News
SpaceX Crew Dragon In-Flight Abort test gets its first firm launch date
The day after questions arose around the targeted launch date of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon In-Flight Abort test (IFA), SpaceX and NASA have officially set the date for the spacecraft’s next major flight test.
On Friday, December 6th, a NASA Commercial Crew Program blog post confirmed a NET date of Saturday, January 4th, 2020 for the IFA test. The IFA test is one of the most notable final steps to be completed by the Crew Dragon capsule prior to supporting crewed astronaut flight to the International Space Station in 2020 as a part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Following an apparent incorrect statement made during SpaceX’s CRS-19 webcast that identified a February 2020 target date of the IFA test, SpaceX provided re-assurance that teams were very much still working toward a NET December launch date.
A January 4th date falls just short of SpaceX’s December goal but it still comes as little surprise. In addition to this week’s CRS-19 launch, SpaceX aims to support two more launches prior to year’s end – an internal mission to launch 60 more Starlink satellites and the launch of the JCSAT 18/Kacific 1 communications satellite for customers SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. of Japan and Kacific Broadband Satellites of Singapore. While completing four Falcon 9 launches and landings in a period of less than four weeks is certainly possible for SpaceX, it was rather ambitious, especially given that Crew Dragon’s abort test is almost certainly the company’s preeminent priority.
The targeted January launch date now encroaches into the first quarter of 2020, which SpaceX has adamantly stated is also the goal for Crew Dragon’s first NASA astronaut launch, known as Demo-2. With the IFA test now NET January 4th, it will be a major challenge for NASA and SpaceX to turn around and prepare Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 for Demo-2 just 4-12 weeks later. Of note, Boeing is preparing its own Starliner spacecraft for an uncrewed launch test NET December 20th and has also claimed that it wants to launch a crewed flight test (CFT, akin to SpaceX Demo-2) as early as February 2020, same as SpaceX.
It’s extremely unlikely that NASA will be able to preserve both of those schedules given the Commercial Crew Program’s fixed workforce and the vast quantity of paperwork it must complete before the agency can give the go-ahead for SpaceX and Boeing astronaut launches.
Unsurprisingly, the blog post confirmed that the IFA test would launch from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A). Pad 39A is the same facility that previously supported Crew Dragon’s March 2019 Demo-1 launch debut and is the only pad SpaceX intends to launch Crew Dragon from.
Interestingly, Pad 39A is also an active construction site – SpaceX is in the midst of building a new launch mount and modifying existing facilities to support future launches of SpaceX’s next-generation Starship vehicle. Construction has been underway for a few months and is situated directly beside Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy’s exiting launch mount.
Although that construction will not be allowed to interfere with Crew Dragon launch activity, including the IFA test, construction on the Starship mount will likely be impacted. Construction crews will undoubtedly be expected to evacuate the area surrounding the launchpad during any Falcon 9 static fire test or launch, likely translating to a few days to a few weeks of downtime depending on how SpaceX handles the scheduling.
As 2019 comes to a close, SpaceX remains determined to launch Crew Dragon’s IFA test as quickly as is safely possible. If all goes perfectly during the upcoming abort test, SpaceX says it is seriously targeting Crew Dragon’s biggest test yet – its inaugural astronaut launch – less than two months later in February 2020. It should go without saying that that schedule is incredibly ambitious and highly liable to slip in March or Q2, but if the ambition is there, SpaceX believes it is technically possible.
For now, we have less than a month to wait for Crew Dragon’s next launch milestone and perhaps just 2-3 weeks before the spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket roll out to Pad 39A to prepare for a routine static fire test.
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Tesla is starting to truly tease and hype its groundbreaking Cybercab event, which takes place tomorrow in Austin, Texas. It will be the first time members of the public will be able to ride in a Cybercab, a vehicle without any manual controls, on public roads.
Tesla has been dropping some hype on X over the past several days, but this morning, the excitement has truly started to build up for the event. Although Cybercab has been unveiled before, this is truly Tesla’s announcement that it is ready to start offering autonomous rides for public passengers in its new ride-hailing-geared vehicle for the first time.
The hype has started with a variety of different social media posts that are a true indication that Tesla is preparing for something big. Teasing so much of the potential of Cybercab, including its ability to truly revolutionize how people hail rides for local travel, is what the big idea for the event entails. The time that many Tesla owners, fans, and investors have been waiting for is potentially here:
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 2, 2026
The event has remained slim on details. Even invitees are still awaiting true details about what the event will entail, where they’ll go, and what is in store for the evening. This is pretty typical for an event run by Tesla; they keep things under wraps for the most part until the very last minute.
However, there is no secret about what the real intention of Tesla is for this event: it is going to be a huge reveal party for a vehicle that has no steering wheel and no pedals. It is a truly massive step for the company moving forward.
No steering wheel, no pedals
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) September 2, 2026
Speculation persists as to whether this is going to be an event that simply announces that rides will begin with the Cybercab, or it will be something more substantial. Tesla has said in the past that they plan to sell the Cybercab to the general public in what could become a great way to earn passive income by adding it to a more global fleet of Robotaxi-geared vehicles.
Tomorrow, the show begins in Austin, and the Cybercab goes live at some capacity; we just don’t know exactly how quite yet.
News
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
SpaceX filed with the FCC for Starship Flight 14, its first true orbital launch attempt.
SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to fly Starlink terminals during Starship’s fourteenth flight test, and the filing lays out a genuine trip to orbit, something the program has never attempted.
Every Starship flight so far, including Flight 13’s successful splashdown in the Indian Ocean on July 24, has flown a suborbital arc that ends with the ship reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launches. The FCC paperwork describes a mission profile built around an actual orbital insertion instead.
The payload is the other half of the story. Flight 13 carried 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, but because that mission never reached orbit, the satellites reentered along with the ship rather than joining the constellation, something Teslarati covered in detail after SpaceX released footage shot from one of those satellites as it drifted away from Starship in space. Flight 14 is designed to close that gap. If the orbital insertion holds, the roughly 20 V3 satellites onboard would separate into an operational orbit and could eventually go into service, each one rated for about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity by SpaceX’s own account.
SpaceX announces new Starbase for ‘thousands of Starship launches annually’
Elon Musk first flagged the orbital attempt during SpaceX’s August 4 earnings call, the company’s first as a public entity following its June IPO under the ticker SPCX. He also floated catching the ship with the Starbase tower on the same flight, an idea he walked back on August 20, saying the catch attempt would more likely come “in a few months,” as Teslarati reported at the time. Flight 14 will instead target a splashdown for the ship in the Indian Ocean, the same recovery method used since Flight 12.
Hardware has been catching up to the ambition. Booster 21 completed a full 33-engine static fire on August 28, and Ship 41 finished its own six-engine test the week before. An airspace briefing circulated to pilots on August 20 listed September 15 as the target date, later than the end of August window Musk mentioned on the earnings call, though SpaceX has not confirmed a launch date publicly and Starship schedules routinely slip while hardware and FAA paperwork line up.
The FCC filing itself does not guarantee a launch date. It covers communications authority, and not flight readiness, considering SpaceX still needs Ship 41 fully stacked and cleared by the FAA before Flight 14 can fly. But the filing is a real marker of intent and it puts a specific regulatory process behind what had so far only been Musk’s word on the earnings call.
Tesla is set to launch Cybercab on Thursday at an event in Austin, Texas, which will officially bring the company’s first steering wheel-less and pedal-less vehicle to a limited number of consumers for the first time.
The event, which is invite-only, is still thin on details: we’ll be there, and it seems the event will be held at Gigafactory Texas, but the launch of this vehicle truly relies on it being operational outside of the factory and on public roads.
🚨 Close-Up look at Tesla Cybercab without steering wheel: pic.twitter.com/9TXCDeDCz7
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 3, 2026
Nevertheless, there are some big things to expect, and other things to temper expectations on. For what it’s worth, we believe this event could be perhaps the biggest indication that Tesla is ready to truly enter a new phase and chapter in its historic story.
Tesla Cybercab’s First Foray into the Public with Real-World Riders
Cybercab will likely hit the streets of Austin and the surrounding areas, likely in the established geofence that Tesla has expanded on for the past 14 months. Just yesterday, Tesla expanded it once again by 9 percent.
Tesla will put, for the first time, a vehicle without any manual controls on public roads, likely without any help from teleoperators. This is a truly groundbreaking development if it comes through in this fashion: it would be groundbreaking for Tesla to roll out a truly driverless ride-hailing vehicle.
Cybercab Has Already Been Unveiled
This is not an unveiling event. Cybercab has been released for nearly two years, as Tesla first showed it to the public on October 10, 2024.
FIRST LOOK: Tesla ‘Cybercab’ Robotaxi makes its global debut
While there is some small speculation that Tesla could release the Roadster at the event as a surprise, it seems more likely the focus will be on the Cybercab and the huge accomplishment that will come with releasing a vehicle with no manual controls.
There Will Be a Lot of Hype
What’s important to remember about the Cybercab event is that Tesla will continue to prioritize safety and the rollout will likely be slow, just as it has been with Robotaxi.
One of the biggest complaints about Robotaxi is vehicle population, and the fact that the wait for a ride, at least in some instances, has been longer than most want to admit.
It will take time for this project to truly scale. It will take time for Tesla to roll this out in a large fashion. The important thing to note is that they are doing it, and they’re doing it with a vehicle that is completely engineered and built internally. That’s something no other ride-hailing service can say.
Tesla starts teasing and hyping groundbreaking Cybercab event
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
