News
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
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla teased an October 1 Roadster reveal, reviving years of delayed SpaceX thruster hover promises.
Tesla teased an October 1 event date for its next generation Roadster, posting an image on X Saturday that shows the car lit up like it is sitting on a launch pad, with the date “10.01” stamped across the bottom and the caption “Go for launch.” A countdown clock on Tesla’s Roadster order page now points to the same date, which falls on a Thursday. The company has not said where the event will happen or whether it will be streamed at the moment. Stay with us @Teslarati for live updates.
Go for launch pic.twitter.com/Khu03eiZ04
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 12, 2026
Tesla has since sent formal invitations to reservation holders confirming the event will take place in Waco, Texas, about 90 minutes north of its Austin headquarters, based on a digital ticket shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. Tesla did not name the exact venue, though Waco sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket test site, previously reported as the planned location for a Roadster thruster demonstration. The invite sets the reveal for 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, requires RSVPs by midnight on September 16, and limits entry to guests 21 and older. Invitations are non-transferable.
The tease follows nine years of a project defined by unimaginable specs along with slipped dates. Musk first showed the second generation Roadster in November 2017 as a surprise reveal at the end of the Tesla Semi event, promising a 0 to 60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery, and production starting in 2020. At last November’s shareholder meeting, Musk set an April 1 demo date and joked the choice gave him “deniability” if it slipped again, which it did, moving first to late April, then to “a month or so,” then to August.
Tesla Roadster SpaceX Package’s 1.1-second 0-60 mph launch visualized in concept video
Whatever Tesla shows on October 1 is expected to center on the SpaceX developed thruster package Musk has described since 2018. Internally code named A71, a nod to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the system reportedly uses cold gas thrusters fed by a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, the same tank design SpaceX uses on Falcon 9. Musk has said a thruster equipped Roadster could hit 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds under roughly 2.75 g of launch force, well past the 1.9 second figure quoted for the standard car. That version reportedly will not be street legal and has reportedly been discussed as a limited run sold through a track only program.
The standard Roadster is still expected to carry the original $200,000 base price and $250,000 Founders Series tier, both set when Tesla opened $50,000 and $250,000 reservations in 2017. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy has confirmed production will happen at Gigafactory Texas, with Musk targeting 2027 or 2028, 12 to 18 months after whatever the company demonstrates next month.
Tesla is planning to roll out some pretty significant safety and accident avoidance features with Full Self-Driving version 15, which will be the next major FSD deployment from the company.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy used a near-miss this week to preview what the company says is the next leap in Full Self-Driving.
In response to a driver whose car had swerved away from another vehicle pulling out of a parking lot, Elluswamy wrote that he was glad the owner was safe and that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” would arrive with FSD v15.
Glad you are safe. Even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance coming as part of the next big upgrade (v15).
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 11, 2026
The comment landed as Tesla continues to treat software as the primary safety upgrade path. v15 is described internally as a larger architectural step, with a much bigger neural network and tighter coupling between prediction and control.
The company has already begun using early v15 software in some robotaxi operations while rolling out safety features such as Automatic Collision Evasion into current customer cars, allowing the driving stack to intervene even when the driver is in manual control.
Tesla is rolling out a new FSD version with a massive safety addition
Tesla’s published telemetry is the backbone of its safety argument. In recent North American Vehicle Safety Report data, vehicles with FSD (Supervised) engaged traveled roughly 5.1 million to 5.7 million miles between major collisions, defined as airbag-deployment events.
Tesla’s estimate of the U.S. average over the same period is about 699,000 miles per comparable crash. That is the comparison Tesla often frames as roughly seven times fewer major collisions.
A tighter comparison uses the same Tesla fleet. Cars driven manually with active safety features such as automatic emergency braking still recorded a major collision about every 2.1 million miles. Against that baseline, FSD’s advantage shrinks to roughly 2.4 to 2.7 times fewer severe crashes, which independent researchers argue is the more apples-to-apples figure.
European data released in 2026 pointed in the same direction: Tesla reported FSD as 3.5 times safer than manual driving in the Netherlands and 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas with active safety across more than 100 million kilometers in five approved countries.
Those numbers do not settle every debate. NHTSA’s Standing General Order still shows Tesla accounting for the large majority of U.S. Level 2 driver-assist crash reports, in part because the fleet logs far more assisted miles than rivals. Critics also note that Tesla’s “U.S. average” mixes crash definitions and driving mix.
Even so, Tesla’s own same-car comparisons, plus lower rates of automatic emergency braking and harsh maneuvers when FSD is engaged, are the evidence Elluswamy is pointing to when he says v15 will push prediction and collision avoidance further. The claim is not that software already eliminates risk. It is that each major version is meant to widen the gap between the system and an unaided human driver.
Cybertruck
Tesla’s most delayed Cybertruck feature is finally here
Tesla finally links Cybertruck Powershare with Powerwall 3 for extended home backup after years overdue.
Tesla’s Cybertruck can now pair with a Powerwall 3 to keep a house running longer during an outage, a feature the company first promised when the truck launched in November 2023.
The official Cybertruck account posted the update on X Thursday: “Powerwall 3 & I can now power your house together. This extends your home backup by over 3 days, equivalent to 9 additional Powerwalls,” Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill confirmed the rollout separately, calling it the first time a vehicle and a home battery have worked together this way. Powerwall 2 and Powerwall+ compatibility is still coming later this year, per both the Cybertruck account and Morrill.
Powerwall 3 & I can now power your house together⁰ ⁰This extends your home backup by over 3 days, equivalent to 9 additional Powerwalls pic.twitter.com/8G2twIm6AN
— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 10, 2026
Powershare itself is not new. Tesla enabled the version that lets Cybertruck power tools, appliances or another EV through its bed outlets when the truck launched in 2023. Home backup through a Powershare Gateway and Universal Wall Connector arrived in 2024, and Tesla extended that support to homes with solar the following year. What has been missing until now is Powershare working alongside an existing Powerwall, instead of functioning as a separate backup source competing for the same job.
The pairing matters because a single Powerwall home battery typically covers a home for about a day, less if usage is heavy or the outage stretches into a heat wave or freeze. A second Powerwall for more backup storage costs several thousand dollars installed. A Cybertruck instead uses a battery the owner already has, one large enough here to add roughly three more days of backup without mounting another unit or booking an installer visit. For households in wildfire, hurricane or winter storm regions where outages run past a day, that keeps the refrigerator and medical equipment running instead of shutting down.
The company told owners in October 2024 that Powerwall integration was coming sometime in 2025. That date passed, and in December 2025 Tesla pushed the target to mid-2026, with Morrill explaining at the time that two grid-forming devices need to negotiate which one manages a home during an outage, and that certifying the process across multiple generations of Powerwall took longer than expected.
For owners who bought Powershare hardware expecting it to work with whatever battery setup they already had, Thursday’s update closes a gap that has shown up repeatedly in owner complaints since Cybertruck deliveries began. Tesla has also rolled out a separate Powershare grid support program in Texas, letting Cybertrucks send power back to the grid during high demand events, so the truck’s role in a home’s energy setup keeps expanding even as individual pieces of it arrive later than promised.
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla plans big safety improvements for Full Self-Driving v15
