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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon just became America’s longest-lived astronaut spaceship
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has officially become the longest-lived American astronaut spacecraft ever built, beating an 84-day record set by the Apollo-era Skylab-4 mission almost half a century ago.
Crew Dragon was able to beat that record so quickly because NASA ultimately chose to cannibalize its existing Saturn rocket and Apollo CSM spacecraft expertise, production capabilities, and budget to go all-in on the Space Shuttle program. Meant to be quickly and cheaply reusable, a wide range of compromises, budget shortfalls, and design-by-committee missteps ultimately produced a Shuttle that was horrifically complex, unsafe, only partially reusable, suboptimal for most tasks, and more expensive to launch than Saturn V.
The Space Shuttle was ultimately a beast to refurbish and “reuse”, often requiring an almost complete disassembly and reassembly and extensive rework on most propulsive components. Partially due to those extreme shortcomings and a catastrophically fatal launch failure just five years after its debut, the Shuttle was never able to get anywhere close to realizing its limited but still strong potential, including a maximum orbital longevity of just two or so weeks.
As a result, NASA went from Saturn I, Saturn V, and CSM – a combination that enabled single-launch space stations, multi-month crewed spaceflights, and the Apollo Program – to the Space Shuttle, an anchor that yanked the space agency’s human agency ambitions back to low Earth orbit (LEO). In the Space Shuttle’s defense, NASA did eventually join an international initiative to build the International Space Station (ISS), a program the Shuttle supported with several dozen launches of crucial modules, components, and supplies.
However, had NASA been able to continue the Skylab program with Saturn and CSM, a space station with a habitable volume similar to the 2021 ISS could have been completed in a mere three launches, compared to no less than 30 launches to build the ISS.
Regardless, after an unfortunate and unnecessary 47-year pause, SpaceX – with NASA funding – has returned the space agency and the US to its legacy of envelope-pushing. On the heels of 20 successful uncrewed Cargo Dragon missions to and from the ISS over the last 9 years, all of which spent around a month in orbit, SpaceX’s third Crew Dragon launch has already beat the US record for crewed spacecraft longevity on orbit and is ultimately poised to double it before the mission’s end.
Crew Dragon’s Crew-1 astronauts even celebrated the milestone in orbit with (albeit virtually) Ed Gibson, one of the three astronauts that set Skylab-4’s record 47 years prior. Additionally, in a pleasing coincidence, Skylab-4 and SpaceX Crew-1 nearly launched on the same day, meaning that tomorrow (February 8th) is the true 47th anniversary of the Skylab-4 mission’s reentry and splashdown.
All told, all operational Crew Dragon missions – of which Crew-1 is the first – are scheduled to spend approximately 180 days in orbit between launch and reentry. As the first US spacecraft (and first private spacecraft) to attempt such a long spaceflight, there is obviously some uncertainty and no guarantee that this first try won’t be cut short, but odds are in SpaceX’s favor that Crew Dragon capsule C207 will depart the ISS without issue and safely return its four-astronaut crew back to Earth sometime in May 2021.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk rips ABC News over fatal NYC Tesla crash report
Musk pushed back on NYC Tesla crash coverage, pointing to a pattern of premature blame.
Elon Musk pushed back overnight against media framing of a fatal Tesla crash in Midtown Manhattan, telling a user on X that “it wasn’t the car” and that the vehicle’s Autopilot system had nothing to do with the wreck.
The crash happened just before 3 a.m. Wednesday, when a 2024 Tesla Model Y struck a sidewalk shed outside 315 Madison Ave., a bus stop pole and a mailbox on East 42nd Street, according to the NYPD. The car kept moving several more blocks before stopping near Second Avenue. Both women inside, each 27, were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where the passenger was pronounced dead. The driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter, driving while ability impaired and leaving the scene of an accident.
Police have not attributed the crash to Autopilot or Full Self-Driving in any public statement. The charges point to impairment, not software. Musk’s response followed a since-deleted ABC News post that he said mischaracterized the incident. Replying to a user on X, Musk wrote that if Autopilot had been engaged, “they would not have crashed,” and added that “the legacy media will never forgive Tesla for failing to advertise with them,”
The legacy media will never forgive Tesla for failing to advertise with them
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2026
It’s a familiar cycle for Tesla. In June, headlines from several national outlets described a fatal crash in Katy, Texas, as happening while the car was “on autopilot,” based on the driver’s own account to police after his Model 3 struck a home and killed a 76-year-old woman. Tesla’s data told a different story when Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI, said the driver had pressed the accelerator to 100% and reached 73 mph in a residential zone. Harris County prosecutors later confirmed the human override and the driver was charged with manslaughter.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed to that same Katy crash last month to argue that outlets routinely name Tesla in crash headlines while leaving other automakers unnamed, even after a driver’s own actions are shown to be the cause. A similar pattern played out in 2024, when Musk had to clarify that FSD was never even downloaded onto the Model 3 involved in a fatal Colorado DUI crash, despite a passenger’s claim that an “auto drive feature” was in use.
Tesla has not issued a separate statement on the Manhattan crash beyond Musk’s posts on X. The NYPD’s investigation is ongoing, and no cause for the driver losing control has been released.
Tesla’s two recently-defunct flagship models, the Model S and Model X, are getting a big upgrade, according to the company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy.
Older Hardware 3 Model S and Model X vehicles have been the last major holdouts in Tesla’s Full Self-Driving v14 Lite rollout, and that wait now appears to be ending.
Tesla brings closure to flagship ‘sentimental’ models, Musk confirms
At Tesla’s Cybercab launch, AI chief Ashok Elluswamy told Ryan McCaffrey that he thought the S and X build “was supposed to go out last week.” Evidently, Elluswamy expects the suite to be rolled out to those HW3 Model S and Model X very soon:
For my @Tesla friends – and specifically Model S & X owners with HW3 who are waiting on FSD v14 Lite – I spoke to @aelluswamy at the Cybercab launch, & when I asked for an ETA on v14 Lite for S/X owners, he said, “Oh, I thought it was supposed to go out last week.”
So: soon! 🙌
— Ryan McCaffrey (@DMC_Ryan) September 7, 2026
Those cars are not the current Model S and Model X, which already ship with Hardware 4. They are the pre-refresh flagships built around Tesla’s older Autopilot computer, often called HW3 or AI3.
Tesla stopped putting that computer in new vehicles years ago, which is why owners treat these S and X cars as a closed generation. Model 3 and Model Y vehicles on the same computer began receiving v14 Lite in late June 2026 and saw a wider North American expansion in July. South Korea followed as an early international market. The S and X versions of the same software never joined that wave.
v14 Lite is Tesla’s way of squeezing the current v14 driving stack onto hardware that cannot run the full AI 4 model. The company describes the process as distillation: behaviors learned on the newer computer, including reinforcement learning and offline models, are compressed so the older chip and cameras can use them as a guide.
Early descriptions put the distilled network at roughly 15 percent of the original size. The result is still supervised Level 2 driving. Tesla has been clear that HW3 cannot support unsupervised Full Self-Driving or robotaxi operation because of memory and bandwidth limits.
The feature list is what made the wait so frustrating for S and X owners, as plenty of new features are to be shipped with it.
Official notes for the first Lite build, firmware 2026.20.5.1, added parking, unparking, and reversing; arrival options for a parking lot, street, driveway, or curbside; speed profiles that stay available at all times; and start-from-park engagement. Tesla also claimed better handling of merges, forks, pedestrians, traffic lights, and cut-ins, plus fewer false slowdowns and smoother lane centering.
A mid-July follow-on build, 2026.20.6.10, added more of the Hardware 4 interface, including a standalone Self-Driving app and the ability to start a trip from Park without a brake-pedal confirmation.
Elluswamy called that version the one “likely going to wide release.”
That wide release already reached most other HW3 cars in the United States and Canada. International timing still depends on regional validation and regulatory approval. For S and X owners, the remaining work appears to be model-specific validation rather than a new software stack.
There is no official Tesla changelog or build number for those two models yet, only Elluswamy’s offhand timeline. Some HW3 drivers who already have Lite report large gains over v12.6; others have described new indecision or phantom braking. The next test will be whether the same software lands cleanly on the older flagships that have waited the longest.
Yesterday, we reported on Tesla Cybertruck getting some major adjustments from a manufacturing standpoint in an effort to make the all-electric pickup more cost-effective, more reliable, more serviceable, and more easily produced.
Tesla Cybertruck engineer reveals new changes in ‘constantly evolving’ pickup
One of those changes was the addition of a self-reinforcing polypropylene aero shield that sits underneath the truck. Previously, Tesla utilized aluminum for this, but the self-reinforcing polypropylene was more durable while also being cheaper and lighter.
Tesla has revealed another small change it made to the Cybertruck, and it has to do with the side repeater cameras.
Tesla does not wait for a new model year to improve its vehicles. On September 8, Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill posted side-by-side photos of an updated side repeater camera housing now rolling off the line at Gigafactory Texas.
The triangular camera pod mounted on the front fender looks almost identical at first glance. A closer look reveals a revised contour that uses the air already flowing around the truck to keep the lens clearer in rain and road spray.
The side repeater camera was updated – the version on the left is the newer part which uses passive geometry to create airflow disturbance that better keep water off the lens while driving. No cost penalty, just pure vision improvement. pic.twitter.com/wAbXtcL1Jf
— Wes (@wmorrill3) September 8, 2026
The side repeater cameras sit in an exposed position on the Cybertruck’s angular stainless-steel body.
In wet weather, they readily collect water droplets that can degrade the image Autopilot and Full Self-Driving use for lane changes and blind-spot monitoring. Early production trucks sometimes left owners wiping lenses by hand or accepting temporary restrictions on driver-assistance features.
Tesla has added washers to cameras on certain other models and on Cybercab prototypes, but those active systems add cost, complexity, and extra potential leak points.
The new housing solves the problem with passive geometry. Subtle changes in the surround create localized airflow disturbances as the vehicle moves. Those eddies physically push water droplets away from the optical surface. Morrill called the result “pure vision improvement” achieved at “no cost penalty.” Once the production mold is updated, every subsequent part costs the same as the original.
The advantages compound quickly. Clearer cameras in rain improve the reliability of driver-assistance features precisely when they are needed most. The design consumes no extra energy and introduces no new failure modes.
New Cybertrucks built after the tooling changeover receive the updated part automatically. Some owners of trucks delivered as late as June 2026 have already confirmed they received the revised housing. Retrofit questions have appeared in replies, and the cameras appear electrically compatible, though Tesla has not announced an official service program.
A few millimeters of reshaped housing will not make headlines the way a new battery pack does, but these changes are incremental and increase the Cybertruck’s effectiveness as a vehicle over time.
This improvement illustrates how Tesla continues to refine the Cybertruck after volume production began. Better wet-weather vision, zero added cost, and no extra hardware add up to a meaningful gain in everyday usability and safety.
Elon Musk rips ABC News over fatal NYC Tesla crash report
Tesla’s two defunct flagship models are getting a big upgrade
