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Rocket Lab’s NASA Moon launch to kick off new era of ultra-cheap deep space exploration

Photon separates from Electron's second stage and begins burning to escape Earth's gravity well. (Rocket Lab)

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6 years ago

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Rocket Lab will soon take its tiny Electron rocket further than any similarly-sized vehicle before it, sending a NASA satellite to the Moon and potentially kicking off a new era of unprecedentedly cheap space exploration.

On February 14th, the world-leading small satellite launch company announced – alongside NASA – that the space agency had awarded it a $9.95 million launch contract worth $9.95 million to send the $13.7 million Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) CubeSat to lunar orbit. In other words, NASA has contracted a full-up scientific mission to the Moon for less than $25M total – almost unfathomably cheap compared to all interplanetary exploration performed in the last half-century.

The mission announcement comes just four months after Rocket Lab announced at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington D.C., that it would utilize its small two-stage rocket, Electron, and proprietary satellite bus platform, Photon, to support lunar orbit missions. It also occurs just two months after the official opening of Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 2 located in Wallops, Virginia – a dedicated facility to specifically service NASA and the US government launch contracts.

According to Ana Rivera, LSP program integration manager for CAPSTONE, the launch will be Rocket Lab’s “inaugural NASA launch from their new launch site at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia” and is expected to occur in the early part of 2021.

With a small extra fuel tank attached to its nose, Photon burns its small engine to send CAPSTONE on its way to the Moon. (Rocket Lab)

NASA’s CAPSTONE is a tiny spacecraft weighing around 55 lb (25 kg) – small enough for an equally tiny rocket to send it on an improbable journey. Rocket Lab’s two-stage Electron rocket will begin by launching CAPSTONE to LEO, where NASA says Photon – a Rocket Lab-built kick stage and satellite bus – will send CAPSTONE on its way to the Moon. CAPSTONE will then use its own propulsion system to enter a “Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit” (NRHO) around the Moon.

It is important to note that, under its own propulsion, CAPSTONE is expected to take nearly three months to reach its intended orbit around the moon. However, the CAPSTONE mission is an imperative one that could lead to better understandings about the journey to the moon and “can reduce navigation uncertainties ahead of our future missions using the same lunar orbit” according to Marshall Smith, director of human lunar exploration programs at NASA Headquarters.

https://twitter.com/RocketLab/status/1186725033344983040

Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck stated that Rocket Lab is “able to provide NASA with complete control over every aspect of launch and mission design for CAPSTONE, something typically only available to much larger spacecraft on larger launch vehicles. In the same way (Rocket Lab) opened access to low Earth orbit for small satellites, we’re proud to be bringing the Moon within reach to enable research and exploration.”

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Photon – the all-in-one experience

Photon is a satellite bus platform designed with interplanetary delivery and deep space communication in mind. The small, but mighty, launch-to-orbit bus features downlink communication capability, radiation-tolerant avionics, and higher power generation. Photon is also able to precisely deploy multiple small payloads into various orbits enabling multiple mission launches supported by Rocket Lab’s proprietary Curie propulsion system.

In the era of NASA’s Artemis initiative to return astronauts to the moon, Beck explains that “small satellites will play a crucial role in science and exploration, as well as providing communications and navigation infrastructure to support returning humans to the Moon.” In this sense, small satellites will serve as pathfinders and build the necessary infrastructure prior to the arrival of more robust hardware such as NASA’s lunar spaceship Gateway and eventually human space travelers.

The Rocket Lab in-house designed and manufactured a small satellite platform – Photon. (Rocket Lab)

To date, Rocket Lab has successfully launched 11 missions and 48 satellites to low-Earth orbit. Eventually, Rocket Lab intends to use a recoverable and reusable Electron to loft Photon on interplanetary missions to lunar fly-by orbits, Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO), and low-Lunar Orbit by the end of 2020. The two most recent missions – Running Out Of Fingers and Birds of a Feather – featured an upgraded first-stage of Electron that survived re-entry in one piece. This will hopefully lead to a fully recoverable first-stage rivaling the current recovery efforts of SpaceX with its first stage of the Falcon 9 boosters.

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Tesla Model Y L’s new features flexed at unveiling event at Diner

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1 hour ago

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July 31, 2026

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Tesla Model Y L in a field
Credit: Tesla

Tesla flexed the new features of the Model Y L with a dedicated media event at the company’s Diner on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.

The Model Y L is the extended-wheelbase version of the all-electric crossover, which has been voted the best-selling car in the world on three occasions. The vehicle is already rolling off production lines at Gigafactory Texas, and first deliveries are slated to take place later this year.

Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990

Teslarati was invited to the event, but due to some scheduling conflicts, we could not make it to Los Angeles. Instead, we will have our hands on a media unit sometime in August, so we’ll be able to spend some more extended time with the Model Y L.

However, plenty of those who made it to LA shared some cool features that set the Model Y L apart from the Model Y.

Multi-Row Climate Control

Tesla fitted the Model Y L with full climate control on all three rows on the front screen. It can be adjusted by selecting which row you’d like to modify on the right-hand side of the touch screen:

Better Rear Window Visibility

One of the strangest things about the Model Y, especially the Juniper iteration, is the rear window has extremely limited visibility when looking into the rearview mirror.

Tesla has improved upon this with the Model Y L:

PowerShare will be included

Model Y L will come with PowerShare in North America, with an 11.5kW output to your home. Tesla said it would require Powerwall 3 for operation.

Wireless Charging Pad

There has been some speculation that Tesla would upgrade the wireless charging pads in the United States, but this is not the case.

Tesla owner fixes common feature complaint with crafty DIY retrofit

Tesla confirmed that it does not come with the cooled pads as the Y L in China does. This is because North America has not adopted Qi charging yet.

Thermal Management Improvements

These improvements in the Model Y L were seen with thermal management:

  • Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
  • +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather, 7 miles of real-world range gained
  • 8x more solar energy reflection off of glass roof
  • 30% reduction in solar energy entering the cabin

Demand

Tesla said the Model Y L is almost sold out in the U.S. It comes with

  • 1 year of FSD Supervised
  • 1 year of Supercharging
  • 1 year of Premium Connectivity
  • Free exterior paint color, interior, and wheel option at no additional cost
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Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor

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3 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Thursday night to deny a ridiculous rumor regarding the sale of the company’s Chinese vehicle production plant, Gigafactory Shanghai.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, claimed in a scathing new report that Tesla was exploring a potential sale of the entire China business in an effort to help bolster a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk immediately denied the rumor not once but twice, initially calling it “fake news,” and then calling it “absurdly fake news” in a separate post just a few moments later:

The original poster of the Wall Street Journal article that Musk saw deleted the initial post sharing the headline and the rumored sale of Tesla’s China business.

The report seemed absolutely and unequivocally false to begin with; Tesla’s business in China is among the most important pieces of the company’s business. Not only does the factory supply vehicles for the domestic market, but also for various other markets in Asia and Europe.

China is also one of the largest automotive markets in the world, and Tesla has performed well there despite the robust competition.

The speculation regarding a Tesla and SpaceX merger has started to gain steam this year as the space exploration company went public just a month ago. There has been speculation that Musk will bridge all of his companies under one “umbrella company,” and analysts believe this could happen before the end of the decade.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

This is the latest iteration of Musk’s very evident war on mainstream media. Reports regarding any of Musk’s companies are quick to get the dreaded “false” or “fake news” response from the CEO when they are unfounded.

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Elon Musk

Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get

Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.

Published

11 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]

Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”

The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.

The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.

Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress

Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.

Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.

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