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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.
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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)
Tesla has revealed plans through permit submissions for a massive Robotaxi charging hub in Austin, Texas.
Tesla plans to build the Supercharger hub in multiple phases, with the second phase potentially introducing wireless induction charging, something the company has been developing for the Robotaxi fleet.
Initially, 48 Tesla Robotaxi-geared Superchargers will be built on a lot just across from the St. Elmo, Texas, Service Center. There are about 80 additional spots that will not be impacted by phase 1 of the construction process.
Filings show that the second phase of the project will turn those 80 additional spots into wireless charging for Robotaxi, but it might be an error. The Key Notes state that item 3 is listed as “V4 Charging Cabinet to Support 80 Wireless Chargers in Phase 2. However, the drawings point to V3 Cabinets that are already tied to Superchargers:
There are roughly 128 total spots in the lot, but it is unclear if they will all be used for charging based on what appears to be some sort of typo in the blueprint.
A new Robotaxi fleet charging hub is coming soon to Austin, Texas!!
Permits have been filed for the installation of 48 (V3) stalls in a vehicle storage lot across the road from Tesla’s St Elmo service center. pic.twitter.com/xwRgSWDqht
— MarcoRP (@MarcoRPi1) August 18, 2026
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This is among the first Robotaxi charging hubs Tesla has started to develop, as it currently has four others planned throughout various areas: one in Phoenix, one in San Antonio, another in Irving, which will serve the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and another in Las Vegas.
These projects are necessary as Tesla expands its Robotaxi program. Now that preparations have started for the public launch of Cybercab, Robotaxi will likely be expanding aggressively, especially over the next two to three years.
Last night, The Information reported that Tesla was planning to launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Hours later, Tesla then announced it was launching a competition for fans to potentially ride in Cybercab during its first public rides.
Tesla’s plan to expand its charging infrastructure in the regions where Robotaxi will initially operate is great preparation for the expanding service. There is still a lot to do, including launching the Cybercab on time.
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Tesla got its largest order for the all-electric Class 8 Semi yet, a 500-unit order from Einride AB, a Swedish trucking company.
Einride made the announcement this morning following its second-quarter earnings call. The company said it plans to use 500 Tesla Semi units on its fleet intelligence platform, called Saga AI. The deployments will serve large companies like Amazon and will extend Einride’s electric freight network across logistics routes in California, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia.
🚨 Tesla has received a MASSIVE order from Swedish freight company Einride AB, which placed an order for 500 Tesla Semi trucks
Tesla’s biggest order for the Semi yet! pic.twitter.com/PrtLp5yzvh
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 18, 2026
The deployment is being carried out in several phases over the next two years as Tesla ramps production of the Semi at its dedicated production facility in Sparks, Nevada. Einride will receive its first Semi units in September.
Saga AI
Saga AI is Einride’s dedicated fleet intelligence platform. It enables scaled adoption of electric trucks for freight use and allows shippers to integrate electric capacity without the operational burden or capital risks of managing a fleet. This helps integrate cost-efficient logistics and makes budgeting and forecasting much more accurate.
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Tesla Semi’s Adoption
The Tesla Semi is now gathering large-scale clients past those who have helped the company operate a Pilot Program to gain initial information and feedback from real-world drivers.
Perhaps the biggest and most notable is that of Frito-Lay and PepsiCo., who have worked with Tesla for the past several years to dial in the finer details of the truck, including its efficiency and operation-related components.
Tesla Semi gets strange-but-understandable comparison from Jay Leno
There has been tremendous progress in that time, and it even catalyzed Tesla to make some design changes, which were unveiled earlier this year.
But Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli says his company’s partnership with Tesla will continue to push those things forward:
“This deployment is yet another proof point that we can execute at the scale our customers demand. Working closely with Tesla to bring next-generation Semis into active operations quickly and at scale is a testament to the strength of that partnership, and how quickly this technology is maturing from promise to daily operations.”
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Additionally, Dan Priestley, the Director of the Semi Program at Tesla, said the partnership is ideal due to Einride’s focus on sustainable transport:
“Einride is at the forefront of sustainable freight, and we are thrilled to deepen our relationship with them through this order of 500 Semis. EV heavy trucks provide lower costs per mile from fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and better uptime over diesel trucks. These savings increase further through operational efficiency when deploying EV trucks at scale, and we are excited that Einride recognizes this and look forward to supporting their deployments.”
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
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Tesla reveals plans for Robotaxi charging hub in Austin
Tesla Semi gets its largest order yet
