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Antares rocket launches Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station
Northrup Grumman has launched a fresh batch of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station with its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft.
On Saturday, February 19th, an uncrewed Northrup Grumman Cygnus spacecraft lifted off on an Antares rocket from Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in northeast Virginia. As part of Northrup Grumman’s 17th Cargo Resupply Services (CRS) mission to the International Space Station since 2013, the rocket successfully carried the Cygnus spacecraft and more than 3.7 tons (~8300 lb) of cargo into orbit.
At 4:44 AM EST Monday, February 21st, Cygnus finished its autonomous rendezvous with the ISS and the station’s robotic Canadarm2 arm – operated by NASA astronaut Raja Chari – grabbed the hovering spacecraft and ultimately installed it on a berthing port later that morning. Prior to its arrival, NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Kayla Barron trained on the US Destiny laboratory module’s robotics workstation to prepare for the capture operation.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
On February 22nd, ISS astronauts began the process of unpacking Cygnus, which brought with it an array of supplies, snacks, scientific investigations, and critical materials needed to support over 250 experiments aboard the ISS. That list of experiments includes medical research, technology development, space safety work, and plant life investigations. In one investigation, cancer cells from breast and prostate cancer will be treated with MicroQuin, a novel cancer treatment drug. This investigation will allow tumors to be treated in a microgravity environment, allowing researchers an opportunity to better understand and characterize their structure, gene expression, cell signaling, and response to the treatment.
The NG-17 mission also carried a modification kit that will pave the way for the installation of the new set of upgraded solar arrays. The second batch will be launched no earlier than (NET) May 2022 on SpaceX’s CRS-25 Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft. Additionally, NASA says that Cygnus NG-17 “[included] other components [needed] for the successful functioning of astronaut life on the space station, such as a trash deployer and acoustic covers for the waste management system.” (NASA)
In general, NG-17 was loaded with:
• 2,980 pounds (1,352 kilograms) of crew supplies
• 2,883 pounds (1,308 kilograms) of [station] hardware
• 1,975 pounds (896 kilograms) of science investigations
• 200 pounds (100 kilograms) of unpressurized cargo
• 132 pounds (60 kilograms) of spacewalk equipment
• 77 pounds (35 kilograms) of computer resources
While attached to the ISS, Cygnus will also be responsible for raising the altitude of the space station for the first time in its history. This will be the first time since the Space Shuttle’s retirement in 2011 that an American spacecraft helps maintain the space station’s orbit – a task Russia has exclusively handled for more than a decade. “This Cygnus vehicle has been modified to [use some of its own propellant] to reboot ISS. We’ve done a test prior to this with Cygnus, but this will be our first real use of this capability to actually re-boost the station. And it gives us another way to do so, in addition to the Russian Zvezda thrusters or the Russian Progress cargo spacecraft capabilities,” stated Dina Contella, NASA’s ISS operations integration manager.
Cygnus will remain attached to the International Space Station for the next three months and is set to depart in May. Once detached from the ISS, the spacecraft – operating a bit like a space tug or orbital transfer vehicle – will deploy a number of cubesats. Finally, the fully expendable spacecraft will dispose several thousand pounds of trash when it reenters and burns up in Earth’s atmosphere later this year.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a photo of himself standing with the Optimus production team inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, arms crossed amid workers in hard hats and safety vests. The image captures a pivotal industrial shift: the same facility space once dedicated to building Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV is now home to the company’s humanoid robot manufacturing line.
Walking the Optimus production line in Fremont pic.twitter.com/ABS0tuRibW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2026
Tesla’s Fremont Factory, acquired in 2010 from the former NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM, has been the company’s original U.S. manufacturing hub since Model S production began in 2012.
The Model X followed soon thereafter. These premium vehicles offered lower annual volumes, recently around 30,000 combined, compared to the high-volume Model 3 and Model Y lines that continue around the site. Over their combined run, the S and X accounted for roughly 610,000 units.
In late January 2026, during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk announced the end of Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026. The final vehicles rolled off the line in early May. Rather than retooling for another vehicle, Tesla chose to convert the dedicated S/X assembly area into a dedicated Optimus Gen 3 production line.
Model 3 and Y manufacturing remains unaffected. Tesla’s official Fremont Factory page now lists Optimus alongside the 3 and Y as core products.
The conversion was executed with remarkable speed. After production stopped, crews dismantled the existing vehicle line and installed entirely new modular equipment—including lines sourced from Germany and dozens of sub-lines for actuators, batteries, and other components—in roughly four months.
Musk described the timeline as “insanely fast,” noting it would be unprecedented for any other manufacturer. Initial Optimus output is expected to ramp slowly due to the robot’s roughly 10,000 unique parts and the brand-new production processes involved. The Fremont line targets an eventual capacity of 1 million Optimus units per year.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Optimus Development Timeline
- August 19, 2021: Optimus (then called Tesla Bot) formally announced at Tesla’s first AI Day. A concept video showed a person in a suit demonstrating the vision for a general-purpose humanoid capable of dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks using the same AI architecture as Full Self-Driving.
- 2022: Early prototypes displayed. At the second AI Day in September, semi-functional units demonstrated walking across a stage and basic arm movements
- 2023: September videos showed improved capabilities, including sorting colored blocks, precise limb awareness, and holding a Yoda pose.
- 2024-early 2025: Factory integration videos showed Optimus navigating workspaces and handling objects like battery cells.
- January 2026: Gen 3 mass-production activities began at Fremont, with reports of over 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating inside the factory for real-world learning and AI training
- April 2026: Musk confirms Optimus production on converted Fremont line would begin in late July or August 2026. The Gen 3 reveal, originally eyed for Q1, was pushed closer to production start. A second, much larger Optimus factory at Giga Texas is under construction, with volume production targeted for Summer 2027 and long-term capacity of 10 million units annually
- July 1, 2026: Musk’s on-site visit and team photo confirm the Optimus line is operational and the transition is actively progressing
Tesla positions Optimus as potentially its largest project ever, leveraging vertical integration, AI expertise, and car-like manufacturing know-how to scale humanoid robots first for its own factories and later for broader industrial and consumer use.
The Fremont conversion serves as a critical proving ground for this ambitious new chapter in Tesla’s already-rich history.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
