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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.
Tesla Cybercab is using a unique strategy for picking up the correct rider, which is a crucial part of ride-hailing to ensure people end up in the right place and are charged the correct price.
Cybercab will utilize an RGB strip in its front light bar that will illuminate in a variety of different colors to mark itself.
This identifying mark will also appear in the Robotaxi app, giving riders in the same location a notable distinction in an effort to avoid any confusion regarding who should get in each vehicle.
🚨 Tesla is using different light bar colors to help riders understand which vehicle is theirs
Pretty cool strategy pic.twitter.com/eGMpEMeRpc
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 27, 2026
Other ride-hailing services use similar strategies: Lyft and Uber rides are recognizable through driver identity, vehicle type and color, as well as license plate. Waymo will display the rider’s initials on top of the vehicle, letting them know that the specific vehicle for them has arrived.
Tesla’s strategy is unique and interesting, but there are some flaws. Cybercab’s main purpose is aimed toward being an autonomous ride for all, including those who have disabilities like being blind or even color blind.
Tesla will likely have something in the pipeline for those who cannot see colors or have limited vision. There will definitely be multiple ways to identify which vehicle is the one that “you” specifically ordered.
Cybercab is set to start giving public rides next Thursday, September 3, in Austin, as it announced a dedicated event last week and invited many members of the Tesla community.
Additionally, members of the public will be invited as well. Tesla has been offering employee rides in Cybercab for nearly two months.
Tesla has said goodbye to one customization option for its vehicles: the wrap service it launched several years ago.
After launching an in-house wrap service in August 2020 for the first time in China. In the U.S., it launched in October 2023. Tesla continued to expand the program and adjust it with better pricing and fewer options for the Cybertruck.
By December 2023, it was giving owners of the Model 3, Model Y, and the Cybertruck the opportunity to give their vehicle a fresh look with a vinyl wrap.
Tesla revamps in-house vinyl wrap service with better pricing
It was only available in five locations: Costa Mesa, Oceanside, Santa Clara, West Covina, all in California, and Seattle, Washington.
However, Tesla made some big adjustments to its shop, and the wrap service is officially gone:
Tesla has made a LOT of changes to its online shop recently — price increases, price cuts, new options, and several products being removed entirely.
Some of the biggest increases are wheel covers. 👀
📈 PRICE INCREASES
• 2017-2023 | Model 3 Aero Wheel Cover — Style: Refresh…— Phoenix Self-Driving 🐦🔥 (@PhoenixFSD) August 25, 2026
Wraps are very popular across the Tesla lineup, especially since the company offers relatively few colors. Many choose to wrap their Teslas with interesting colors, patterns, or even finishes, turning their cars from glossy to satin or matte.
However, Tesla’s wrap service was so limited geographically that it never really had a chance to get off the ground or compete with local shops. Every area in the United States is now overflowing with detailing shops, mobile detailers, and other automotive specialists, many of whom perform wrap services.
Tesla’s service was confined to the Pacific time zone and only spanned across two states. It was never going to be something Tesla was a major competitor in, nor was it going to disrupt the wrapping industry. Now that the program has ended, it seems pretty ideal to believe it was always going to be a short-term thing.
Along with the wrap service, Tesla removed several other products, but nothing too crazy. The Model 3 Door Pocket and Cupholder Liners, the Model S 19″ Magnetite Wheel and Winter Tire Package, Model X/Y Ski/Snowboard Carrier for Hitch Rack, Tesla’s Electric Summer Party Tee, and the Electric Summer Tee were the other items the company totally eliminated from its online shop.
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Tesla Robotaxi fleet gets a brain upgrade ahead of Cybercab launch event
Tesla’s Robotaxi service now runs longer hours nationwide as its unsupervised fleet quietly grows larger.
Tesla’s Robotaxi service just got easier to catch, with the company’s official Robotaxi account noting that rides are now available from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, across its operating footprint. The account also said its unsupervised fleet is “a lot bigger” than before, though without specifics. The bigger change is what Tesla says upgraded intelligence in vehicle distribution and routing is what’s actually cutting wait times, not a new Full Self-Driving version.
While Tesla did not name the team behind the upgrade, the language points to its AI and fleet software group rather than the driving stack itself. Vehicle distribution and routing in Robotaxi has functioned mostly as a dispatch problem with the software deciding which idle car goes to which rider, and how far it has to travel to get there. “Upgraded intelligence” suggests a smarter version of that dispatch logic, likely using demand forecasting to position idle cars near where riders are about to request them rather than reacting once a request comes in. Tesla’s AI division has built similar prediction systems for other parts of the business, including the neural networks that power FSD itself, so applying that same approach to fleet logistics would be a natural extension rather than a new discipline for the team.
Robotaxi now runs 6am to 10pm, 7 days/week
Unsupervised fleet is a lot bigger
Also, upgraded intelligence in vehicle distribution & routing means you wait less pic.twitter.com/UFZ4bqg2dZ
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) August 26, 2026
Tesla is also about a week away from a separate robotaxi milestone. The company plans to launch Cybercab, its purpose built two seat robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, in Austin on September 3. Cybercab has been giving employees rides on public and private roads for weeks, and the September event is expected to fold those vehicles into the existing Robotaxi fleet within days of the launch.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
Austin previously ran Robotaxi from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. as of last September, a schedule set before the service expanded into Dallas, Houston, Miami, Tampa, Orlando and the Bay Area. Wednesday’s post did not specify whether that extended overnight window still applies in Austin specifically or whether 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. is now the standard across every market. Tesla’s post, visible on its official Robotaxi account, framed the change simply as fewer riders waiting around for a car.
Whether the wider hours hold once Cybercab enters the fleet next week is the next thing worth watching. Tesla has tended to expand Robotaxi in increments, first geofence, then hours, then fleet size, and each step so far has arrived without much advance notice.
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Tesla Cybercab uses a unique strategy for picking up the right rider
