second, turned around, and landed on an autonomous barge about two feet off of its optimal target. It is truly difficult to describe how impressive that kind of accuracy is.
The hypersonic X-15 and Falcon 9 S1, with a 737-800 on the right. All vehicles are to scale. (Wikipedia, SpaceX)
Mr. Musk nevertheless did not let 1038 steal all the fanfare, and revealed that the first stage responsible for launching BulgariaSat-1, 1029, had the honor of being the fastest first stage yet, clocking in at at a truly staggering Mach 7.9, or 2,700 meters per second. That speedy mission marked the stage’s second flight and was SpaceX’s second successful reuse of a Falcon 9. Indicative of the intense speed and heat the core experienced, one of the vehicle’s grid fins was noted to have almost completely melted through. Aluminum’s melting point begins at 1,221°F.
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- The central aluminum grid fin of 1029 features a dramatic lack of several vanes, likely melted off during the intense heat of reentry. Expending older boosters is likely helping SpaceX learn how to preserve Block 5 rockets for multiple high-energy missions. (Reddit, u/thedubya22)
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- SpaceX will move to titanium grid fins in the future, first trialed during 1036’s launch of Iridium-2. (SpaceX)
Investor's Corner
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope heads to orbit this August aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with massive scientific ambitions.
SpaceX is set to play a central role in one of NASA’s most anticipated science missions in years. The company’s Falcon Heavy rocket, currently the most powerful operational launch vehicle in the world, will carry the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into orbit on August 30 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Roman is now in final preparations inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where on June 26 technicians used a crane to lift the observatory into a specialized stand for fueling and pre-launch testing.
Roman is named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief of astronomy, whose career helped shape how the agency approaches space science.
NASA chose SpaceX Falcon Heavy because of Roman’s needs to reach a specific orbit far from Earth, well beyond where a standard Falcon 9 can deliver it. The Falcon Heavy, which first flew in 2018, has since become NASA’s go-to option for missions that need serious muscle without the cost and complexity of older launch systems.
Celebrating SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Tesla Roadster launch, seven years later (Op-Ed)
Roman will carry a field of view at least 100 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope, meaning it can photograph enormous swaths of the universe in a single shot rather than the narrow slices Hubble captures. That difference in scale is significant. While Hubble reshaped our understanding of the cosmos over 30 years, Roman is built to work faster and wider, surveying hundreds of millions of galaxies at once.
One of Roman’s most compelling capabilities is its potential to discover and photograph planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, and with enough precision to directly image planets that would otherwise be lost. That means scientists could study the atmosphere and surface characteristics of distant worlds rather than simply confirming they exist. Combined with Roman’s sweeping field of view, the telescope could detect thousands of exoplanets, and some of those planets may be in habitable zones where liquid water could exist. No telescope currently in operation has this level of power and capability. That capability alone could change what we know about other worlds, and perhaps finally answer the question: are we the only intelligent lifeforms in existence?
What Roman actually finds once it reaches orbit is an open question, and that is exactly what makes this launch worth watching.
Tesla has confirmed a crucial detail of its Miami Robotaxi launch, stating that the fleet is operating on an Unsupervised basis, joining a few other cities where company employees do not watch over the vehicles from inside.
Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, confirmed the detail on X, answering a highly speculated question about the Robotaxi Service in Miami, which was launched on June 3:
Unsupervised
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) July 3, 2026
The first launch of Robotaxi in Florida, Miami presents a unique opportunity for Tesla as it is operating the Unsupervised Robotaxi ride-hailing service in a major tourist hotspot in the Sunshine State. It also signals the suite will expand to other cities soon; many have requested Orlando, a heavy tourist spot with Disney and other resorts nearby, get access to the program soon as well.
Miami is getting a conservative rollout as well, just as Tesla has done with other cities. The initial geofence covers a compact 10–14 square mile zone in western Miami-Dade County, primarily West Miami extending toward Doral and Sweetwater. It is bounded roughly by SR-826 (Palmetto Expressway) to the north and US-41 (Tamiami Trail) to the south, excluding downtown Miami, Miami Beach, the airport, and most of Coral Gables.
Tesla has also been pretty slim on other details. For example, Tesla has not disclosed the exact fleet size, but field reports and license plate tracking indicate just two unsupervised Model Y vehicles were active on launch day, increasing to three within 48 hours.
According to The Road to Autonomy, a nearby staging lot near Miami International Airport holds dozens of Cybercabs alongside additional Model Y units, suggesting capacity for rapid scaling as demand and data collection grow.
The confirmation of Robotaxi being Unsupervised carries immense weight. It establishes that Tesla’s Miami Robotaxi operations run without human safety drivers or remote supervision, relying entirely on the company’s Full Self-Driving technology. Miami becomes the second major U.S. city after Austin to offer unsupervised Robotaxi rides from day one.
The move reflects rapid progress in Tesla’s AI efforts. Neural networks trained on vast real-world data now handle complex urban environments, including South Florida’s heavy traffic, pedestrians, and rainy conditions. Industry observers see it as validation of Tesla’s vision-centric, data-driven approach versus traditional rule-based systems; a truly unorthodox approach in this day and age.
Challenges remain, including regulatory oversight, public trust, and scaling the fleet to match geofence ambitions. Miami’s small initial footprint and limited vehicles highlight a deliberate, measured expansion strategy focused on safety and data gathering.
Nevertheless, the unsupervised confirmation marks a pivotal milestone. It showcases technical readiness and advances Tesla’s vision of transforming vehicles into autonomous revenue generators while reshaping urban mobility. For Miami users, driverless transportation has moved from concept to reality.
A California radiologist who drove his Tesla Model Y off a 250-foot cliff in an attempt to kill his family has had his charges dismissed after doctors say he is “doing well” in a mental health program.
Dharmesh Patel was charged with three counts of attempted murder in connection with a January 2023 crash where he drove his Tesla off a cliff, injuring his wife and two children, aged 7 and 4 at the time.
Patel drove the Tesla off Devil’s Slide in California, an area that is extremely rough to the point that investigators and rescuers expected the worst when arriving at the scene for the first time. Patel supposedly had schizoaffective disorder, according to Deputy District Attorney Dominique Davis.
Shockingly, Patel’s wife, who was in the vehicle, testified that she did not want her husband to be prosecuted, noting that their children missed their father and they wanted him to come back home. Patel’s attorney argued, “not everyone who commits a crime is a criminal.”
Doctor who took Tesla off cliff gets support from unlikely person
A three-day trial in Mental Health Diversion Court ruled in Patel’s favor, which kept him out of jail and instead on house arrest. He was admitted to a Mental Health Diversion Program, which he successfully completed, the Associated Press reported. San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said the judge was “required by law” to dismiss the charges:
“If the person who’s given mental health diversion follows the treatment plan, there’s nothing that can be done, and at the end of the two years he gets it wiped out of his record.”
Wagstaffe said he has argued, along with other DAs in California, to have attempted murder removed from the list of charges eligible to be dismissed due to mental health diversion programs.
Patel had the charges officially dismissed on Monday; his wife waited for him as he left court and they departed the building together, according to Mercury News. Patel surrendered his California medical license in December.
The crash has been one of the best examples of Tesla’s incredible engineering, which has saved four lives in this particular instance. The car was totalled but kept the four human beings alive and safe, which is something that many referred to as “an absolute miracle.”
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
Tesla confirms crucial detail of Miami Robotaxi launch
