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SpaceX crewed launch imminent as NASA astronauts arrive at Kennedy Space Center
There are just seven days until human spaceflight returns to U.S. soil. In advance of the historic launch, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley boarded an agency plane bound for Kennedy Space Center today (May 20). The duo arrived at the Shuttle Landing Facility at approximately 4 p.m. EDT.
The duo will spend the next several days preparing for their mission to the International Space Station, which will last between 1-4 months.
Astronauts for the #DM2 launch, @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug have arrived at the Shuttle Landing Facility to begin final preparations leading up to their launch on the #SpaceX #Falcon9! pic.twitter.com/9rzb2wyDDe
— Richard Angle (@RDAnglePhoto) May 20, 2020
Behnken and Hurley have been under a mission-related quarantine that all astronauts participate in prior to launch. In order to spend some time with the pair prior to liftoff, Behnken and Hurley’s families have also been under strict quarantine and will arrive at the launch site a few days before take-off. It also prevents the crew from bringing any transmittable diseases to the other astronauts currently living and working on the space station.
Behnken and Hurley answered a few questions upon their arrival, explaining that they were excited and very humbled to be a part of the commercial crew program. Hurley and Behnken are both veterans of the space shuttle program, with Hurley having flown on the final flight of the space shuttle Atlantis in 2011.
“I didn’t expect to fly again after STS-135,” Hurley told members of the media.
“Thanks to the SpaceX teams from across the country who have worked hard to make this happen,” he added.
Behnken chimed in: “If you gave us one thing to put on our list of dream jobs, it would have been to be onboard a new spacecraft.”
The duo explained that there would be one final dress rehearsal where the crew will practice entering the Crew Dragon spacecraft as well as try on their spacesuits one last time.
The flight is scheduled to take off on May 27, at 4:33 pm EDT (2033 UTC). Everything is on track so far, but there is still a lot of work left to do before liftoff can occur.
On Thursday, May 21, NASA and SpaceX will conduct a flight readiness review system to evaluate the Crew Dragon and deem it ready for flight. If the vehicle passes that, then on Friday, a static fire test will occur, followed by a crew dress rehearsal. On Monday, NASA will hold its final launch readiness review. If all goes as planned, Bob and Doug will board their spacecraft approximately three hours before launch.
They will spend 19 hours on orbit, testing out various systems on the Crew Dragon spacecraft. At that point, autopilot will take over, and the spacecraft will dock with the space station.
This week the head of NASA’s human exploration program abruptly resigned after being on the job for six months. He was supposed to lead the agency’s flight readiness review, but that will now be handled by the agency’s associate administrator Steve Jurczyk.
Former astronaut and current deputy associate administrator of human exploration Kenneth Bowersox will take over for the departed Doug Loverro. According to NASA, Loverro’s departure will not have an effect on the upcoming crew launch.
Tesla has officially launched public Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a Safety Monitor in the vehicle, marking the first time the company has removed anyone from the vehicle other than the rider.
The Safety Monitor has been present in Tesla Robotaxis in Austin since its launch last June, maintaining safety for passengers and other vehicles, and was placed in the passenger’s seat.
Tesla planned to remove the Safety Monitor at the end of 2025, but it was not quite ready to do so. Now, in January, riders are officially reporting that they are able to hail a ride from a Model Y Robotaxi without anyone in the vehicle:
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla started testing this internally late last year and had several employees show that they were riding in the vehicle without anyone else there to intervene in case of an emergency.
Tesla has now expanded that program to the public. It is not active in the entire fleet, but there are a “few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors,” Ashok Elluswamy said:
Robotaxi rides without any safety monitors are now publicly available in Austin.
Starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time. https://t.co/ShMpZjefwB
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) January 22, 2026
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
The Robotaxi program also operates in the California Bay Area, where the fleet is much larger, but Safety Monitors are placed in the driver’s seat and utilize Full Self-Driving, so it is essentially the same as an Uber driver using a Tesla with FSD.
In Austin, the removal of Safety Monitors marks a substantial achievement for Tesla moving forward. Now that it has enough confidence to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis altogether, there are nearly unlimited options for the company in terms of expansion.
While it is hoping to launch the ride-hailing service in more cities across the U.S. this year, this is a much larger development than expansion, at least for now, as it is the first time it is performing driverless rides in Robotaxi anywhere in the world for the public to enjoy.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk shared an incredible detail about Tesla Cybercab’s potential efficiency, as the company has hinted in the past that it could be one of the most affordable vehicles to operate from a per-mile basis.
ARK Invest released a report recently that shed some light on the potential incremental cost per mile of various Robotaxis that will be available on the market in the coming years.
The Cybercab, which is detailed for the year 2030, has an exceptionally low cost of operation, which is something Tesla revealed when it unveiled the vehicle a year and a half ago at the “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles.
Musk said on numerous occasions that Tesla plans to hit the $0.20 cents per mile mark with the Cybercab, describing a “clear path” to achieving that figure and emphasizing it is the “full considered” cost, which would include energy, maintenance, cleaning, depreciation, and insurance.
Probably true
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026
ARK’s report showed that the Cybercab would be roughly half the cost of the Waymo 6th Gen Robotaxi in 2030, as that would come in at around $0.40 per mile all in. Cybercab, at scale, would be at $0.20.
Credit: ARK Invest
This would be a dramatic decrease in the cost of operation for Tesla, and the savings would then be passed on to customers who choose to utilize the ride-sharing service for their own transportation needs.
The U.S. average cost of new vehicle ownership is about $0.77 per mile, according to AAA. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft rideshares often cost between $1 and $4 per mile, while Waymo can cost between $0.60 and $1 or more per mile, according to some estimates.
Tesla’s engineering has been the true driver of these cost efficiencies, and its focus on creating a vehicle that is as cost-effective to operate as possible is truly going to pay off as the vehicle begins to scale. Tesla wants to get the Cybercab to about 5.5-6 miles per kWh, which has been discussed with prototypes.
Additionally, fewer parts due to the umboxed manufacturing process, a lower initial cost, and eliminating the need to pay humans for their labor would also contribute to a cheaper operational cost overall. While aspirational, all of the ingredients for this to be a real goal are there.
It may take some time as Tesla needs to hammer the manufacturing processes, and Musk has said there will be growing pains early. This week, he said regarding the early production efforts:
“…initial production is always very slow and follows an S-curve. The speed of production ramp is inversely proportionate to how many new parts and steps there are. For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow, but eventually end up being insanely fast.”
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla Earnings Call: Top 5 questions investors are asking
