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Musk sets a date for Starship trip to Mars with Optimus on board
Optimus could be the first humanoid to make it to Mars, and Musk has set a date for when he thinks it’ll happen.
Elon Musk has shared when he expects to take Starship to Mars for its first uncrewed mission, and he also says Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot will be on board for the flight.
On Friday, Musk wrote on X that SpaceX’s reusable Starship rocket will take Optimus to Mars at the end of 2026, with human landings expected to commence a few years later.
“Starship departs for Mars at the end of next year, carrying Optimus,” Musk said. “If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely.”
Hold on
— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) March 15, 2025
Last year, the SpaceX and Tesla head also said he expected that SpaceX would be able to begin uncrewed launches in 2016, with early launches including both Optimus and a Cybertruck unit.
Musk also followed up the announcement with a post on X on Saturday morning, noting that he expects SpaceX to launch more than 90 percent of Earth’s payload mass to orbit this year. Meanwhile, he says China will make up just around 5 percent, while the rest of the world, including other parts of America, would also make up just 5 percent.
He also predicted that the number would go up even further to nearly 100 percent, once SpaceX’s reusable rocket is being launched more frequently.
“When Starship is launching at high rate, SpaceX will probably carry >99 percent of Earth’s payload mass to orbit. This is necessary to make Mars a self-sustaining civilization,” Musk added.
READ MORE ABOUT SPACEX’S STARSHIP: Texas awards SpaceX $17.3M grant to expand Bastrop tech hub
To be sure, Musk has been known to make ambitious claims about when his companies’ products would achieve certain milestones. For example, Musk predicted in 2018 that SpaceX could launch a rocket to Mars with humans aboard by 2024, though SpaceX only began testing the company’s reusable Starship in 2023.
Still, the company has been routinely testing Starship since then, and with increasing frequency, and in October, SpaceX performed the first catch of the Starship’s Super Heavy booster after liftoff to demonstrate the concept that a reusable rocket could be possible. In a launch earlier this month, SpaceX again successfully caught the Super Heavy Booster, though it lost the upper stage to a “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” effectively meaning that it had exploded in air and showered surrounding areas with rocket parts.
The explosion was the second consecutive launch in which debris from Starship reigned down, highlighting the continued importance of testing as SpaceX aims to make the rocket a viable product for reusable space travel.
On Friday, SpaceX also launched its Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) to rescue astronauts that have been stuck on the orbital craft, after a Boeing Starliner craft was originally intended to bring them back to Earth. While SpaceX attempted to rescue the two astronauts in September, issues with the Crew Dragon craft’s thrusters discovered upon arrival made NASA hold off on approving the return mission.
Update 3/16/25: Edited final paragraph after incorrectly saying that Starliner had been a SpaceX craft, rather than one owned by Boeing.
Tesla is going to let you guide Full Self-Driving with Grok in 3 months, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
The response from Musk, which revealed Tesla plans to allow drivers to effectively control the car and its navigation more explicitly using Grok, puts the feature for about September.
A Tesla owner said that Full Self-Driving is great, but owners should be able to “converse with Grok like we can with an Uber driver.” She then used examples like, “Grok, turn right here,” and “Drop us off right here, we’ll walk due to traffic,” and finally,” Drop at entrance first, then park far away.”
Coincidentally, the final piece of dialogue would also mean features like Banish are potentially on the way soon.
This functionality will be there in about 3 months or so
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2026
Banish is also referred to as “Reverse Summon,” and would enable the car to self-park while dropping occupants off at their destination.
This would be a great way to improve the overall experience while supervising FSD. Navigation is already a major painpoint that many owners complain about. Manual overrides when a maneuver is requested or canceled (like using the turn signal stalk to override a navigation route), do not always work.
The feature could be especially useful in street parking scenarios in a city, where spots are sometimes tough to come by. Many of us who grab dinner in a more populated area will park a street or two over from wherever we’re going, because sometimes you know that’s the best you will get. If a driver using FSD could say, “Hey Grok, turn right here on Queen St. and park in that open spot on the right,” it could save a lot of confusion FSD might have on its own.
Musk teased that a similar feature was “coming” back in February:
Tesla Full Self-Driving set to get an awesome new feature, Elon Musk says
It is certainly surprising that Tesla is doing it at this point. The company’s more recent moves have been more evident of taking control and inputs away from humans and putting them in the AI’s hands more frequently. The biggest example of this was taking away Max Speed in AI4 cars, giving us Speed Profiles, and not having any input on the fastest speed the car will travel.
Of course, giving navigation preferences to Grok is availble already in Teslas, but not at the drop of a hat. Instead, you can suggest a certain route at the beginning of your drive.
Here’s an example of that from December:
🚨🏈 I am taking my parents and Fiancee to the @Ravens game next weekend and asked @Grok to help me route my @Tesla through a specific neighborhood to reach the correct Lot we will park in.
This is a great example of the new @grok nav integration with the Tesla Holiday Update: pic.twitter.com/rPp4I7q8Yv
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) December 13, 2025
Finally, the original post that Musk responded to mentioned a parking preference after dropping off the occupants, which describes the Banish feature that Tesla has teased for years.
We’re not sure if Musk was responding more to the ability to guide the car with Grok, or whether he also was including Banish in the three-month prediction timeframe.
A close-up image of a Cybercab engineering vehicle in Peabody, Massachusetts, reveals a compact triangular side repeater camera housing equipped with an integrated washer mechanism.
This seemingly small hardware addition could prove to be one of the most critical components for achieving reliable, unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) — not just for the dedicated Robotaxi but potentially for existing AI4-equipped vehicles as well.
The washer system’s importance cannot be overstated in Tesla’s vision-only autonomy approach. Cameras are the sole sensory input for the neural networks powering FSD, constantly interpreting the environment for safe navigation. In real-world conditions, however, lenses quickly accumulate rain, snow, mud, dust, or road spray.
Many of us Tesla owners, especially those who deal with any sort of winter weather at all, know the all-too-common alert that pops up when cameras are obstructed:
Even brief obstructions can drop perception confidence, trigger safety disengagements, or force the vehicle to pull over, although these are relatively rare. Instead, most of the time, the camera will need a wipe from the owner next time they stop the car.
But unlike human drivers who can manually clear their view, a Robotaxi operating 24/7 without a steering wheel or mirrors must maintain pristine vision autonomously. The Cybercab’s side repeater washer delivers targeted cleaning bursts precisely where needed for merging, lane changes, and blind-spot monitoring — functions that demand uninterrupted visibility from the external cameras:
And this is how the side camera and washer look like on a Cybercab. This is from an Engineering vehicle in Peabody MA. pic.twitter.com/Re8VknpmLM
— Tobias Goebel (Unsupervised) (@tpgoebel) June 17, 2026
This hardware directly tackles a known pain point in current FSD deployments. Owners frequently report camera-related alerts during inclement weather, which is understandable, but needs to be solved for a true autonomous experience.
For a production Robotaxi fleet aiming for high utilization and minimal downtime, robust washer systems represent a foundational reliability upgrade; essentially, they’re a must-have. Early sightings suggest the design may extend to rear cameras as well, creating a comprehensive cleaning architecture that keeps the entire vision suite operational in harsh environments.
Without it, even the most advanced neural nets struggle when their “eyes” are compromised.
What Does This Mean for AI4 Cars?
This Cybercab detail raises timely questions for AI4 cars already on the road. While Hardware 4 delivers superior compute and camera resolution compared to earlier versions, production models typically lack dedicated side and rear washers. Tesla has included them on Model Y robotaxis that it is using in the fleet:
Tesla Robotaxi has a highly-requested hardware feature not available on typical Model Ys
As Tesla refines unsupervised FSD for broader release, the gap in environmental resilience becomes evident. Software improvements can help mitigate issues, but they cannot fully replace physical cleaning in heavy rain or muddy conditions. Analysts and owners increasingly speculate that AI4 vehicles may eventually require similar washer retrofits — or a future AI4.5 variant — to match the Cybercab’s all-weather readiness and support the same level of autonomy.
As testing progresses, the Cybercab’s washer mechanism highlights Tesla’s pragmatic focus on real-world robustness. It may well become the hardware piece that determines how quickly and reliably FSD scales from prototypes to everyday vehicles.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk just upped his Tesla stake further fueling SpaceX merger conversation
Elon Musk just collected a $116 billion Tesla payday and the timing is eye-opening
Elon Musk quietly collected one of the largest single-transaction paydays in corporate history on Monday. A Form 4 filed with the SEC on June 17, 2026 disclosed that Musk exercised 303,960,630 Tesla stock options from his 2018 compensation package, with the transaction dated June 16. No shares were sold on the open market.
The numbers are straightforward but striking. Musk exercised the options at a split-adjusted strike price of $23.34, with Tesla closing at $404.66 that day, putting the spread at $381.32 per share and generating roughly $115.9 billion in paper gains in a single transaction. To cover the exercise cost, Tesla withheld 17,531,857 shares through a net share settlement, meaning Musk paid nothing out of pocket.
For perspective, in 2018, Elon Musk’s award was originally approved by Tesla shareholders on March 21, 2018, and structured entirely around performance milestones that many analysts at the time called unreachable. Every tranche eventually vested. The original grant covered 20,264,042 shares at $350.02, which after Tesla’s 5-for-1 split in 2020 and 3-for-1 split in 2022 adjusted to 303,960,630 shares at $23.34. A Delaware court rescinded the award in January 2024, ruling the board was conflicted. As Teslarati reported, Tesla shareholders voted to ratify the package anyway in June 2024 by a wide margin. The Delaware Supreme Court reversed the decision in December 2025, finding full cancellation too extreme, and Tesla’s board signed an Implementation Agreement on April 21, 2026 to formally deliver the shares.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
The timing and structure of the Form 4 filing carries more weight than a routine stock option exercise typically would. Musk exercised his 2018 Tesla award on June 16, a week into SpaceX completing its IPO and trading publicly, and giving SpaceX a public market valuation and share currency for the first time in the company’s history. A stock-for-stock merger between two companies requires the acquiring entity to have tradeable shares it can offer to the target’s shareholders, and SpaceX now has exactly that. At the same time, Musk just increased his direct Tesla voting power to approximately 20%, giving him greater influence over any shareholder vote that a merger would require. The restricted shares he received cannot be sold until 2033, which removes any near-term incentive to cash out and instead positions this stake as long-term structural collateral in a deal. Additionally, Musk’s two companies are already deeply intertwined through shared semiconductor fabrication at their joint TERAFAB facility in Austin, cross-company supply chain transactions, and Tesla’s $2 billion investment in xAI prior to the SpaceX-xAI merger.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has publicly placed the odds of a Tesla and SpaceX combination at 80% to 90% by early 2027. The Implementation Agreement that made Monday’s exercise possible was signed on April 21, 2026, roughly two months before the SpaceX IPO closed. That sequencing, building Musk’s Tesla ownership to its highest point ever immediately before SpaceX gains the public currency needed to acquire it, is either an extraordinary coincidence or a carefully staged foundation for the largest corporate merger in history.
Tesla teases greater Grok FSD integration and ‘Banish’ feature ‘in about 3 months’
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
