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SpaceX Crew Dragon astronauts are chasing the space station around Earth
The morning of SpaceX’s most prolific launch – the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission – began with one question on the mind of many, why did the Falcon 9 rocket have just one second, and one second only, to launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS)? A simplified answer is orbital mechanics and a carefully planned out 19 hour trip around the planet.
Richard Angle for Teslarati)
The launch of the Falcon 9 was a highly anticipated moment, however, it was easily the most familiar part of the Demo-2 mission. Leading up to Demo-2, SpaceX had successfully launched twenty-eight Block 5 Falcon 9 boosters – the same type of booster that the Crew Dragon carrying Behnken and Hurley would launch on. The landing of the Falcon 9 on the autonomous spaceport drone ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean was also a familiar process that SpaceX had completed successfully a number of times.
Even the Crew Dragon capsule had a launch and mission to the space station under its belt, however, launching astronauts aboard the capsule had yet to be attempted, let alone done successfully. The least familiar part of the mission was what Crew Dragon and its occupants had to achieve once free of the Earth’s gravity well.
Once past launch and separation from the Falcon 9 first stage booster, Crew Dragon would separate from the Falcon 9 second stage, enter an initial orbit, and proceed to spend the next nineteen hours chasing the ISS around the planet. The capsule had to perform a series of burns to lift its orbit high enough to match that of the ISS for autonomous docking nineteen hours later. During the trip, Behnken and Hurley had a series of items to check off prior to initiating their crew sleep aboard Crew Dragon. A few of the items included doffing – or taking off – their SpaceX pressure suits, hosting a brief media opportunity explaining the name “Endeavour” chosen for their capsule as well as the zero-G indicator named “Tremor” chosen to ride along with them and eat their first meal in space.
The Crew Dragon also had a few jobs of its own to complete. Crew and capsule would spend about two hours performing 3 different burns of the sixteen Draco thrusters outfitted all around the Crew Dragon’s outer shell. The first phasing burn was needed to insert it into the correct orbit, followed a little while later by a boost burn to raise the capsule’s orbit even more. And lastly, a close coelliptic burn to flatten out the orbit around the Earth making it more elliptical, rather than circular matching that of the ISS. These three burns were completed while the crew was awake performing any necessary tasks. Two more burns remained to be completed, but those would need to occur much closure to docking with the ISS, one while the crew slept and one just before autonomous docking procedures were set to begin.
The fourth burn – a transfer burn – is intended to raise the capsule the final ten meters in orbital space to match that of the ISS. This burn will allow the capsule to begin its final approach toward the station. It will be completed by the SpaceX mission control ground station in Hawthorne, California while the crew sleeps. It will be a gentle burn of the Dracos lasting less than a minute.
The capsule will then burn the Draco thrusters once more for the final coelliptic burn matching its orbit directly with the ISS. At this time, the crew aboard both the Crew Dragon capsule and space station will be awake for a full day of work including the meticulous process of autonomously docking the capsule to the ISS, the opening of the hatch of Crew Dragon, and welcoming Behnken and Hurley aboard the station as members of the Expedition 63 crew.
Crew Dragon is expected to meet up with the ISS nineteen hours after liftoff. Docking with the station is set to occur on Sunday, May 31st around 10:30 am EDT/14:30 UTC. Behnken and Hurley will be welcomed aboard the station during a traditional crew welcoming ceremony that should occur about two hours after docking has been confirmed.
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
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Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
Tesla ended its Semi event with a Roadster teaser revealing a new front light bar.
Tesla closed out its Semi event in Nevada on Thursday night with a nod to its own history, dropping a short Roadster teaser that suggests the production car will look noticeably different from the prototype first shown in 2017.
“We can’t have a Semi event without the Roadster,” Tesla engineering executive Lars Moravy told the crowd before the clip played. The line was a deliberate callback. Tesla first revealed the next generation Roadster in November 2017 by driving it out of the back of a Semi trailer at the truck’s original unveiling in Hawthorne, California.
The new video opens on trailer doors swinging apart in the dark. A thin white light bar glows across what appears to be the nose of the car, Tesla and SpaceX logos flash over the frame, and the Roadster name appears before the clip ends on “See you next week.” Tesla posted the nine second clip on X after the livestream wrapped.
See you next week pic.twitter.com/BT52bGVxFu
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 25, 2026
The light bar is the most concrete design detail so far. The 2017 prototype used two separate curved headlamp pods, while a connected front light strip would bring the Roadster in line with the Cybertruck, Cybercab, Semi, and refreshed Model Y. Sawyer Merritt was among the first to point out what looked like part of a SpaceX logo in the video, something Tesla has not addressed.
That logo fits the buildup around the optional SpaceX Package, which Elon Musk has long said would use cold gas thrusters to improve acceleration and possibly allow the car to briefly leave the ground. Tesla’s “Go for launch” post on September 12 set the October 1 date, and invitations sent to reservation holders place the event in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Waco sits roughly 20 minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA has put a temporary flight restriction in place from September 18 through October 2, covering a 1.5 nautical mile radius from the surface up to 10,000 feet.
Tesla is also taking money ahead of the reveal. The company reopened Roadster reservations earlier this week with a $5,000 refundable card payment, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. That puts buyers at $50,000 committed before Tesla has published a price.
The original pitch set a high bar: 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds before any upgrades, 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and production in 2020. That timeline has slipped repeatedly, and Tesla has since pointed to production at Gigafactory Texas no earlier than 2027. The company has said next Thursday’s event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets, the three details original reservation holders have been waiting on for nearly nine years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s release in Europe is set to be delayed by at least a few months.
The European Union will not vote on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on October 6. The draft agenda for the 119th meeting of the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles lists only a 25-minute “continuation of discussions” on the Netherlands’ Article 39 request, not a decision. The next scheduled TCMV session is in December, which is now the earliest date a bloc-wide vote could occur.
Tesla Europe had pointed to October 6 as a possible EU-wide vote after the Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted the first European type approval on April 10.
That approval, under UN Regulation 171 plus an Article 39 exemption in EU Regulation 2018/858, is the legal file other member states have been recognizing one by one. The same committee has already discussed the request twice without voting.
Elon Musk’s reply to the delay was a single word: “Sigh.”
Sigh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2026
Seven EU countries have now cleared FSD Supervised on their own roads: the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia. Those seven states represent about 53 million people, or roughly 12 percent of the EU population. An EU-wide authorization still needs a qualified majority: at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population, about 292 million people.
Germany, France, Italy, and Spain remain the decisive markets. France has already rejected the current system; several other governments have flagged speed-limit compliance as the main sticking point.
The safety case Tesla is putting in front of those governments is now public. On September 1, Tesla Europe said FSD Supervised was in use by more than 70,000 customers, covering over 1 million kilometers a day, and was 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on EU public roads.
An earlier mid-year cut of the same fleet data, covering 65 million kilometers in five approved countries, put the collision advantage at 5.2 times, with zero highway collisions over 41.9 million kilometers. Tesla also reported far fewer automatic emergency braking events, harsh accelerations, and hard swerves than in comparable manual Tesla driving. Those figures are company-reported, not independently audited.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is taking over Europe: fourth country gets FSD approval
The public-health backdrop is harder to dispute. European countries recorded about 19,400 road deaths in 2025, or roughly 53 a day, most of them attributed to human error. FSD Supervised is not unsupervised autonomy; the driver remains legally responsible. But the software is already legal and in daily use across seven member states.
Until TCMV votes, the rest of the EU remains a patchwork: available in Prague and Amsterdam, locked behind review in Paris and Berlin. December is now the next chance to close that gap.
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
