SpaceX
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to launch astronauts in July, says Russian source
A source familiar with Russia’s aerospace industry recently informed state newspaper RIA Novosti that NASA has provided Russian space agency Roscosmos with an updated planning schedule for International Space Station (ISS) operations, including a preliminary target for SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon launch with astronauts aboard.
According to RIA’s source, NASA informed Roscosmos that the agency was tentatively planning for the launch of SpaceX’s Demonstration Mission 2 (DM-2) as early as July 25th, with the spacecraft departing the ISS, reentering the atmosphere, and safely returning astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to Earth on August 5th. In a bizarre turn of events, Russian news agency TASS published a separate article barely 12 hours later, in which – once again – an anonymous space agency source told the outlet that “the [DM-2] launch of Crew Dragon is likely to be postponed to November”. For the time being, the reality likely stands somewhere in the middle.
While it’s hard not to jump to conclusions about the oddity of two wholly contradictory reports arising from similar sources in similar articles just half a day apart, it’s just as likely that the near-simultaneous publishing of both TASS and RIA stories is mainly a coincidence. At the same time, truth can be found in both comments made by the anonymous source(s), while they also offer a sort of best-case and worst-case scenario for the first crewed launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.
RIA began the series on March 22nd with a brief news blurb featuring one substantive quote from the aforementioned space industry source.
“The American side informed the Russian side that the launch of the [first crewed launch of] Dragon-2…to the ISS…is scheduled for July 25. The docking with the station is scheduled [to occur around one day later]. The separation from the ISS and return to Earth is expected on August 5,” the agency’s source said.
Put in a slightly different way, NASA informed Roscosmos that it had begun to loosely plan for the launch of SpaceX’s DM-2 no earlier than (NET) late July, much like NASA and SpaceX publicly announced that Crew Dragon’s DM-1 launch debut was scheduled NET January 17th as of early December 2018. DM-1’s actual debut wound up occurring on March 2nd, a delay of approximately six weeks. The cause(s) behind the discrepancy between NASA’s first serious planning date and the actual launch remains unknown but it’s safe to say that things took quite a bit longer than expected even after Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 were technically “go” for launch.
Although NASA and SpaceX now have the luxury of a vast cache of flight data and the practical experience derived from conducting Crew Dragon’s first – and nearly flawless – orbital launch and ISS rendezvous, Crew Dragon’s DM-2 mission remains an entirely different animal. Aside from requiring a number of significant hardware changes and introducing the visceral pressure of real human lives hanging in the balance, DM-2 will be a major first for the NASA after having spent the better part of eight years unable to launch its own astronauts into orbit.
A ‘race’ no more
Meanwhile, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft – a companion to Crew Dragon under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program – has suffered multiple setbacks in 2019, reportedly pushing the vehicle’s uncrewed launch debut from April to NET August, a delay of at least four months. As a result, nothing short of severe anomalies during Crew Dragon hardware preparation and/or NASA’s reviews of DM-1 performance and DM-2 flight-readiness could prevent SpaceX from becoming the first commercial entity to build, launch, and operate a crewed spacecraft in the history of spaceflight.
According to a December 2018 update provided during NASA’s quarterly Advisory Council meetings, the entirety of Crew Dragon DM-2’s manufacturing and integration may already be complete, with the capsule potentially heading to SpaceX’s Florida payload processing facilities later this week. NAC’s December 2018 dates did not, however, account for the DM-1 launch delays that shortly followed, plausibly impacting the completion of DM-2 integration and pad delivery to ensure that any potential anomalies experienced during Crew Dragon’s test flight could be resolved in Hawthorne, CA.
According to NASA and SpaceX, DM-2’s Crew Dragon will need to be retrofitted with thermal regulation hardware to prevent Draco thruster plumbing from freezing under a handful of specific conditions on orbit, as well as potential modifications to the craft’s parachute system and the installation of four windows instead of two. SpaceX will also need to install Crew Dragon’s first orbit-ready display and control hardware. Finally, SpaceX has opted to conduct an in-flight abort (IFA) test of Crew Dragon to verify that the spacecraft can safely carry astronauts to safety from the moment of launch to orbital insertion, a test that will have to be completed successfully and reviewed by NASA before the agency allows SpaceX to proceed with DM-2.
All of the above tasks – including major agency-wide reviews of Crew Dragon’s performance during its DM-1 debut – must be completed before SpaceX will be permitted to launch astronauts to the ISS, all of which inherently add some level of uncertainty to DM-2’s practical launch schedule. If all reviews and modifications proceed flawlessly, including a perfect in-flight abort test as early as late June, it’s possible that SpaceX and NASA could be prepared to launch Crew Dragon once more by the end of July.
In reality, it’s extremely unlikely that everything will proceed perfectly, as evidenced by the drawn-out process required for NASA and SpaceX to eventually reach flight-readiness prior to DM-1. If a significant number of challenges arise over the next few months of reviews and work, it’s not out of the question for DM-2’s launch to slip to Q4 2019 or Q1 2020. Splitting the difference, it would be safest to bet that Crew Dragon will lift off with astronauts aboard no earlier than August or September. Regardless, a great many exciting milestones are soon to come for SpaceX’s first human spaceflight program. Stay tuned as SpaceX prepares to ship the second flightworthy Crew Dragon to Florida.
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Elon Musk
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.
Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.
On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.
Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.
Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.
The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.
The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.
Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.
SpaceX officially launched the Starlink Mini 2 on November 10, delivering the first portable Starlink terminal designed around independent power.
Invitation-only preorders for select U.S. customers are priced at $999 plus tax, a figure that includes a full year of Roam Unlimited service valued at roughly $2,100. A refundable $100 deposit reserves the kit, with the balance due at shipment, expected to begin in mid-December. Broader availability is listed as coming soon.
Starlink just unveiled Mini 2, its next-gen portable dish.
Quick-swap battery, up to 4.5 hrs per charge
USB-C power
Built-in Wi-Fi
Online in about 60 secondsPreorders are open now. https://t.co/QawqgbswrQ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 10, 2026
The headline feature is the quick-swap 71 Wh battery. Clipped to the rear of the dish without tools, it delivers up to 4.5 hours of connectivity on a single charge.
The 490-gram pack includes its own USB-C port and LED indicators, so users can charge a spare separately and swap it in seconds while staying online. Starlink notes that the terminal can continue operating while the battery charges or run directly from a 60 W USB-C source. The retail box includes one battery, a 60 W USB-C charger, and a 3-meter cable.
Beyond power, the Mini 2 is thinner at 23.1 mm (versus 38.5 mm on the original Mini) while measuring 263 × 314 mm. With the battery and kickstand attached it weighs 1.6 kg.
Built-in Wi-Fi 6 expands coverage to up to 1,800 square feet, an IP67 rating protects against dust and water, and a standard 1/4-20 tripod thread plus physical power button round out the design. Field of view remains 110 degrees, and the unit retains support for mobile use.
For travelers, campers, and remote workers, the swappable battery removes the longstanding requirement for an external power bank or vehicle outlet that defined the first Mini. Spare packs sold separately further extend runtime, turning the compact terminal into a more self-contained solution.
While the bundled $999 invitation price sits well above the original Mini’s current $149 starting point, the included year of service and genuine untethered operation mark a clear step forward in portable satellite internet.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s $24B Starbase supercomputer plan slipped past a key roadblock
SpaceX wants a Starbase tax break for a $24 billion gas plant and supercomputer campus.
SpaceX is asking its own company town for a tax break on a $24 billion natural gas power plant and supercomputing facility at Starbase, Texas, and the land it picked sits just outside the reach of a data center moratorium that took effect in neighboring Brownsville last week.
A City of Starbase public hearing notice says SpaceX “proposes to construct, own, and operate a gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility” on roughly 444 acres between Boca Chica Boulevard and the Port of Brownsville. The $24 billion figure covers only the initial phases, and the notice leaves room for future expansions. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement and a related economic development agreement at a 7 p.m. hearing on December 9. The notice does not disclose the size or length of the abatement, or how much computing capacity the site would hold.
The location has a history. Over the summer, SpaceX asked Brownsville to remove the tract from its city limits and offered $220 million for water and wastewater projects in return. Brownsville approved the move in August, and Starbase later annexed the land. Brownsville’s own 90-day pause on data center applications took effect last week, and had the tract stayed inside the city, the project likely would have needed a different home.
The power side is already in front of state regulators. SpaceX has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for air permits covering 35 mobile gas turbines producing roughly 750 megawatts, according to Politico, which also noted that two of the three Starbase commissioners voting on the incentives are SpaceX executives.
Building its own plant lets SpaceX skip the Texas grid. Gov. Greg Abbott paused new data center grid connections in August pending an audit, but a facility that generates its own electricity does not need one. The air permit still has to clear the TCEQ, where Abbott also ordered a halt on data center permits.
The bigger test arrives in January. Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who unseated Abbott last week, has said she will block data center approvals until the legislature passes new protections, and she has already asked state officials to hold off on any sale of Boca Chica State Park to SpaceX until she is sworn in. Tesla and SpaceX shares both fell the day after the election, and Musk’s first reaction on X was “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”
That line points to Starmind, SpaceX’s orbital compute constellation. Musk has said terrestrial compute will be “peanuts compared to orbital compute” and expects monthly orbital deployments to pass ground deployments around the end of 2028, as Teslarati reported. Until then, SpaceX still needs gigawatts on the ground. It ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute, is targeting 2.5 to 3 GW by the end of this year and wants at least 10 GW more in 2027. Its existing Colossus sites around Memphis already run on gas turbines and face a lawsuit from residents over emissions.
Local reaction is split. The South Texas Environmental Justice Network has announced a protest, citing air quality, water use and energy bills, while some Brownsville residents told the Tribune they welcome the jobs. SpaceX did not respond to the Tribune’s questions about the project.
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Starlink Mini 2 arrives with one feature for true off-grid connectivity
