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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut mission officially extended by NASA
With less than a month to go before NASA’s first crewed launch in nearly a decade, the space agency is still mulling over the details. On May 27, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will strap into their Crew Dragon spacecraft and blast off towards the International Space Station. During their stay, the duo will assist fellow NASA astronaut, Chris Cassidy, in maintaining the station as well as conducting several research experiments.
But how long the duo will remain on the station is still up in the air. NASA held a series of briefings on Friday, May 1, detailing the historic mission and how it would work. Hurley and Behnken will launch from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 4:32 p.m. EDT (20:32 UTC), and dock with the space station 24 hours later.
The exact length of that mission will be determined during their time in space. “It is a trade-off,” Kirk Shireman, NASA ISS program manager said during the news briefing, “between getting the spacecraft back quickly to complete its certification and providing additional crew time on the station for maintenance and research.”
The Demo-2 mission is a test flight. NASA and SpaceX will be using the mission to certify the Crew Dragon spacecraft for regular use to and from the station. So during this flight, the crew will try their hands at manual control and will test and monitor on boars systems during the significant phases of flight: launch, on orbit, and during re-entry.
Once the vehicle has completed its objectives successfully, it will be certified for a crewed flight. Currently, SpaceX is nearing completion on the next Dragon spacecraft, which will ferry four astronauts to the station for a long-duration mission. During the news briefings, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell announced that the spacecraft for that mission is nearing completion and should arrive in Florida in the next couple of months.
Shireman said that the length of the Demo-2 mission was directly tied to that vehicle’s progress. “What we would like to do, from a station perspective, is to keep them on orbit as long as we can until that Crew-1 vehicle is just about ready to go, bring Demo-2 home, allow that certification work to be completed and launch Crew-1,” he said.
Steve Stich, NASA’s deputy manager of the commercial crew program, said that at minimum, the DM-2 crew would stay on orbit about a month. Their maximum stay would be no more than 119 days, due to the potential degradation of the Dragon spacecraft’s solar panels.
Solar panels are how spacecraft get their power while on orbit, and the sensitive components within the hardware degrade over time thanks to the harshness of the space environment. While it’s on orbit, ground control teams will “wake up” the spacecraft once a week to perform health checks and test the solar array’s performance.
“We would like to fly a mission that is as long as we need to for a test flight, but also support some of the space station program needs,” Stitch said.
Originally, Behnken and Hurley were expected to have a much shorter time on orbit. However, NASA officials said they started to explore the possibility of extending their mission six months ago to ensure there were enough astronauts onboard the space station to keep the orbital outpost in top shape. This year the agency is celebrating 20 years of continuous human presence on the space station, and NASA would like to ensure its continuation into the future.
To that end, Behnken and Hurley have spent significant time training to refresh themselves on station systems as well as prepare the potential spacewalks. A new shipment of batteries is scheduled to arrive on station a few days before Behnken and Hurley, and it’s possible that Behnken could be asked to conduct a spacewalk, along with Chris Cassidy.
The top priority for Behnken and Hurley will be to thoroughly check out the Crew Dragon’s systems, followed closely by relieving Chris Cassidy. “There’s a lot of work and activity that can be done in the U.S. segment; certainly more than one person can accomplish on their own,” Behnken explained during a later briefing.
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Tesla Giga Berlin plant manager faces defamation probe after IG Metall union complaint
Prosecutors in Frankfurt (Oder) confirmed they have opened a defamation probe into Gigafactory Berlin plant manager André Thierig.
Tesla’s Giga Berlin plant manager is now under investigation after a complaint from trade union IG Metall, escalating tensions ahead of next month’s works council elections.
Prosecutors in Frankfurt (Oder) confirmed they have opened a defamation probe into Gigafactory Berlin plant manager André Thierig, as per a report from rbb24.
A spokesperson for the Frankfurt (Oder) public prosecutor’s office confirmed to the German Press Agency that an investigation for defamation has been initiated following a criminal complaint filed by IG Metall against Thierig.
The dispute stems from Tesla’s allegation that an IG Metall representative secretly recorded a works council meeting using a laptop. In a post on X, Thierig described the incident as “truly beyond words,” stating that police were called and a criminal complaint was filed.
“What has happened today at Giga Berlin is truly beyond words! An external union representative from IG Metall attended a works council meeting. For unknown reasons, he recorded the internal meeting and was caught in action! We obviously called police and filed a criminal complaint!” Thierig wrote in a post on X.
Police later confirmed that officers did seize a computer belonging to an IG Metall member at Giga Berlin. Prosecutors are separately investigating the union representative on suspicion of breach of confidentiality and violation of Germany’s Works Constitution Act.
IG Metall has denied Tesla’s allegations. The union claimed that its member offered to unlock the laptop for review in order to accelerate the investigation and counter what it called false accusations. The union has also sought a labor court injunction to “prohibit Thierig from further disseminating false claims.”
The clash comes as Tesla employees prepare to vote in works council elections scheduled for March 2–4, 2026. Approximately 11,000 Giga Berlin workers are eligible to participate in the elections.
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Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The decision grants Tesla a waiver that allows the Cybercab’s wireless charging system to be installed on fixed outdoor equipment.
Tesla has received approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to use Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio technology in its wireless EV charging system.
The decision grants Tesla a waiver that allows the Cybercab’s wireless charging system to be installed on fixed outdoor equipment. This effectively clears a regulatory hurdle for the company’s planned wireless charging pad for the autonomous two-seater.
Tesla’s wireless charging system is described as follows in the document: “The Tesla positioning system is an impulse UWB radio system that enables peer-to-peer communications between a UWB transceiver installed on an electric vehicle (EV) and a second UWB transceiver installed on a ground-level pad, which could be located outdoors, to achieve optimal positioning for the EV to charge wirelessly.”
The company explained that Bluetooth is first used to locate the charging pad. “Prior to the UWB operation, the vehicular system uses Bluetooth technology for the vehicle to discover the location of the ground pad and engage in data exchange activities (which is not subject to the waiver).”
Once the vehicle approaches the pad, the UWB system briefly activates. “When the vehicle approaches the ground pad, the UWB transceivers will operate to track the position of the vehicle to determine when the optimal position has been achieved over the pad before enabling wireless power charging.”
Tesla also emphasized that “the UWB signals occur only briefly when the vehicle approaches the ground pad; and mostly at ground level between the vehicle and the pad,” and that the signals are “significantly attenuated by the body of the vehicle positioned over the pad.”
As noted by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, the FCC ultimately granted Tesla’s proposal since the Cybercab’s wireless charging system’s signal is very low power, it only turns on briefly while parking, it works only at very short range, and it won’t interfere with other systems.
While the approval clears the way for Tesla’s wireless charging plans, the Cybercab does not appear to depend solely on the new system.
Cybercab prototypes have frequently been spotted charging at standard Tesla Superchargers across the United States. This suggests the vehicle can easily operate within Tesla’s existing charging network even as the wireless system is developed and deployed. With this in mind, it would not be surprising if the first batches of the Cybercab that are deployed and delivered to consumers end up being charged by regular Superchargers.
Elon Musk
Tesla posts updated FSD safety stats as owners surpass 8 billion miles
Tesla shared the milestone as adoption of the system accelerates across several markets.
Tesla has posted updated safety stats for Full Self-Driving Supervised. The results were shared by the electric vehicle maker as FSD Supervised users passed more than 8 billion cumulative miles.
Tesla shared the milestone in a post on its official X account.
“Tesla owners have now driven >8 billion miles on FSD Supervised,” the company wrote in its post on X. Tesla also included a graphic showing FSD Supervised’s miles driven before a collision, which far exceeds that of the United States average.
The growth curve of FSD Supervised’s cumulative miles over the past five years has been notable. As noted in data shared by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, annual FSD (Supervised) miles have increased from roughly 6 million in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and 4.25 billion in 2025. In just the first 50 days of 2026, Tesla owners logged another 1 billion miles.
At the current pace, the fleet is trending towards hitting about 10 billion FSD Supervised miles this year. The increase has been driven by Tesla’s growing vehicle fleet, periodic free trials, and expanding Robotaxi operations, among others.
Tesla also recently updated the safety data for FSD Supervised on its website, covering North America across all road types over the latest 12-month period.
As per Tesla’s figures, vehicles operating with FSD Supervised engaged recorded one major collision every 5,300,676 miles. In comparison, Teslas driven manually with Active Safety systems recorded one major collision every 2,175,763 miles, while Teslas driven manually without Active Safety recorded one major collision every 855,132 miles. The U.S. average during the same period was one major collision every 660,164 miles.
During the measured period, Tesla reported 830 total major collisions with FSD (Supervised) engaged, compared to 16,131 collisions for Teslas driven manually with Active Safety and 250 collisions for Teslas driven manually without Active Safety. Total miles logged exceeded 4.39 billion miles for FSD (Supervised) during the same timeframe.
Tesla Giga Berlin plant manager faces defamation probe after IG Metall union complaint
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
