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SpaceX Crew-1 launch set for Sunday, ULA successfully launches spy satellite

The SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience and Falcon 9 rocket at LC-39A ahead of the Crew-1 launch attempt. (Richard Angle)

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On Friday evening, Nov. 13, NASA and SpaceX announced that the first operational Commercial Crew Program mission of the Crew Dragon would be delayed 24 hours to Sunday, Nov. 15, at 7:27 pm EST (0027 GMT 11/16). During a Crew-1 pre-launch news conference, SpaceX’s senior director of the Human Spaceflight Programs, Benji Reed, stated that the delay was driven by impacts on recovery efforts caused by tropical storm Eta, which had plagued Florida for days.

Just prior to the news conference, United Launch Alliance(ULA) successfully launched its Atlas V rocket after suffering delays of its own earlier in the week. The NROL-101 mission carried a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office of the U.S. government and successfully launched from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:32 pm EST.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V 531 rockets liftsoff from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station just after sunset at 5:32pm EST. (Richard Angle)

Florida weather caused multiple launch delays

Weather, especially that caused by tropical storm Eta, has caused a domino effect of delays for SpaceX and ULA over the last few weeks. The ULA Atlas V 531 rocket stacked with the secretive NROL-101 payload, initially set to liftoff on Nov. 3, was first delayed by damage sustained to environmental control system hardware of the upper stage.

According to company CEO, Tory Bruno, as the rocket was transported from ULA’s vertical integration facility (VIF) to the launchpad of SLC-41, very high winds caused damage to a duct that controlled the flow rate of an upper payload environmental control system. As a result, the rocket was returned to the VIF to have the duct replaced. A launch attempt scheduled for the following day on Wednesday, Nov. 4, was called off due to an unrelated problem with ground support equipment.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V 531 rocket on the SLC-41 launchpad ahead of a launch attempt of the NROL-101 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. (Richard Angle)

The NROL-101 mission was then set to launch on Sunday, Nov. 8, but that attempt was eventually called off due to the impending weather that would be brought across the Florida peninsula by then hurricane Eta. On Friday, Nov. 6, the Atlas V 531 rocket and payload for the National Reconnaissance Office was once again returned to the VIF for protection from the storm.

A final launch attempt was identified for Friday, Nov. 13, just 22 hours before the scheduled launch of the SpaceX, NASA Crew-1 mission from nearby Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Fortunately, the weather held out long enough for the ULA Atlas V 531 rocket to liftoff. Following liftoff and successful payload deployment the mission was later declared a full success by ULA.

The launch of the ULA Atlas V 531 rocket carrying a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office on November 13, 2020. (Richard Angle.)

Florida weather also caused offshore recovery delays, impacting crewed launch

Similarly, the SpaceX and NASA Crew-1 mission has also suffered setbacks due to inclement weather, although not at the launch site. Following the successful launch and landing of the B1062 Falcon 9 of the recent GPSII-SV04 mission on Thursday, Nov. 5, SpaceX recovery teams battled unsettled seas to return the booster and the recovery droneship, Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), safely back to Port Canaveral.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 and the Crew Dragon Resilience on the launchpad of LC-39A ahead of an launch attempt scheduled for Sunday, November 15 at 7:27pm EST. (Richard Angle)

After securing B1062 safely aboard OCISLY, the SpaceX recovery vessel GO Quest took refuge at the Port of Morehead City in North Carolina. The recovery crew would wait there to assist with the recovery of the B1061 Falcon 9 of the Crew-1 mission, rather than return to Port Canaveral in Florida. The droneship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) was intended to meet the crew of GO Quest at the Crew-1 booster recovery zone prior to the end of the week.

Due to high winds and rough seas churned up by tropical storm Eta, the OCISLY droneship took an exceptionally tedious 7-day journey hugging the eastern coast of the United States to return to Port Canaveral. The delay caused the crew transfer process from OCISLY to JRTI to be delayed which in turn hindered the departure of the JRTI droneship.

As tropical storm Eta moved out and away from Florida the waters of the Atlantic remained too rough for the JRTI droneship to make up for the lost time. Following the conclusion of SpaceX’s Crew-1 preflight launch readiness review on Friday, Nov. 13, it was announced that the delay in getting the recovery droneship to the B1061 landing zone would delay the Crew-1 launch attempt by 24 hours.

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Recovering the Falcon 9 booster, of any mission, is a secondary mission objective. However, the recovery of the Crew-1, B1061 Falcon 9 is important to both NASA and SpaceX – enough so to delay a launch attempt. NASA and SpaceX have already designated this booster to be reused on the next Crew Dragon mission, Crew-2, targeted for no earlier than March 30, 2021. In order to reuse a booster to save on launch costs, it must first be successfully recovered.

The SpaceX Crew-1 Crew Dragon Resilience sits atop the B1061 Falcon 9 booster awaiting launch on Sunday, November 15, 2020. (Richard Angle)

If all goes to plan, three NASA astronauts and one astronaut from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will climb aboard the Crew Dragon Resilience on Sunday, Nov. 15, and blast off to the International Space Station precisely at 7:27 pm EST (0027 11/16) from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA and SpaceX will provide a hosted live broadcast of all Crew-1 events beginning at 3:15 pm EST on Sunday, Nov. 15, on NASA TV and on the SpaceX website.

Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes.

Space Reporter.

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Energy

Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can now do what only Cybertruck could

Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can power your home with Powerwall 3 during outages.

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Tesla has turned its two top sellers into backup batteries for the house.

Tesla Energy announced on Tuesday that Powershare Home Backup is now available for new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles paired with a Powerwall 3, saying the car can “extend your home backup by over 2 days.” Minutes later, Tesla’s main account quoted the post with a broader pitch: “With Powerwall 3, every Tesla can now serve as your home’s backup battery.”

Until this week, the Cybertruck was the only Tesla that could send power back into a home, and that capability only began working alongside Powerwall 3 last month, after years of ambitious targets.

Tesla’s updated Powershare page says every Model 3 and Model Y ordered in the U.S. or Puerto Rico on or after October 1, 2026 can use the feature. Some, but not all, earlier cars also qualify. Owners can check on the touchscreen under Software, then Additional Vehicle Information, where a capable car shows “Powershare Support: Enabled.” As Electrek reported, bidirectional power on the two cars runs through an inverter Tesla calls PCS2 Lite, and the company has not said when that part entered production on each trim.

The home side is simpler. A house that already has a Powerwall 3 and either a Wall Connector 3 or Universal Wall Connector needs no additional equipment, and Tesla says compatibility is enabled through a software update. When the grid drops, the Powerwall and the car work together, with up to 11.52 kW of continuous power available. Tesla’s “over two days” estimate assumes a home using 30 kWh per day and a car starting at a 90 percent charge. Standard trims are rated for up to two days, while the Cybertruck adds more than three.

There are limits. Powerwall 2 and Powerwall+ support is listed as “coming soon.” Model S and Model X are not included, and Grid Support, the program that lets Cybertruck owners in Texas send power back to the grid during demand spikes for bill credits, is not available for Model 3 or Model Y.

The rollout also lines up with something Elon Musk said more than three years ago. At Tesla’s March 2023 Investor Day, Musk said, “I don’t think very many people are going to want to use bidirectional charging, unless you have a Powerwall.” Tesla has now shipped the feature for its volume cars with exactly that requirement attached.

The Powerwall pairing was the hard part on Cybertruck. Tesla told owners in December 2025 that Powershare with Powerwall had been pushed to mid 2026, and lead engineer Wes Morrill explained that two devices capable of forming a home’s grid have to negotiate which one leads during an outage, across multiple generations of hardware. With that work done for the truck, Tesla was able to extend it to the Model 3 and Model Y within a month.

Ford and GM have offered home backup from their EVs for several years, but both require a separate inverter and backup hardware. Tesla’s version leans on equipment many Powerwall 3 owners already have on the wall. Powershare for the two cars also ships as part of software update 2026.38.3, the same release that began delivering Halloween Mode on Tuesday.

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Tesla ships ‘spooky’ Halloween Mode with creepy and fun features

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla is now starting to ship a “Halloween Mode” that is filled with some creepy and fun features; the company says, “This spooky update turns your Tesla into a haunted house on wheels.”

The update is just the latest in a series of updates that Tesla typically ships out in a seasonal fashion. The Spring and Summer Updates provided some fun novelty items while also packing some cool features that are actually useful for the ownership experience.

This one seems to be more fun-forward, and there are not any updates to the Full Self-Driving suite or overall operation of the vehicle. Instead, these novelty features are geared toward getting you in the mood for the Fall and Halloween.

New Ghost Costume on Car Avatar

Driver Visualization will now show your vehicle as a ghost, as an all-white sheet is draped over the vehicle. Pedestrians are turned into mummies or skeletons, and other vehicles are all a spooky green:

Credit: Tesla

Additionally, the Park Scene with your Tesla now displays that ghost costume draped over your vehicle in the foreground of a scary backdrop with Jack-o-Lanterns and a haunted house:

Credit: Tesla

Trick or Treat Mode

Trick or Treat Mode will enable the vehicle to play spooky sounds and flicker the lights as visitors approach. This might be a nice touch for when you’re handing out candy to kids on Halloween Night.

Other Features

Tesla is also adding a new Light Show, new Wrap Options, and a new Lock Sound with this update.

Credit: Tesla

Additionally, Photobooth has a new Halloween option:

Credit: Tesla

You will also be able to speak remotely through the app and transmit your voice to people outside, which is not a new feature, but the car will say it in a voice of its own, which is a new feature with that bullhorn-like feature.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions

SpaceX reveals plans for one million Starmind AI satellites and calls out operators hiding maneuvers.

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Concept rendering of SpaceX Starmind constellation via Grok
Concept rendering of SpaceX Starmind constellation via Grok

SpaceX has put the largest satellite count it has ever published into writing, and it says that plan only works if every other operator in orbit starts sharing what it knows.

In a new Space Safety page highlighted Tuesday morning by Sawyer Merritt on X, SpaceX said it “plans to operate up to 100,000 Starlink satellites and up to 1 million Starmind AI satellites to meet the growing demand for broadband and supercompute.” Starlink has a little over 11,000 satellites in orbit today, so the target alone implies roughly a ninefold expansion of the broadband network.

Starmind is SpaceX’s orbital AI compute constellation. Elon Musk confirmed the Starmind name in June after an xAI trademark filing surfaced, and in August SpaceX said it was working with Nvidia on the compute payload. The FCC accepted the filing for up to one million satellites back in February.

FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan

SpaceX also released a new render of what a full Starmind constellation could look like. Alongside it, SpaceX VP Michael Nicolls explained why the satellites will not operate on their own. “We need to operate clusters of satellites in tight formation to get enough coherent compute to run AI models efficiently,” Nicolls said. “A cluster will be 10-ish satellites connected with 10 terabits or so of bandwidth between them, and interconnected to the broader constellation.”

That is the most specific detail SpaceX has given on how Starmind will be built. Instead of a million independent servers, the network would work as tightly packed groups of about 10 satellites acting as one compute unit, with Starlink’s laser links carrying results back to Earth.


Packing satellites that close together, at that scale, makes collision avoidance the central problem, and most of the Space Safety page is aimed at other operators. SpaceX said Starlink encountered collision risks with about 650 unique maneuvering third party satellites in 2026, and only about half of them shared data. Over six months, Starlink recorded roughly 164,000 more collision risks where the closest approach came within four hours of an unannounced maneuver.

Some operators keep maneuver plans private over proprietary concerns, while others cannot get government permission to share them. SpaceX called those policies “counterproductive,” saying they “largely only serve to create preventable collision risk between satellites.” Starlink is also offering a free ephemeris sharing and screening platform that returns risk results within a minute, backed by its Stargaze network of 30,000 optical sensors.

The push comes as the Starmind application draws opposition from astronomers and environmental groups. In a September filing with the FCC, SpaceX said each Starmind satellite could weigh up to 4,000 kg, nearly seven times the mass of a Starlink V2 Mini. Musk has brushed off crowding concerns before, telling viewers in June that “space is enormous” and that SpaceX already knows how to run very large constellations safely.

SpaceX’s Starmind page says its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, is designed to produce AI satellites at scale, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027.

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