News
NASA officially says goodbye to Mars Opportunity rover lost in massive dust storm
After 15 years roving around our neighboring red planet, NASA announced the end of its Opportunity rover mission on Mars today during a live conference held at 2 pm EST. The rover’s team of scientists spent last night sending a set of commands intended to be the last attempt at waking Opportunity, and this afternoon’s announcement confirmed the final fate of the mission. A planet-wide dust storm in summer of 2018 shut the Martian rover down due to its solar panels being blocked from debris, and the long duration spent without power apparently led to a series of failures which prevented a recovery. The last communication NASA received from Opportunity was on June 10, 2018.
#OppyPhoneHome Update
Tonight, we’ll make our last planned attempts to contact Opportunity. The solar-powered rover last communicated on June 10, 2018, as a planet-wide dust storm swept across Mars.
Want to show the team some love? Send a postcard: https://t.co/eO2SClFcYm pic.twitter.com/trDjRNf65E
— NASA Mars (@NASAMars) February 12, 2019
Over the last few months, while scientists continued to revive Opportunity, hopes were fairly high that communication would be reestablished. The rover’s batteries were in good health prior to the dust storm, and the surface temperature was relatively warm when the storm began. Also, its programming was designed with “fault modes” allowing actions to be taken automatically to maintain the rover’s health. The team at NASA had attempted to talk to Opportunity several times per week once the storm began to clear using the Deep Space Network, an international array of giant radio antennas supporting interplanetary spacecraft missions, and over 600 attempts were made without any response received. The announcement was broadcast live via NASA’s website.
Emotions were high during NASA’s mission end announcement. Associate NASA Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen began the event’s commentary: “I stand here, surrounded by the team…it’s an emotional time,” he began. “Science is a team sport, and that’s what we’re celebrating today.” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine noted that while Opportunity stopped communicating around the same time be began his service with the administration, he was still in awe at the achievements the rover and its team were able to achieve throughout their mission. “When this little rover landed, the objective was to have it move 1100 yards and survive for 90 days,” he exclaimed before reiterating the unexpected 15 years the mission eventually lasted. Michael Watkins, Director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory commented on the mission’s broader contribution to society: “Spirit and Opportunity energized the public about the spirit of Mars exploration.”
John Callas, project manager of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project, provided some insight about what could have caused Opportunity to shut down for good. Earlier in Opportunity’s mission days, a heater on its robotic arm failed to turn off, draining the rover’s energy in the process. To overcome this issue, the team at NASA designed a deep sleep mode which shut down nearly everything on Opportunity, including the heater. Callas surmised that the dust storm which ended the rover’s mission may have disrupted its sleep cycle, reinstating the power draining issue and preventing recovery. He also described the quality of Opportunity’s batteries and the seasonal reliability of the Martian winds to clean its solar panels as part of the reasons it lasted as long as it did. Finally, Callas had his own farewell comments to add. “Even though it’s a machine, saying goodbye, it’s very hard and very poignant,” he remarked.
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- NASAs Mars Curiosity Rover takes a selfie in the middle of a massive storm. [Credit: Seán Doran/Flickr]
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- InSight, a NASA mission to put another spacecraft on Mars, is the first mission dedicated to investigating the deep interior of Mars. The findings will advance understanding of how all rocky planets, including Earth, formed and evolved. Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Opportunity rover (nicknamed “Oppy”) launched on July 7, 2003, aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its primary mission was to search for and characterize rocks and soil while looking for indications of water activity in the Martian past. One of the better-known discoveries made by the rover was the discovery of hematite on the surface, a mineral which typically forms in water. Also found were strips of gypsum in rocks around a crater, indicating that water most likely flowed through the area at one point. The storm which finally ended the rover’s mission was intense and massive, its size is roughly the area of North America and Russia combined with Opportunity in the center.
A month prior to Opportunity’s launch, its twin rover Spirit headed for Mars with a similar mission. Both rovers lasted years longer than their 90-day expected life span, but unfortunately, Spirit’s mission ended before Opportunity’s when it became lodged in soft soil at a site called “Troy”. NASA ended its rescue effort of Spirit in May 2011. Another NASA rover named Curiosity is still crawling the planet, however. Its plutonium-nuclear power source helped it avoid the same fate that came over its predecessor, even sending back a storm-riding selfie during the event that claimed Opportunity.
NASA’s most recent mission to Mars was its InSight lander, a geological science mission sent to study the core of the planet and atmosphere. After arriving at the red planet in late November 2018 with twin CubeSat mission MarCo, it successfully landed without incident and sent a dusty photo back for Earthling enjoyment and arrival confirmation. In the months since it’s treated NASA and the public alike with selfies and the sound of Martian wind. Its instruments have recently been placed on the surface, so new planet data is expected soon.
Up next for the fourth rock from the Sun will be Mars 2020, an advanced rover dedicated to high-priority science missions including the search for habitable conditions and microbes in the ancient past. NASA plans to launch this rover in July 2020.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.
SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.
There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.
We’ve unified plans across Grok, Cursor, and X Premium.
Introducing The X Subscription. https://t.co/SvkrVvBa0p
— SpaceX Super Intelligence (@SpaceXSI) October 12, 2026
The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.
That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.
The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.
The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.
Energy
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.
A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.
The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.
Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.
Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.
Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.
The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.
Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
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