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SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule christened ahead of operational astronaut launch debut
The long-standing tradition of astronauts naming the spacecraft that transports them safely to and from space continues ahead of SpaceX’s next crewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS).
Shortly after safely arriving in low Earth orbit during SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission to the ISS under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley revealed “Endeavour” to be the chosen name of their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. Prior to being named by its crew, the capsule had only been referred to by its internal build number, C206. The next Crew Dragon Capsule to visit the ISS, the Crew-1 mission C207 capsule, has been given the same treatment. Until now.
On Tuesday, September 29, during a full day of Crew-1 pre-mission media briefings, NASA astronaut and Commander of the Crew-1 mission, Mike Hopkins, revealed that “the Crew-1 Dragon capsule number 207 will henceforth be known by the call sign: Resilience.”
Hopkins explained that “I think all of us can agree that 2020 has been a challenging year; global pandemic, economic hardship, civil unrest, isolation. The name Resilience is really an honor of the SpaceX and the NASA teams.” He went on further to explain that the name was also chosen as a nod to all of those that have endured the difficulties, but continued to support the mission, “our families, our colleagues, our fellow citizens, our international partners, our leaders that have all showed those same characteristics through these difficult times.”
What’s in a name?
The naming of crewed spacecraft is a tradition that extends all the way back to NASA’s Mercury program. Alan Shepard, the first American in space in 1961, designated his spacecraft “Freedom 7” before its debut flight.
More notable names arose during NASA’s Apollo era of lunar exploration. With two spacecraft required for the missions to the Moon – a command module and a lunar lander – monikers were needed to distinguish between the two vehicles during radio communication. “Charlie Brown” and “Snoopy” were chosen for the spacecraft of the Apollo 10 mission. The characters of Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” have since become synonymous with NASA.
In observance of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 10, an inflatable Snoopy balloon dressed in an orange astronaut suit premiered during the 2019 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. It was a reoccurrence of the astronaut Snoopy balloon that originally debuted in 1969 celebrating Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s famous walk on the Moon during NASA’s Apollo 11 mission.
New era of spaceflight, same traditions
Hurley and Behnken designated “Endeavour” for their dragonship as a way of honoring those before them. Both Behnken and Hurley both flew to the ISS for the first time as NASA astronauts on NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour.
After the tragic loss NASA’s space shuttle “Challenger” in 1986, NASA returned to flight with the newly christened space shuttle “Endeavour” in 1992. The name was chosen to fit in-family with the other space shuttle names designated after famous historical ships that set sail to explore the great unknown. Endeavour was named after a British Royal Navy research vessel designated for the lands of Australia and New Zealand in 1768.
The command module of Apollo 15 also shares the name. Commander David Scott once explained that the named “Endeavour” was chosen to recognize the heavy scientific emphasis of the Apollo 15 mission mirroring that of the British Royal Navy research vessel of the same name.
It seemed only fitting that the first crewed vehicle to return humans to the ISS from American soil after an absence of nine years receive the honorary name “Endeavour” as well.
Although the tradition of naming the spacecraft remains, the inspiration for those names has shifted. Dragonship “Resilience” is not the only spacecraft to launch from Earth in 2020 with a name defined by a characteristic. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover launched earlier this year on its way to the Red Planet.
The name option of Perseverance was submitted, along with 28,000 other essay submissions, to be voted on by the general population. Perseverance was chosen by seventh-grader Alexander Mather. He believed the name fit in-family with the other Mars rovers currently occupying the Red Planet and that it was one of the most important characteristics missing from the line up of other inspirational names such as Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and InSight.
When Mather submitted the name, he believed it to represent a quality possessed by humans. Throughout the year 2020, the definition of the name evolved to represent the wilfulness of human nature to endure and overcome the tumultuous year of 2020. As Mather explained “we, not as a nation, but as humans will not give up. The human race will always persevere into the future.”
Dragonship “Resilience” is sure to inspire just as many as its many predecessors. “Resilience” will be the very first spacecraft to complete an operational crewed mission to the ISS for NASA’s Commerical Crew Program. It will carry NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker along with Japan Aerospace Exploration astronaut Sôichi Noguchi to the ISS. Barring any further delays, the Crew-1 “Resilience” Dragon capsule is slated to blast off atop of a SpaceX Falcon 9 at 2:40 am (0640 UTC) from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center, FL on October 31, 2020.
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Tesla has initiated Cybertruck deliveries in a new region for the first time, as the all-electric pickup has officially made its way to the United Arab Emirates, marking the newest territory to receive the polarizing truck.
Tesla launched orders for the Cybertruck in the Middle East back in September 2025, just months after the company confirmed that it planned to launch the pickup in the region, which happened in April.
I took a Tesla Cybertruck weekend Demo Drive – Here’s what I learned
By early October, Tesla launched the Cybertruck configurator in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, with pricing starting at around AED 404,900, or about $110,000 for the Dual Motor configuration.
This decision positioned the Gulf states as key early international markets, and Tesla was hoping to get the Cybertruck outside of North America for the first time, as it has still been tough to launch in other popular EV markets, like Europe and Asia.
By late 2025, Tesla had pushed delivery timelines slightly and aimed for an early 2026 delivery launch in the Middle East. The first official customer deliveries started this month, and a notable handover event occurred in Dubai’s Al Marmoom desert area, featuring a light and fire show.
Around 63 Cybertrucks made their way to customers during the event:
First @cybertruck deliveries in the UAE 🇦🇪 pic.twitter.com/sN2rAxppUA
— Tesla Europe & Middle East (@teslaeurope) January 22, 2026
As of this month, the Cybertruck still remains available for configuration on Tesla’s websites for the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Middle Eastern countries like Jordan and Israel. Deliveries are rolling out progressively, with the UAE leading as the first to see hands-on customer events.
In other markets, most notably Europe, there are still plenty of regulatory hurdles that Tesla is hoping to work through, but they may never be resolved. The issues come from the unique design features that conflict with the European Union’s (EU) stringent safety standards.
These standards include pedestrian protection regulations, which require vehicles to minimize injury risks in collisions. However, the Cybertruck features sharp edges and an ultra-hard stainless steel exoskeleton, and its rigid structure is seen as non-compliant with the EU’s list of preferred designs.
The vehicle’s gross weight is also above the 3.5-tonne threshold for standard vehicles, which has prompted Tesla to consider a more compact design. However, the company’s focus on autonomy and Robotaxi has likely pushed that out of the realm of possibility.
For now, Tesla will work with the governments that want it to succeed in their region, and the Middle East has been a great partner to the company with the launch of the Cybertruck.
Tesla has officially launched public Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a Safety Monitor in the vehicle, marking the first time the company has removed anyone from the vehicle other than the rider.
The Safety Monitor has been present in Tesla Robotaxis in Austin since its launch last June, maintaining safety for passengers and other vehicles, and was placed in the passenger’s seat.
Tesla planned to remove the Safety Monitor at the end of 2025, but it was not quite ready to do so. Now, in January, riders are officially reporting that they are able to hail a ride from a Model Y Robotaxi without anyone in the vehicle:
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla started testing this internally late last year and had several employees show that they were riding in the vehicle without anyone else there to intervene in case of an emergency.
Tesla has now expanded that program to the public. It is not active in the entire fleet, but there are a “few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors,” Ashok Elluswamy said:
Robotaxi rides without any safety monitors are now publicly available in Austin.
Starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time. https://t.co/ShMpZjefwB
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) January 22, 2026
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
The Robotaxi program also operates in the California Bay Area, where the fleet is much larger, but Safety Monitors are placed in the driver’s seat and utilize Full Self-Driving, so it is essentially the same as an Uber driver using a Tesla with FSD.
In Austin, the removal of Safety Monitors marks a substantial achievement for Tesla moving forward. Now that it has enough confidence to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis altogether, there are nearly unlimited options for the company in terms of expansion.
While it is hoping to launch the ride-hailing service in more cities across the U.S. this year, this is a much larger development than expansion, at least for now, as it is the first time it is performing driverless rides in Robotaxi anywhere in the world for the public to enjoy.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Tesla begins Cybertruck deliveries in a new region for the first time
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
