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SpaceX’s newest Crew Dragon spacecraft arrives at launch site

Crew Dragon is nearly ready for a Halloween astronaut launch. (SpaceX)

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Right on schedule, SpaceX has rolled a new Crew Dragon spacecraft to the pad for its first astronaut launch.

Known as Crew-3, the mission – SpaceX and NASA’s third operational astronaut launch and second ‘crew rotation’ – is scheduled to launch as early as 2:21 am EDT (06:21 UTC) on Halloween (Sunday, October 31st) after a minor one-day delay. In lieu of an operational alternative from Commercial Crew partner Boeing, whose Starliner spacecraft remains chronically delayed, that means that a SpaceX Crew Dragon will again join a second Crew Dragon already docked to the International Space Station (ISS), freeing up four NASA, ESA, and JAXA Crew-2 astronauts for their return to Earth after more than half a year in orbit.

Crew-3 will also debut a new Crew Dragon capsule christened “Endurance” by the mission’s four astronauts, beginning the introduction of several new Dragons as part of SpaceX’s plan to double its fleet of reusable orbital spacecraft in less than a year.

Crew-3’s Dragon will be the latest addition to SpaceX’s fleet of four reusable, orbital space capsules. (NASA/ESA)

In a media briefing following a successful October 25th flight readiness review (FRR), SpaceX and NASA officials revealed that the only ‘open item’ (the only issue left unsolved) for Crew-3 was the qualification of a change… to Crew Dragon’s toilet. During SpaceX’s highly successful Inspiration4 mission in September 2021, Dragon performed flawlessly except for a small issue discovered with its last-resort toilet. According to the briefing, in less than a month and incurring what amounts to zero delays to Crew-3, SpaceX analyzed the Inspiration4 spacecraft, determined the fault (a leaky storage tank), redesigned said tank, and replaced the new spacecraft’s faulty toilet with the fixed design.

The issue appears to only remain ‘open’ because SpaceX and NASA are still finalizing the studies and documentation needed to qualify the design change – no small feat in a human-rated spacecraft with dozens of critical systems packed together in close proximity. Neither partner appears to believe that that qualification work will delay Crew-3’s Halloween launch.

Crew-3’s Dragon arrives at Pad 39A. (SpaceX)
Crew-2 demonstrates rollout day. (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

After performing closeout work and carefully fueling the spacecraft with toxic monomethylhydrazine (MMH) fuel and nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) oxidizer, SpaceX transported Crew-3’s new Dragon to Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on October 24th. In the ~24 hours since then, it’s likely that SpaceX has flipped Crew Dragon horizontal and mated it with Falcon 9’s orbital second stage – itself already attached to the mission’s flight-proven booster.

As early as Tuesday, the Dragon and Falcon 9 launch vehicle will roll out to Pad 39A for an integrated static fire test, followed by a dry dress launch rehearsal with Crew-3 astronauts Thomas Marshburn (NASA), Raja Chari (NASA), Kayla Barron (NASA), and Matthias Maurer (ESA).

If all goes well during those crucial tests and rehearsals and weather permits, Crew-3 will lift off next Sunday and dock with the ISS early on Monday, November 1st, joining two Russian cosmonauts and five ESA/NASA astronauts. Crew-2 astronauts Shane Kimbrough (NASA), Megan McArthur (NASA), Akihiko Hoshide (JAXA), and Thomas Pesquet (ESA) will then board their Crew Dragon and depart the ISS on November 4th to return to Earth as early as November 5th.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving expands to another European country

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is heading to Czechia after the Czech Ministry of Transport recognised the Dutch RDW’s provisional type approval, making the country the seventh EU member state to clear the system for public roads. Tesla Europe announced on 21 September 2026 that “FSD Supervised is now approved in Czechia” and that rollout “will begin soon.”

The decision marks a notable reversal. Earlier in 2026, Prague had declined to automatically recognise the Netherlands’ April approval, citing concerns over speed-limit compliance, traffic-sign recognition and driver-attention monitoring, and arguing that a coordinated EU approach was preferable. Officials said months of expert review, talks with Tesla and other member states, and real-world data from countries already using the system resolved those issues.

“Safety remains the top priority,” the ministry stated.

FSD Supervised remains a Level 2 driver-assistance system: the driver must stay engaged and is legally responsible. Eligible vehicles need AI4, the company’s most up-to-date hardware version. Tesla is expected to push the feature over the air in the coming days, following the pattern seen after earlier national approvals.

Europe’s rollout began when Dutch regulator RDW issued a provisional EU type approval on 10 April 2026 after extensive testing. Mutual recognition then produced a rapid cascade: Lithuania (20 May), Estonia (29 May), Denmark (9 June), Belgium (10 June) and Slovenia (7 September). Czechia now completes that list of seven.

The approvals cover only a modest share of the EU population, but they add political weight ahead of a 6 October vote by the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles. A qualified majority, at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the EU population, could open the remaining markets, including large ones such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain that have so far preferred to wait for a bloc-wide decision.

For Czech Tesla owners, the immediate prize is access to the same supervised highway and city driving already available in the other six countries. For Tesla, each new market generates additional European driving data and strengthens the case that FSD Supervised can operate safely under the continent’s varied road rules. The Czech approval is therefore both a local milestone and another incremental step toward a wider European launch.

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Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges

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Credit: @BLKMDL3/Twitter

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has established a Temporary Flight Restriction over SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket development and test facility, a move widely viewed as preparation for Tesla’s October 1 Roadster reveal. The restriction took effect September 18 and runs through October 2.

NOTAM FDC 6/3825 covers a 1.5-nautical-mile radius around the site near Waco and extends from the surface to 10,000 feet above ground level. The FAA cited hazards under 14 CFR 91.137(a)(3) and barred aircraft and drones from the zone. Tesla’s invitation to reservation holders already placed the event in Waco, about 20 minutes from McGregor, making the timing and location more than coincidental.

What stands out is the altitude. Typical recent TFRs at McGregor for engine static fires and component tests have used far lower ceilings, often around 2,000 feet. Raising the limit to 10,000 feet is unusually high even compared with some Starbase restrictions and signals operations that go beyond a standard ground-level engine test.

That extra airspace has fueled speculation about the long-promised SpaceX Package for the Roadster. Elon Musk has described cold-gas thrusters that could deliver sub-one-second 0-60 times and, more dramatically, brief lift-off. Reports earlier this year indicated Tesla planned a remote-controlled demonstration at McGregor in which the car would leave the ground with no one inside; spectators kept hundreds of yards away because of the noise.

The 10,000-foot envelope would give operators a large safety buffer even if the vehicle only hovers a short distance.

Tesla has not confirmed a flight demo. The company has only used the phrase “Go for launch” and posted a teaser image of the car on what looks like a launch pad. The TFR itself mentions only hazards. Still, closing airspace this high and this close to the reveal date strongly suggests the event will include more than a static display.

Whether the Roadster actually hovers on October 1 remains to be seen. What is certain is that the FAA has cleared a large vertical slice of Texas sky for whatever Tesla and SpaceX intend to show. Reservation holders heading to Waco will be among the first to find out if the car can do more than drive.

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Elon Musk drops a surprise update on Boring Company’s next big dig

Musk says Boring Company could shrink the Austin to San Antonio drive to just minutes.

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Elon Musk says The Boring Company is working on what he called “a simple, precursor Hyperloop” tunnel connecting Austin and San Antonio, targeting speeds above 200 mph and cutting a drive that can take up to two and a half hours down to a consistent under 30 minutes. Musk posted the idea on X Sunday, in a reply to a repost of an AI generated video imagining a science fiction future with human colonies on other worlds, which he shared with the line “This is the future we shall bring into being.”


The Boring Company’s own account picked up the idea in the same thread, adding a detail about how the trip would actually work: “Because Loop/Hyperloop is express (i.e. no intermediate stops), one could travel from an Austin parking lot to a favorite San Antonio restaurant in about 30 minutes. As long as they both have Loop stations.” That framing ties the proposed intercity link to the same station model the company already runs in Las Vegas, where riders enter the tunnel network through small, garage style stops rather than one central terminal.

This is not the company’s first run at the Austin to San Antonio corridor. Boring Company floated tunnels between the two cities as far back as 2021, and later competed for a separate San Antonio Loop project tied to the airport before that specific bid stalled. Pitches for tunnels in Chicago, Los Angeles, and a New York to Washington corridor have followed a similar pattern of big announcement without a shovel in the ground.

What is different this time is the balance sheet, especially since The Boring Company closed a 3 billion dollar funding round led by investors in the United Arab Emirates earlier this month at a valuation near 23 billion dollars, giving the tunneling company more capital to chase speculative projects than it had during its earlier Texas pitches. The company is also mid-build on two other intercity systems it has actually broken ground on, inc;luding a Nashville tunnel linking downtown to the airport, where a second boring machine finished commissioning in June, and its Las Vegas network, where the station count keeps climbing on paper faster than tunnels get dug.

That gap between announcement and execution is the reason to treat Sunday’s post as an opening bid rather than a project. A tunnel spanning roughly 80 miles between two metro areas, running at speeds Boring Company has not demonstrated over any real distance, would dwarf anything the company has built. For now, the Austin to San Antonio Hyperloop exists as a caption under an AI generated space video.

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