SpaceX
SpaceX given the go-ahead for Crew Dragon’s first journey into Earth orbit
NASA and SpaceX officials announced on Friday that the company is ready to conduct the first orbital launch of Crew Dragon as early as March 2nd, a demonstration that will directly precede the first crewed launch on a US rocket in more eight years.
Shortly after the news broke, NASA hosted what can only be described as an effusive press conference in which typically reserved officials like Bill Gerstenmaier and Kathy Lueders discussed the Commercial Crew Program milestone. Above all else, they reported no glaring concerns and rather unequivocally echoed the affirmation that SpaceX, NASA, Falcon 9, and Crew Dragon are all ready and eager to get to orbit. SpaceX now aims to roll the spacecraft and rocket out to the launch pad – Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A – on Thursday, February 28th, roughly 48 hours before T-0.
The Demo-1 Flight Readiness Review has concluded. The Board set March 2 at 2:48 a.m. EST as the official launch date for @SpaceX's flight to @Space_Station. #LaunchAmerica https://t.co/2DIJ99guG2 pic.twitter.com/86lV29gVNS
— NASA Commercial Crew (@Commercial_Crew) February 22, 2019
Relative to any number of recent NASA press conferences, the mood in the conference hall following the joint NASA-SpaceX Flight Readiness Review (FRR) was one of obvious relief and elation, marked particularly by heaps of praise and rare personal segues from Mr. Gerstenmaier (associate NASA administrator of Human Exploration and Operations) and Ms. Lueders, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager.
“We’re go for launch, we’re go for docking, and we’ll work through [one minor ISS partner concern] next week. But again, just a phenomenal review today … It’s great being back here again [and] starting to get that feeling of launching again and getting ready to go fly.” – Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA HEOMD, 02/22/19

“Right now, [we] do not have any open, joint risks [present on] this mission. It’s been part of our FRR process, and it was the reason why I could tell Mr. Gerstenmaier … that we [are] ready to go fly.” – Kathy Lueders, NASA CCP, 02/22/19
SpaceX Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability Hans Koenigsmann was equally enthusiastic about the completed review, describing his firm belief that – regardless of any delays it may have caused – the Crew Dragon spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket would ultimately be the best they could be as a result of the constant back-and-forth between NASA and SpaceX engineers and analysts.
The main mission objectives for DM-1: pic.twitter.com/i5rCKSQEDP
— SpaceXUpdates (@SpaceXUpdates) February 22, 2019
Aside from the encouraging FRR and follow-up press conference, SpaceX and NASA are reportedly planning on making the hosted webcast of Crew Dragon’s inaugural launch something fairly spectacular. While no specifics were given, this would come as no surprise knowing SpaceX’s past history of exceptional launch webcasts combined with CEO Elon Musk’s equal affinity to spectacular events. According to Koenigsmann, Crew Dragon will be outfitted with a mannequin (effectively an aerospace-grade crash test dummy) dressed in one of SpaceX’s in-house spacesuits, a globally-recognizable icon thanks to the widespread popularity of Falcon Heavy’s launch debut and special payload.
“The only work between now and launch is what we would consider standard work and [the] standard close-out of activities moving forward. So that shows you that we’re fully ready to go do this DM-1 flight next Saturday.” – Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA HEOMD, 02/22/19
The spacecraft will also apparently be nearly identical to DM-2’s Crew Dragon, the first vehicle that will fly with astronauts onboard. As such, it will presumably be outfitted with everything a crew of astronauts would need, including seats, a functioning control panel/display, lighting, and the general fit and finish of an interior ready to support a human presence for multiple days straight. Live camera views of both Starmannequin and out of Crew Dragon’s windows will thus be par for the course, among many other unique perspectives. SpaceX will also offer a rare hosted webcast for Crew Dragon’s arrival and docking at the International Space Station, scheduled roughly 24 hours after launch, an event that could potentially include exceptionally rare feeds from Dragon’s own onboard cameras.
Regardless, this is an event you do not want to miss. If all goes well during the Feb. 27 launch readiness review (LRR) and Falcon 9’s subsequent roll-out to Pad 39A, SpaceX will attempt its first Crew Dragon launch at 2:49 am EST (07:49 UTC) March 2nd.
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News
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
SpaceX’s Crew-13 Dragon reached the ISS in under eight hours, and NASA confirmed a record.
SpaceX now owns every spot on the list of the five fastest trips a U.S. spacecraft has ever made to the International Space Station, and its newest entry beat the old mark by more than four hours.
Crew Dragon Grace docked to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:05 p.m. ET on October 1, just 7 hours and 55 minutes after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. NASA confirmed the milestone in a space station blog update, writing that the flight “marked the fastest launch‑to‑docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the history of the International Space Station.”
The previous U.S. record also belonged to Dragon. SpaceX’s uncrewed CRS-31 cargo mission reached the station in a little over 12 hours in November 2024. The fastest crewed trip before last week was Crew-11, which took 14 hours and 43 minutes in August 2025, according to Space.com.
A post that Elon Musk reposted on Monday filled out the rest of the ranking. Behind Crew-13, CRS-31 and Crew-11 sit Axiom’s Ax-2 mission at 15 hours and 35 minutes and NASA’s Crew-4 at 15 hours and 44 minutes. All five flew on Dragon.
SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest
Crew-13 carried NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. NASA had projected a docking around 8 p.m. ET, as Teslarati reported the day before launch, and Dragon arrived nearly an hour early. Our launch day coverage noted that the flight was lined up to be the quickest Crew Dragon transit yet.
The speed came from timing more than hardware. SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman said the station “was in an opportune spot in space,” which let Dragon start closing the gap almost immediately after reaching orbit. “This is close to the fastest it could be,” she added. Most Crew Dragon flights still take close to a day, using a series of Draco thruster burns to raise and phase their orbit before arrival.
Dragon’s next job at the station is a departure. NASA said Monday it is targeting 8:05 a.m. ET on Wednesday, October 7, for Crew-12 to undock, setting up a splashdown off the coast of California around 11:34 a.m. on Thursday. Clearing that port makes room for CRS-35, a cargo Dragon carrying the final set of iROSA solar arrays.
Dragon remains NASA’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner stays grounded, and the agency recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming
Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.
Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.
In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”
The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”
Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner
SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.
Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.
The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.
It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”
The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.