Connect with us

News

SpaceX Dragon, Falcon 9 rocket roll out to pad for first launch in six weeks

Published

4 years ago

on

SpaceX has rolled a Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 to the launch pad for the rocket’s first launch in more than six weeks.

Continuing an extremely unusual downtick in launches in the second half of 2021, SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission is nevertheless scheduled to launch three NASA astronauts and one ESA astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) no earlier than (NET) 2:21 am EDT (06:21 UTC) on October 31st. Having fixed a minor toilet issue discovered during Crew Dragon’s private Inspiration4 astronaut launch last month, SpaceX and NASA were still in the process of qualifying the redesign as of October 25th.

Late on October 26th, once-flown Falcon 9 booster B1067 and new Crew Dragon spacecraft C210 (christened “Endurance” by its first astronauts) rolled out to the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A pad, kicking off a busy few days of essential preparation and testing. Most importantly, the rollout implies that SpaceX and NASA have more or less closed out that toilet issue, clearing Dragon for its next professional astronaut launch.

After last night’s rollout, the company has just four full days (Oct 27-30) to attach the rocket to pad systems, perform a combined wet dress rehearsal and static fire, and analyze the data gathered from those tests. Finally, SpaceX and NASA need to perform a dry dress rehearsal in which Crew-3 astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, Matthias Maurer, Kayla Barron will go through launch day preparations, simulating everything short of propellant loading and liftoff.

Crew-3 astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, Matthias Maurer, Kayla Barron pose in front of their ride to orbit. (SpaceX)

Normally, both the static fire and dry dress are full-day processes, leaving SpaceX with a compressed Crew-3 preflight schedule and minimal margin for error. As such, if anything is even slightly off-nominal during preflight testing, there’s a strong chance that Crew-3’s launch will slip into November. For now, though, NASA and SpaceX continue to push towards liftoff on Halloween.

Following Inspiration4, Crew-3 will be SpaceX’s first back-to-back Crew Dragon launch ever and first back-to-back Dragon launch in general since early 2015. Crew-3 will also be SpaceX’s first launch in more than six weeks, continuing an unusually extreme drop in cadence. In the first half of 2021, SpaceX completed 20 orbital launches. In the second half of 2021, SpaceX has launched just three times, with Crew-3 set to be the fourth.

Advertisement
Related Topics:

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.

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

Elon Musk reveals SpaceX’s target for Starship’s 10th launch

Elon Musk has revealed SpaceX’s target timeline for the next Starship launch, which will be the tenth in program history.

Published

10 hours ago

on

July 16, 2025

By

Credit: SpaceX

Elon Musk has revealed SpaceX’s target timeline for the next Starship launch, which will be the tenth in program history.

Musk says SpaceX is aiming for a timeline of roughly three weeks from now, which would come about ten weeks after the previous launch.

Coincidentally, it would bring the two launches 69 days apart, and if you know anything about Elon Musk, that would be an ideal timeline between two launches.

SpaceX is coming off a test flight in which it lost both the Super Heavy Booster and the Upper Stage in the previous launch. The Super Heavy Booster was lost six minutes and sixteen seconds into the flight, while SpaceX lost communication with the Ship at 46 minutes and 48 seconds.

Musk is aiming for the tenth test flight to take place in early August, he revealed on X:

This will be SpaceX’s fourth test flight of the Starship program in 2025, with each of the previous three flights bringing varying results.

IFT-7 in January brought SpaceX its second successful catch of the Super Heavy Booster in the chopstick arms of the launch tower. The ship was lost after exploding during its ascent over the Turks and Caicos Islands.

IFT-8 was on March 6, and SpaceX caught the booster once again, but the Upper Stage was once again lost.

The most recent flight, IFT-9, took place on May 27 and featured the first reused Super Heavy Booster. However, both the Booster and Upper Stage were lost.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hit SpaceX with a mishap investigation for Flight 9 on May 30.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk confirms Tesla is already rolling out a new feature for in-car Grok

Tesla is already making in-car Grok more robust with a simple but effective feature that CEO Elon Musk says is “coming.”

Published

16 hours ago

on

July 16, 2025

By

Credit: Tesla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the company will roll out a new feature for in-car Grok as it is rolling out to vehicles for the first time.

Grok was just recently added as a feature to Tesla vehicles within the past week, but owners are already requesting some small changes to make it more convenient to use.

Tesla debuts hands-free Grok AI with update 2025.26: What you need to know

The first is already on the way, Musk confirmed, as WholeMarsBlog requested a simple, but useful feature for Grok as it is used within Tesla vehicles.

Whole Mars requested that “Hey Grok” be used as a wake word, automatically activating the AI assistant without having to touch any buttons. Musk confirmed it is already in development and on the way to vehicles:

This feature is incredibly similar to that of “Hey Siri” with iPhones and other iOS devices. The phone will recognize your voice and hear that prompt, automatically activating Siri. Apple’s assistant will then perform whatever task it is asked to perform. It’s a simple but effective performance feature.

Grok is already getting its first reviews from owners as it rolls out to owners for the first time. It is a long time coming, too. Tesla has been hinting that Grok would be enabled in the vehicles for a while now, and it just started its initial rollout last week.

Grok is available in vehicles with the AMD chip and requires Premium Connectivity or a WiFi connection to use.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Tesla reveals key detail of Supercharger Diner, but it’s bigger than you think

Tesla has finally released one key detail about the Supercharger Diner, and it is bigger than what it appears at face-value.

Published

18 hours ago

on

July 16, 2025

By

tesla-diner-supercharger
Credit: Tesla

Tesla has revealed a key detail of its Supercharger Diner as its launch date appears to be nearing, based on what we are seeing at the site currently.

The Supercharger Diner is located on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles and was first proposed as an idea by CEO Elon Musk back in 2018. Musk envisioned a drive-in movie-style 1950s-inspired diner that would feature elements such as servers on roller skates, large movie screens, and a menu inspired by classic treats from several decades ago.

A project that first broke ground in 2023, the Supercharger Diner has been in development for over two years, as Tesla performed demolition work at the site back in February of that year.

It has slowly moved forward, and drone footage shot this week seems to show things are nearly up and running. Musk even mentioned that he had eaten at the Diner Supercharger this week.

There are still details that Tesla has yet to announce and confirm. The most important thing is regarding the menu that will be served at the diner.

Tesla has not hinted at what it will be making for patrons at the restaurant, but Musk commended the food and said the diner would be one of the coolest spots in LA.

However, we now have details on another important thing about the restaurant: the hours.

Images taken by Aaron Cash of ABetterTheater.com show the diner will be open 24/7, as it appears on the front doors of the diner:

At first thought, it seems this will operate like any other diner, as many are open for 24 hours a day. Diners typically serve large menus with numerous options, catering to the tastes and moods of anyone who walks in.

People of all walks of life eat at diners, as the food is typically affordable, tasty, and available at any hour to serve those who are night owls or those who work non-typical schedules.

However, Tesla is a bit different, and it seems that this new venture into food service could eventually transition from human servers and cooks to robots, most notably the company’s in-house project of Optimus.

It is something straight out of a Star Wars movie. I can think of Obi-Wan Kenobi visiting Dex in his diner in Attack of the Clones to figure out where a poison dart was sourced from:

Eventually, Optimus will likely be working as an employee in the Tesla Diner, and 24/7 operation will be performed by the humanoid robot that aims to eliminate trivial tasks from humans.

Continue Reading

Trending