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NASA’s Artemis Moon mission hits important milestone with successful full-scale booster test
NASA’s upcoming Artemis mission to the Moon hit an important milestone today by successfully ground testing a full-scale version of its newest rocket booster.
Building on the completion of other similar tests of the booster – named Flight Support Booster 1 (FSB-1) – which qualified it for flight as part of the agency’s upcoming Space Launch System (SLS), this most recent test used new propellant materials and verified that the ballistic requirements of its five motors were met. In a follow up teleconference, NASA and its partners confirmed the test accomplished its goals.
https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1301260812342890496
“NASA and Northrop Grumman have completed testing for the boosters used for the first three Artemis missions of the agency’s lunar program,” the digital press kit detailed. “FSB-1 builds upon prior tests of the rocket’s five-segment solid rocket booster to evaluate improvements and new materials in the boosters for missions beyond Artemis III.”
FSB-1 and its variants are primarily built by NASA partner Northrop Grumman whose facility in Promontory, Utah is where today’s test took place. The recent test firing burned for about two minutes and produced 3.6 million pounds of thrust. Its success is a nod to NASA’s claim that these are the largest, most powerful rocket boosters ever built for flight. Measuring 167 feet long and 12 feet in diameter, FSB-1-type boosters will fly in pairs along with the main SLS rocket body and cargo.
NASA’s Artemis mission is dubbed as the “twin sister of Apollo” and is aiming to return humans to the Moon by 2024. The agency has set out to develop a whole suite of technologies to support both a sustainable lunar-oriented mission and a subsequent Mars mission, engaging the commercial space community along the way. While the launch components of Artemis involve the traditional NASA path of using long-time contractors, other parts of the mission have been opened to other bidders whose contract winners have included SpaceX.
As an add-on to its success in launching the first astronauts to the ISS from American soil since the Space Shuttle’s retirement in 2011, SpaceX has also made headway in NASA’s competitive Moon race. The private space company has already procured four contracts to develop and lunar launch and landing capabilities for the agency, one as recently as the end of August. SpaceX also has multiple Moon-oriented launch contracts independent of NASA.
NASA’s SLS rocket seen in its Block 1 configuration with on Orion capsule on top. (NASA)
One of the SLS’s primary competitors will be SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets. The company has already begun testing prototypes of its rocket-lander combination along with setting world records with its new Raptor engine. While SpaceX’s primary mission is to ferry humans to Mars for lifelong stays, the Moon is already providing paying customers for the venture.
Last year, CEO Elon Musk announced a private charter agreement between eccentric Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and the rocket maker for a lunar trip in 2023. SpaceX’s earliest NASA-backed trip to the Moon is set for 2022 while the agency’s own Artemis mission has 2024 on its calendar for launch.
You can watch NASA’s full Artemis mission booster test below:
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Tesla will resolve its massive recall of nearly three million vehicles in China with stickers and a software update.
On Friday, Chinese regulators filed recall plans against Tesla, Xiaomi, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Chery, Geely, Dongfeng, Arcfox, and FAW to resolve what is essentially a carbon-copy issue throughout each of the companies’ vehicle models: emergency door release latches are simply not visible enough.
Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming
The companies will be required to add things that will make these latches, which will open the door in the event of an emergency, more visible. Of the 7 million vehicles impacted, Tesla accounts for 2,975,910 units. More than 1.9 million of those are Model Y vehicles, with the rest, just over 970,000, being Model 3s.
To resolve the issue, Tesla is going to add warning labels to the emergency latches free of charge, and then utilize an Over-the-Air update to add a post-crash window-lowering strategy, according to CNEVpost.
This massive effort to fix the all-electric Model Y and Model 3’s emergency latch system comes just months after several probes across various markets identified the trouble some had identifying this latch. Those who had gotten involved in car accidents that stripped the vehicle of its power were not aware that every Tesla has emergency door latches.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said that severe crashes that disable a vehicle’s low-voltage system could not only hinder occupants from getting out, but also make it more difficult for emergency response workers to gain entry.
SAMR is starting to tighten the regulations it has on door handles on vehicles. A new mandatory national standard will take effect for all models starting January 1, 2027, and will require all doors to be equipped with mechanical release mechanisms. This will effectively end purely electronic door handles. Models already on sale with type approval have been granted a two-year transition period, which will enable things to change until January 2029.
Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
