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Rocket Lab’s first step towards SpaceX-style rocket reuse set for next Electron launch
Just over a year ago, Rocket Lab announced intentions to recover the first-stage of its small Electron launch vehicle, potentially making it the second private company on Earth – after SpaceX – to attempt to recover and reuse an orbital-class rocket.
In a media call earlier this week, Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck, revealed that the first recovery attempt has been expedited to mid-November and will occur following the next flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.
Like competitor SpaceX, Rocket Lab aims to recover its first stage Electron booster to decrease production time and increase launch cadence. Rocket Lab now has three launchpads to launch from and is licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to carry out up to 130 launches per calendar year. In order to increase the launch cadence of the Electron, production times need to decrease. This can effectively be accomplished with the recovery, refurbishment, and reuse of the small, carbon composite rocket booster.
Recovery Doesn’t Happen Overnight
Initially, the first step of recovering an expended first stage – a guided and controlled soft water landing under a parachute and retrieval by sea-vessel – was intended for the seventeenth launch of the Electron prior to the end of this calendar year. However, Rocket Lab is now targeting the sixteenth launch for the first recovery attempt, a mission appropriately nicknamed “Return to Sender.” When asked what prompted the move to an earlier launch, Beck stated to reporters, “the guys got it done in time. With a new development like this, it’s always very dependent on how the program runs and the program ran very successfully.”
Rocket Lab has been working toward this recovery attempt for quite some time. In late 2018, Rocket Lab began collecting data during launches to inform future recovery efforts and determine whether or not it would even be feasible with a small-class rocket. The first major block upgrade of the Electron booster debuted on the tenth flight, “Running Out of Fingers,” in December 2019.
The first recovery milestone, a task Beck called getting through “the wall,” was achieved following the tenth flight. And again in January 2020 following a successful eleventh flight of Electron. The “wall” Beck refers to is the Earth’s atmosphere. Returning a booster through the atmosphere intact requires extreme precision in terms of re-entry orientation and how efficient the heat shield is.
Because the Electron is a small-class rocket, Rocket Lab was able to collect enough data from previous flights to determine that the carbon composite frame could withstand a fall through the atmosphere given a precise enough angle of attack to sufficiently distribute thermal loads. According to Beck, the process is referred to as an “aero thermal decelerator.”
Small Rocket Following in Big Footsteps
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space exploration company pioneered booster landing, recovery, and reuse efforts when the first Falcon 9 booster to successfully land returned to Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on December 21, 2015. SpaceX approaches the process of booster re-entry in a different way than what Rocket Lab has decided to attempt with Electron.
The Falcon 9 boosters perform a re-orientation flip and use the engines to perform what is known as a boost-back burn to set the rocket on the path to return to the Earth’s surface. The rocket then autonomously deploys titanium grid-fins that essentially steer, and slow the booster down as it falls through the atmosphere. Finally, the engines are re-ignited during a series of burns, and landing legs are deployed to propulsively land either at sea aboard an autonomous spaceport droneship or back on land at a landing zone.
The booster of Rocket Lab’s tenth mission in 2019 was outfitted with guidance and navigation hardware and cold gas attitude control thrusters used to flip and orient the booster to withstand the stresses of re-entry. Otherwise, no other hardware was incorporated to reduce the stresses of re-entry or slow the vehicle as it fell through the atmosphere. The booster made it through “the wall” intact and eventually slowed to a rate less than 900km per hour by the time it reached sea-level for an expected impact.
Eventually, Rocket Lab imagines its small Electron booster to be caught during a controlled descent under parachute canopy with a specially equipped helicopter and grappling hook. Beck and his team spent weeks outfitting a test article with prototype parachutes that were manufactured in-house.
A low-altitude drop test of a test article to simulate an Electron first stage was performed and a helicopter was able to snag the test article mid-air and deliver it one piece. Essentially, this proved that the concept was at least feasible and the small-class rocket could in fact be fully recovered to eventually be refurbished and reused. Since the completion of this drop test in April of 2020, the parachute design has been reevaluated and many more drop tests have been conducted. The final drop test with a more traditional system of a drogue parachute and an 18m ringsail type main parachute occurred in August of 2020 with a first stage simulator.
Next up, Rocket Lab plans to use the finalized design of the parachute system to bring Electron home safely for a soft landing in the Pacific Ocean. After which the booster will be collected by a recovery vessel, similar to the process that SpaceX uses to scoop its payload fairings from the water.
“Bringing a whole first stage back intact is the ultimate goal, but success for this mission is really about gaining more data, particularly on the drogue and parachute deployment system,” said Beck. With the parachute system verified the teams should be able to make any further iterations for a full capture and recovery effort on a future mission relatively quickly.
Rocket Lab will try to fully recover the “Return to Sender” expended first-stage booster once it separates approximately two and a half minutes after liftoff from Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Penninsula of New Zealand. Electron will support a rideshare payload of thirty smallsats. The window to launch the sixteenth Electron mission opens on November 16 UTC (November 15 PT / ET). A hosted live webcast of the launch and recovery attempt will be provided on the company website approximately fifteen minutes prior to liftoff.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk explains why Tesla’s 4680 battery breakthrough is a big deal
Tesla confirmed in its Q4 and FY 2025 update letter that it is now producing 4680 cells whose anode and cathode were produced during the dry electrode process.
Tesla’s breakthroughs with its 4680 battery cell program mark a significant milestone for the electric vehicle maker. This was, at least, as per Elon Musk in a recent post on social media platform X.
Tesla confirmed in its Q4 and FY 2025 update letter that it is now producing 4680 cells whose anode and cathode were produced during the dry electrode process.
Why dry-electrode matters
In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that making the dry-electrode process work at scale was “incredibly difficult,” calling it a major achievement for Tesla’s engineering, production, and supply chain teams, as well as its partner suppliers. He also shared his praise for the Tesla team for overcoming such a difficult task.
“Making the dry electrode process work at scale, which is a major breakthrough in lithium battery production technology, was incredibly difficult. Congratulations to the @Tesla engineering, production and supply chain teams and our strategic partner suppliers for this excellent achievement!” Musk wrote in his post.
Tesla’s official X account expanded on Musk’s remarks, stating that dry-electrode manufacturing “cuts cost, energy use & factory complexity while dramatically increasing scalability.” Bonne Eggleston, Tesla’s Vice President of 4680 batteries, also stated that “Getting dry electrode technology to scale is just the beginning.”
Tesla’s 4680 battery program
Tesla first introduced the dry-electrode concept at Battery Day in 2020, positioning it as a way to eliminate solvent-based electrode drying, shrink factory footprints, and lower capital expenditures. While Tesla has produced 4680 cells for some time, the dry cathode portion of the process proved far more difficult to industrialize than expected.
Together with its confirmation that it is producing 4680 cells in Austin with both electrodes manufactured using the dry process, Tesla has also stated that it has begun producing Model Y vehicles with 4680 battery packs. As per Tesla, this strategy was adopted as a safety layer against trade barriers and tariff risks.
“We have begun to produce battery packs for certain Model Ys with our 4680 cells, unlocking an additional vector of supply to help navigate increasingly complex supply chain challenges caused by trade barriers and tariff risks,” Tesla wrote in its Q4 and FY 2025 update letter.
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Even Tesla China is feeling the Optimus V3 fever
As per Tesla China, Optimus V3 is “about to be unveiled.”
Even Tesla China seems to have caught the Optimus V3 fever, with the electric vehicle maker teasing the impending arrival of the humanoid robot on its official Weibo account.
As per Tesla China, Optimus V3 is “about to be unveiled.”
Tesla China hypes up Optimus V3
Tesla China noted on its Weibo post that Optimus V3 is redesigned from first principles and is capable of learning new tasks by observing human behavior. The company has stated that it is targeting annual production capacity of up to one million humanoid robots once manufacturing scales.
During the Q4 and FY 2025 earnings call, CEO Elon Musk stated that Tesla will wind down Model S and Model X production to free up factory space for the pilot production line of Optimus V3.
Musk later noted that Giga Texas should have a significantly larger Optimus line, though that will produce Optimus V4. He also made it a point to set expectations with Optimus’ production ramp, stating that the “normal S curve of manufacturing ramp will be longer for Optimus.”
Tesla China’s potential role
Tesla’s decision to announce the Optimus update on Weibo highlights the importance of the humanoid robot in the company’s global operations. Giga Shanghai is already Tesla’s largest manufacturing hub by volume, and Musk has repeatedly described China’s manufacturers as Tesla’s most legitimate competitors.
While Tesla has not confirmed where Optimus V3 will be produced or deployed first, the scale and efficiency of Gigafactory Shanghai make it a plausible candidate for future humanoid robot manufacturing or in-factory deployment. Musk has also suggested that Optimus could become available for public purchase as early as 2027, as noted in a CNEV Post report.
“It’s going to be a very capable robot. I think long-term Optimus will have a very significant impact on the US GDP. It will actually move the needle on US GDP significantly. In conclusion, there are still many who doubt our ambitions for creating amazing abundance. We are confident it can be done, and we are making the right moves technologically to ensure that it does,” Musk said during the earnings call.
Elon Musk
Tesla director pay lawsuit sees lawyer fees slashed by $100 million
The ruling leaves the case’s underlying settlement intact while significantly reducing what the plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive.
The Delaware Supreme Court has cut more than $100 million from a legal fee award tied to a shareholder lawsuit challenging compensation paid to Tesla directors between 2017 and 2020.
The ruling leaves the case’s underlying settlement intact while significantly reducing what the plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive.
Delaware Supreme Court trims legal fees
As noted in a Bloomberg Law report, the case targeted pay granted to Tesla directors, including CEO Elon Musk, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Kimbal Musk, and Rupert Murdoch. The Delaware Chancery Court had awarded $176 million to the plaintiffs. Tesla’s board must also return stock options and forego years worth of pay.
As per Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. in an opinion for the Delaware Supreme Court’s full five-member panel, however, the decision of the Delaware Chancery Court to award $176 million to a pension fund’s law firm “erred by including in its financial benefit analysis the intrinsic value” of options being returned by Tesla’s board.
The justices then reduced the fee award from $176 million to $70.9 million. “As we measure it, $71 million reflects a reasonable fee for counsel’s efforts and does not result in a windfall,” Chief Justice Seitz wrote.
Other settlement terms still intact
The Supreme Court upheld the settlement itself, which requires Tesla’s board to return stock and options valued at up to $735 million and to forgo three years of additional compensation worth about $184 million.
Tesla argued during oral arguments that a fee award closer to $70 million would be appropriate. Interestingly enough, back in October, Justice Karen L. Valihura noted that the $176 award was $60 million more than the Delaware judiciary’s budget from the previous year. This was quite interesting as the case was “settled midstream.”
The lawsuit was brought by a pension fund on behalf of Tesla shareholders and focused exclusively on director pay during the 2017–2020 period. The case is separate from other high-profile compensation disputes involving Elon Musk.
Elon Musk explains why Tesla’s 4680 battery breakthrough is a big deal
Even Tesla China is feeling the Optimus V3 fever
