Major SpaceX customer Iridium has set an official target date for its eighth and final Iridium NEXT launch, expected to fly on a flight-proven Falcon 9 Block 5 booster as early as December 30th.
With Iridium-8 now tentatively on SpaceX’s launch manifest, the company’s West Coast schedule appears to have stabilized with two more orbital missions before the end of 2018 – Spaceflight Industry’s SSO-A rideshare mission will aim for the second half of November while Iridium-8 will likely be the last global launch of 2018 if it sticks to its December 30 target.
It’s taken awhile, but finally have a schedule for the final launch #8 of Iridium NEXT! 8:38am pst on December 30th – we’ll have the satellites, SpaceX assures us the flight proven rocket will be ready, and VAFB is ready to ring in the New Year with us! #ThePartyWillBeEpic pic.twitter.com/vQPPeSKm0P
— Matt Desch (@IridiumBoss) October 18, 2018
Iridium CEO Matt Desch was happy to offer a few additional details after tweeting Iridium-8’s targeted launch date and confirmed that – despite original estimates to the contrary – the mission would launch on flight-proven Falcon 9 booster B1049.2. He also stated that the booster would attempt to land on SpaceX drone ship Just Read The Instructions after launch, passing up a Return-to-Launch-Site (RTLS) recovery at the freshly-coronated Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) due to the significant weight and suboptimal trajectory of Iridium’s payload.
Barring unexpectedly heavy payloads, high-energy orbits, or new launch contracts, it’s probable that Iridium-8 will be the company’s last drone ship rocket recovery on the West Coast for at least a year, if not longer. The only unknown is whether SpaceX needs to or is able to launch during harbor seal pupping season, lasting from March to June – if that environmental concern can be sidestepped or altogether avoided, there may be no reason for Just Read The Instructions to remain in California when the drone ship could instead move to Florida and immediately facilitate faster launch cadence or support Falcon Heavy missions that could benefit from multiple booster landings at sea.
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- B1048 returns to port on drone ship JRTI after its successful July 2019 launch debut. (Pauline Acalin)
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- It’s second landing marked the debut of SpaceX’s LZ-4 landing zone. B1048 may be a prime candidate for SpaceX’s first triple booster reuse. (SpaceX)
According to CEO Elon Musk and other executives, SpaceX is already building a third autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) for the same reasons, to be named A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG) upon completion. Earlier this summer, Musk stated that the new vessel could be completed as early as summer of 2019, although he has since also stated that the first full BFR launches may take place on a floating platform somewhere off the coast of the US, increasing the probability of SpaceX delaying ASOG’s construction to allow for future use as both a launch and landing platform.
Probably ships next summer
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2018
Triple booster reuse on the horizon
Returning to SpaceX’s Q4 2018 Vandenberg launch manifest, its launch of Spaceflight Industry’s SSO-A rideshare mission is expected to occur sometime next month and will likely be SpaceX’s second-to-last launch before the year is out. Notably, SpaceX executive Hans Koenigsmann recently suggested that SSO-A may end up playing host to the company’s first attempt to launch the same Falcon 9 booster three times. All previous Falcon 9 reuses have been the rockets’ second launches and typically saw SpaceX expend the booster in the ocean rather than recover it and attempt refurbishment for a third launch.
Falcon 9 Block 5, however, included a huge number of upgrades to the rocket’s overall stamina and reusability, theoretically raising the number of potential flights per booster from 10-100. Examined generally, moving from two to three flights per booster may seem inconsequential. The reality, however, is that the first true confirmation of the success or failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Block 5 upgrade will be whether a Block 5 booster is able to safely complete three missions and do so with relative ease.
As SpaceX technicians and engineers gradually gain confidence with the new rocket iteration, debuted less than six months ago, the focus will eventually move from cautiously methodical design validation to rapid booster turnaround, eventually culminating in something approximating the 24-hour first stage reuse Musk challenged his company to achieve before 2019 is out. Ultimately, the third launch of a single Falcon 9 Block 5 booster will be the biggest step yet towards SpaceX’s ultimate goal of rapidly and affordably reusable orbital-class rockets.
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
News
SpaceX brings four astronauts home after 8 months in space, and the return was flawless
SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom returned four Crew-12 astronauts home after 237 days aboard the station.
Four Crew-12 members are back on Earth after 237 days at the International Space Station. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about 50 miles west of Los Angeles at 11:34 a.m. ET on Thursday.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev landed one day after undocking from the station’s Harmony module at 8:05 a.m. ET on Wednesday. NASA confirmed the splashdown minutes later. SpaceX had flagged the 27.5 hour trip home on X while Dragon was still firing its departure burns away from the station.
The descent ran on schedule when Freedom started a nine minute deorbit burn at 10:46 a.m. ET, then hit the thicker atmosphere about 36 minutes later at nearly five miles per second. Chutes deployed at around 18,000 feet, and four main parachutes brought the capsule down to roughly 15 mph at splashdown.
SpaceX fast boats secured Dragon before the recovery ship Shannon hoisted it onto the deck with the crew still inside. Flight surgeons on board ran initial medical checks. All four crew members will be flown ashore by helicopter and then head to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for rehabilitation.
Splashdown of Dragon confirmed! https://t.co/P2o7A3Gytf
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 8, 2026
Crew-12 launched on February 13 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, a flight that also marked the first Falcon 9 booster landing at SpaceX’s new LZ-40 pad. Over the mission, the crew completed 3,792 orbits, covered nearly 101 million miles, and carried out four spacewalks to maintain and upgrade the station.
Meir now has 440 cumulative days in space, which places her in NASA’s top 10. This was the first spaceflight for Hathaway and for Adenot, a French Air Force colonel and former helicopter pilot. Fedyaev, who spent 186 days in orbit on Crew-6 in 2023, has now flown two long duration Dragon missions.
The return closes out a busy stretch of Dragon traffic. Crew-13 arrived on October 1 aboard Crew Dragon Grace, which docked just 7 hours and 55 minutes after liftoff, the fastest launch to docking of any U.S. spacecraft in ISS history. Commander Jessica Watkins, pilot Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov remain aboard alongside the three person Soyuz MS-29 crew.
With Crew-12 gone, the port is clear for CRS-35, a cargo Dragon carrying the final pair of ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays. NASA is holding a post-splashdown teleconference at 1:15 p.m. ET covering both the crew’s return and the upcoming cargo launch.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab
Musk says Tesla and SpaceX will build and run Terafab, with TSMC limited to renting.
Elon Musk has drawn a firm line around who will be in charge of Terafab, the giant chip factory Tesla and SpaceX are planning in Texas.
Musk replied to a post on X arguing that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) would most likely end up owning and operating the plant. “No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that,” Musk wrote. “Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.”
In plain terms, a sublease means TSMC could rent a section of the complex to make chips, similar to a tenant renting one floor of an office tower. The building, the equipment decisions and the daily operation would stay with Tesla and SpaceX.
@herbertong @thejefflutz No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that.
Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 7, 2026
The comment shuts down speculation that started last week. On October 2, tech journalist Tim Culpan reported that TSMC was exploring ways to help run Terafab’s factories. Musk responded the next day that it was “just discussions, but something may come of it,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That left room for a scenario where the world’s largest contract chipmaker took the wheel. Musk’s latest post closes that door.
Some background helps explain why this matters. Tesla designs its own AI chips today but pays outside companies like TSMC and Samsung to manufacture them. Musk unveiled Terafab in March as a joint project between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, arguing that existing suppliers cannot expand fast enough to meet his companies’ future demand. The goal is to produce enough chips each year to supply one terawatt of computing power, roughly 50 times what the entire global AI chip industry produces now.
Those chips are meant for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, the Cybercab and Full Self-Driving computers, along with chips for SpaceX’s planned data centers in orbit. Owning the factory means Musk’s companies would not have to compete with every other chip customer for time on someone else’s production lines.
Intel is still part of the picture. The company signed on in April to help design, build and package chips for the project, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg this week that Intel will keep working on Terafab despite the TSMC chatter.
The project moved from concept to construction planning over the summer. In August, SpaceX confirmed the Grimes County site about an hour from Houston, sent the county a $10 million payment under its tax abatement deal and said civil work would begin shortly. The first phase carries a $16.8 billion price tag, and total spending across all phases could reach as much as $119 billion.
TSMC chairman C.C. Wei has said a new fab typically takes two to three years to build and another one to two years to reach full output. Tesla and SpaceX have never run one, which is why TSMC’s expertise drew so much attention. Musk’s answer suggests he would rather learn that process in house than hand control of a project this central to Tesla’s robotics and autonomy plans to an outside company.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. https://t.co/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Elon Musk
Trump to hand Elon Musk a top honor that traces back to JFK
Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at Thursday’s White House summit.
Elon Musk is set to receive the highest honor the U.S. government gives to scientists and engineers.
President Donald Trump will present Musk with the National Medal of Science on Thursday at the White House’s Science: A New Golden Age Summit, Fox News Digital first reported on Wednesday. Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su will receive the same medal, while Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. A White House official later confirmed the list to Reuters.
“The Trump administration is grateful for the contributions of these incredible leaders in science and technology. These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News.
FIRST ON FOX: Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at the White House Thursday.
Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su will also receive the science medal, while Michael Dell and Satya Nadella will receive the technology medal.
It marks Trump’s first time presenting the awards across either administration.
Full story here https://t.co/omnrLV0EwS
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) October 7, 2026
It will be the first time Trump has presented either medal in his two terms. Congress created the National Medal of Science in 1959, and the National Science Foundation, which administers it, says 529 scientists and engineers have received it since. A presidential committee reviews nominees, but the president makes the final call.
Thursday’s group of medalists run or founded companies, and three of them sit at the center of the Super Intelligence hardware race that Musk competes in. Huang’s Nvidia supplies the GB300 chips filling SpaceX’s Colossus 2 cluster, while Su’s AMD is Nvidia’s biggest rival in data center GPUs.
Worth noting that Trump’s uncle, MIT physicist John G. Trump, received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan for his work on ionizing radiation and its uses in medicine and industry.
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
For Musk, the medal is the latest sign of how far his relationship with Trump has come since their 2025 split over the “Big Beautiful Bill” and his exit from DOGE. Last week, he sat at Trump’s left during a White House lunch where AI executives signed a voluntary safety accord, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named him to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare. Musk has also adopted the administration’s new vocabulary, saying on Sunday that SpaceXAI will be renamed SpaceXSI after Trump ordered federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence.”
Musk has collected science honors before, including the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in 2019.
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Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab
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