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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe takes first picture inside the Sun’s atmosphere
Traveling at the record-breaking speed of 213,200 miles per hour, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe came within 15 million miles of the Sun’s surface, completing its first solar encounter phase and rewarding scientists with the first picture ever taken from within our star’s atmosphere.
Launched on August 12, 2018 in a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the probe will help provide answers to some of the mysteries of our Sun. In particular: Why is the atmosphere hotter than the surface? Why is the solar wind continuously accelerated? These are important questions considering the Sun is both essential for life and a potential danger through its magnetized materials’ interference with our satellites, electronics, and astronauts in orbit. Scientists on the craft’s team presented the initial set of new data from its encounter on December 12th during the 2018 American Geophysical Union meeting.
The Parker Probe’s team began downloading data from its journey on December 7th this year, but the actual Sun passage took place about a month earlier, from October 31st through November 11th. The delay was caused by the nature of the Sun itself – as a wide band radio source, communications are not possible anytime a craft is in front, behind, or to the side of it.
During the probe’s approaches, scientists rely on one of four beacons installed that signal the craft’s status. Mission controllers at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Labs (JHUAPL) received the “A” beacon at 4:46 pm EST on November 7, 2018, indicating that the probe was operating well and collecting data. Also, more data from the probe’s initial encounter will be forthcoming next year following its next approach.
This latest visitor to the Sun was named after physicist Eugene Newman Parker, best known for his mid-1950s theories about solar wind and the Sun’s atmosphere being hotter than the surface itself, and the craft will likely be one more data point complimenting his predictions. Since the Parker Probe’s mission will encounter our star in ways never done before, its science team is not quite sure of what to expect.
“Parker is an exploration mission — the potential for new discoveries is huge,” Nour Raouafi, a Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the JHUAPL in Laurel, Maryland, was quoted on the issue. The craft will also pass by Venus a total of seven times and will come within 3.8 million miles of the Sun at its closest of 24 planned approaches.
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- The Parker Solar Probe prior and during launch on August 12, 2018 in a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. | Credit: Tom Cross/Teslarati
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- The Parker Solar Probe prior and during launch on August 12, 2018 in a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. | Credit: Tom Cross/Teslarati
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- The Parker Solar Probe prior and during launch on August 12, 2018 in a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. | Credit: Tom Cross/Teslarati
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- The Parker Solar Probe prior and during launch on August 12, 2018 in a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. | Credit: Tom Cross/Teslarati
The Parker Solar Probe prior and during launch on August 12, 2018 in a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. | Credit: Tom Cross/Teslarati
Figuring out what the actual underlying physics of the Sun are is a challenge for scientists studying its activity. When observing the surface changes, the variations seen are difficult to classify as being caused by either the star’s activity or its rotation due to how fast it moves. The speed of the Parker Probe will allow it to nearly match the Sun’s rotational speed, one revolution per 27 days as viewed from Earth, meaning it will hover over one area for a short amount of time.
While there, it will be able to specifically collect data about activity caused by the Sun itself, thereby enabling scientists to revise their models accordingly. To collect data surrounding these questions, the probe was given a thermal heat shield that can withstand the 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures it will be exposed to while maintaining a mid-80s F temperature for its instruments.
In addition to the Parker Probe’s historic photo and data, NASA has been on a roll with milestones and discoveries this year. Launched in 1977, the Voyager 2 spacecraft became the second human-made object to enter interstellar space as it left our solar system on November 5th. The first was Voyager 1 when it left on August 25, 2012. NASA also landed its InSight craft on the surface of Mars on November 26, 2018, and several photos have been returned from it since, including a lander “selfie“. That mission had a second milestone with it via two CubeSats named Mars Cube One (MarCO), successfully demonstrating the use of tiny satellites in deep space. The satellites were able to relay InSight’s landing event data to its team much quicker than would be been possible with other orbiting satellites, and they even sent back a picture of the red planet as they passed by and continued into their long orbit around the Sun.
Watch the below video for more on the Parker Solar Probe’s mission:
Elon Musk
OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership
OpenAI will cut SpaceX-owned Cursor’s model access in November, citing Musk’s history of broken contracts.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced late Friday that it is ending its partnership with Cursor, cutting off the coding tool’s access to its models on November 12. The move comes two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, folding the popular AI coding assistant into Elon Musk’s growing SpaceXAI division.
In a post on its website, OpenAI said the decision came down to trust, not technology. “We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” the company wrote. OpenAI pointed to two specific incidents: X, now part of SpaceX, allegedly breaking the terms of an existing OpenAI contract after Musk bought Twitter.
That lawsuit is the backdrop for all of this. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015, left the board in 2018, and sued Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, arguing they abandoned the company’s nonprofit mission for profit. A federal jury sided with OpenAI in May, finding Musk waited too long to sue rather than ruling on the merits of his claims. Musk said at the time he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit, calling the outcome a “calendar technicality” rather than a real judgment.
SpaceX’s interest in Cursor predates that verdict by weeks. The company first struck a deal with Cursor in April, securing an option to acquire it for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for joint development work instead. As Teslarati reported at the time, the logic was straightforward: Cursor was paying retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its most direct competitors, every time a developer used its product, while SpaceX had idle capacity on its Colossus supercomputer, roughly the equivalent of a million Nvidia H100 GPUs, that Cursor could use to train its own models instead. SpaceX exercised the option in June, days after its own IPO, and the deal closed in mid-August.
Once it closed, Musk moved fast. On an all-hands call with more than 1,000 Cursor employees, he reportedly told staff that SpaceXAI’s Grok was playing catchup in the AI race, unlike Tesla and SpaceX in their own markets, and singled out Anthropic as the company to catch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell now reports directly to Musk inside SpaceXAI.
Losing OpenAI’s models leaves Cursor leaning harder on Anthropic’s Claude, which has its own compute agreement with SpaceX, and on Cursor’s in-house Composer model, the one SpaceX’s compute was supposed to accelerate in the first place. OpenAI framed the November deadline as maximum notice under its contract, and said it wants to “go above and beyond” to help developers through the transition. Whether Anthropic makes the same call is now the open question in AI coding.
The in-car Tesla Theater is among the most unique features available within the cars. When charging, parked, camping, or just hanging out, vehicle occupants can access a variety of streaming platforms on the large center screen, helping keep them entertained during downtime.
However, the Theater might be getting plenty more streaming platforms, something that owners have requested for some time.
Tesla owners recently discovered that visiting Apple TV in the vehicle browser can launch a fullscreen interface that looks and behaves like a dedicated application rather than an ordinary webpage:
Today I learned that if you go to Apple TV in the Tesla browser, it will open up an actual Apple TV app, fully functional. Not just the site.
Apparently there are more apps than just the few that show on the apps page. pic.twitter.com/os1Ypfm4JR
— Jason W (@jmwilt21) August 20, 2026
The experience drops the usual address bar and browser chrome, presenting catalogs, continue watching rows, and playback controls in the same window Tesla Theater already uses for its listed services. Independent testers soon found similar treatment for HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, Disney+, and Prime Video when those sites are opened from the car browser.
This shift is a plausible early signal that Tesla is widening Theater support without a formal software note. Theater has long been a set of web views rather than native applications, so recognizing extra domains and stripping the browser frame is a small server-side change that can expand the catalog quickly.
Owners still lack permanent Theater icons for the newly recognized services, and video remains limited to Park, yet the smoother launch is a meaningful step toward a broader lounge while charging.
Tesla Theater arrived with software version 10 in September 2019. The first video services were Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu, available only while parked and originally tied to WiFi. Spotify arrived in the same era as music rather than Theater video. Disney+ joined officially in July 2021 with the 2021.24 update, giving owners another major catalog on the center screen. Twitch and TikTok later appeared among the default Theater tiles, and Tesla Tutorials remained a persistent educational tile.
Not every addition stayed put. In December 2023, a Holiday software build removed the Disney+ tile for many United States owners after a public dispute involving advertising on X. Hulu stayed visible even though Disney owned it. Visiting disneyplus.com in the browser often restored the tile, which suggested the removal was a recognition list change rather than a complete block. Owners have also reported occasional blank Theater grids after updates, usually fixed by language toggles, resets, or later firmware.
Tesla axes Disney+ from vehicles with Musk-Iger rivalry, but there’s a workaround
Code archives from 2024 listed many unused source names, including Apple TV and Prime Video, that never became official icons, which now looks like groundwork for the current fullscreen browser behavior.
Now that this hint toward an expanded Theater experience has been recognized, Tesla could follow through with these additional shortcuts as a sign that more streaming platforms are available in Teslas than ever before.
Tesla recently received its largest order for the all-electric Semi from Einride, a Swedish transport service, for 500 units, a groundbreaking invoice to receive before the first deliveries begin.
Even more remarkable, Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli said in a recent interview that he expects his company to take delivery of all 500 — the entire order — before the end of 2027. He even expects to have 75 Tesla Semi units in the Einride fleet before the end of this year.
🚨 Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli on the Tesla Semi partnership:
“If we start with the Amazon announcement that we did earlier this year, that was on the back of having gone through a proving period together with them and proving out our technology. Then we took that next step in… pic.twitter.com/oazkXjwoig
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 28, 2026
Charli said the Tesla partnership was part of a broader push, along with its earlier partnership with Amazon. Einride is assisting Amazon with the use of its Saga AI platform, which helps eliminate questions about budgeting and forecasting for logistics companies.
The Semi, as well as Tesla’s production and subsequent delivery of the units to Einride, will help the company “to have a good supply of vehicles that we can deploy on the [Saga AI] platform,” Charli said. “Tesla is also a relationship we’ve had for a while, and as the Tesla Semi deliveries are firming up, we decided to do a larger commitment to that and deploy that on our platform.”
In its initial announcement, Einride said it anticipated taking delivery of the trucks over the next two years, but now it appears the company is expecting all 500 units within the next 16 months.
Built at a dedicated factory in Sparks, Nevada, the Tesla Semi has been perhaps the biggest and most intensive testing process the company has ever had for a single vehicle model. For the past several years, Tesla has been working with many companies, most notably Frito-Lay and PepsiCo, to gain knowledge on the performance on regional routes.
Tesla plans to launch the Semi officially on September 24, five months after production started ramping.
Additionally, drivers have said they are happy about the Semi’s performance and that its numerous safety and productivity features have made their jobs and routes much easier.
OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership
Tesla Theater might be getting plenty more streaming platforms
