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SpaceX aims for a burst of December launches despite recent delays
Originally scheduled to launch on December 4, SpaceX’s thirteenth resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) has been pushed back to no earlier than Friday, December 15 after routine preflight checks identified potential contaminants in the Falcon 9 launch vehicle’s upper stage fuel lines.
The past six weeks have been something of an outlier in an otherwise relentless series of 2017 launches for SpaceX. In early November, defects in payload fairings were discovered at the company’s Hawthorne, CA factory and quickly traced to the Zuma mission’s fairing, at that point already vertical and prepared to launch from Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX chose to pause its launch indefinitely as it investigated the fairings already delivered to its several launch pads and began the process of either repairing or replacing those impacted. The CRS-13 Cargo Dragon mission soon took precedent as Zuma remained on hold.
A panorama of SpaceX’s newly-reactivated Launch Complex 40. Falcon 9 and Dragon can be seen in the center. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)
Although CRS-13 does not require a payload fairing and was thus unaffected by SpaceX’s ongoing investigation, the mission was scheduled to be launched from Launch Complex-40, essentially a new pad after ten months of extensive repairs and upgrades. This translated into a few days of additional delays as the SpaceX launch crew thoroughly tested the pad’s new systems and pushed towards static fire of the flight proven Falcon 9 booster, successfully completed on December 6 after an additional handful of days of pad-related delays. This pushed the launch date from the 4th to the 8th, then the 12th and the 13th to accommodate further limited testing in order to ensure pad readiness. However, routine tests revealed a possible fuel line contamination in Falcon 9’s second stage, and SpaceX delayed the mission an additional 48 hours to resolve the problem. CRS-13 is now aiming for launch no earlier than 7:35am/10:35am PST/EST on December 15, but the window is instantaneous and any additional delays would push the launch into late December, at which point Cape Canaveral Air Force Station returns to operational status with the conclusion of winter holidays.
Although LC-40 suffered through its own teething period of bugs and testing while returning to life, there is a certain irony in the fact that a bug in the only wholly new component of CRS-13’s Falcon 9 rocket has been the most recent cause of delay; both the Falcon 9 booster and Cargo Dragon capsule are refurbished, flight-proven hardware, although both the trunk and heat shield of the Dragon were likely replaced with new components. There is something to be said about the logical nature of truly “flight-proven” hardware being more trustworthy than completely new alternatives, but it is far more likely that the upper stage contamination can be largely traced back to the new pad hardware.
A refurbished Dragon perched upon its flight-proven Falcon 9 first stage, separated by the uncooperative second stage. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)
Although Teslarati’s launch photographer Tom Cross has been battered about by Zuma and CRS-13 delays, SpaceX has demonstrated an admirable level of patience and caution, risking significant delays to their launch manifest in order to best ensure the safety and reliability of their launch services. While delays are painful in the spaceflight fan business, they are impermanent and secondary to safety and success. SpaceX will undoubtedly return to their regular programming in no time at all, with the West-coast launch of Iridium-4 and first pad rollout of Falcon Heavy up next on the docket. Stay tuned!
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SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
SpaceX’s Crew-13 Dragon reached the ISS in under eight hours, and NASA confirmed a record.
SpaceX now owns every spot on the list of the five fastest trips a U.S. spacecraft has ever made to the International Space Station, and its newest entry beat the old mark by more than four hours.
Crew Dragon Grace docked to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:05 p.m. ET on October 1, just 7 hours and 55 minutes after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. NASA confirmed the milestone in a space station blog update, writing that the flight “marked the fastest launch‑to‑docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the history of the International Space Station.”
The previous U.S. record also belonged to Dragon. SpaceX’s uncrewed CRS-31 cargo mission reached the station in a little over 12 hours in November 2024. The fastest crewed trip before last week was Crew-11, which took 14 hours and 43 minutes in August 2025, according to Space.com.
A post that Elon Musk reposted on Monday filled out the rest of the ranking. Behind Crew-13, CRS-31 and Crew-11 sit Axiom’s Ax-2 mission at 15 hours and 35 minutes and NASA’s Crew-4 at 15 hours and 44 minutes. All five flew on Dragon.
SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest
Crew-13 carried NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. NASA had projected a docking around 8 p.m. ET, as Teslarati reported the day before launch, and Dragon arrived nearly an hour early. Our launch day coverage noted that the flight was lined up to be the quickest Crew Dragon transit yet.
The speed came from timing more than hardware. SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman said the station “was in an opportune spot in space,” which let Dragon start closing the gap almost immediately after reaching orbit. “This is close to the fastest it could be,” she added. Most Crew Dragon flights still take close to a day, using a series of Draco thruster burns to raise and phase their orbit before arrival.
Dragon’s next job at the station is a departure. NASA said Monday it is targeting 8:05 a.m. ET on Wednesday, October 7, for Crew-12 to undock, setting up a splashdown off the coast of California around 11:34 a.m. on Thursday. Clearing that port makes room for CRS-35, a cargo Dragon carrying the final set of iROSA solar arrays.
Dragon remains NASA’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner stays grounded, and the agency recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification.
Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
