News
SpaceX dropped a Crew Dragon mockup to save a helicopter and its passengers
SpaceX says it encountered an issue that forced it to drop a Crew Dragon spacecraft mockup during parachute testing — not a failure of the vehicle or its parachutes, to be clear, but still a problem nonetheless.
This is now the second significant hurdle SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut spacecraft has faced in the last few days, following the revelation that NASA will not permit the company to launch astronauts until it completes an investigation into an in-flight rocket engine failure during its March 18th Starlink launch. There is likely no technical corollary for the new Falcon 9 rockets that will launch NASA astronauts, but existing Commercial Crew Program (CCP) contract rules still require SpaceX’s internal investigation be completed before it can proceed. With lives on the line, caution – within reason – is unequivocally preferable to the alternative.
Thankfully, SpaceX’s parachute test article anomaly should have a much smaller impact on Crew Dragon’s astronaut launch debut schedule, but it’s unlikely to have zero impact.
“During a planned parachute drop test [on Tuesday], the test article suspended underneath the helicopter became unstable. Out of an abundance of caution and to keep the helicopter crew safe, the pilot pulled the emergency release. As the helicopter was not yet at target conditions, the test article was not armed, and as such, the parachute system did not initiate the parachute deployment sequence. While the test article was lost, this was not a failure of the parachute system and most importantly no one was injured. NASA and SpaceX are working together to determine the testing plan going forward in advance of Crew Dragon’s second demonstration mission.”
SpaceX — March 24th, 2020
On March 24th, SpaceX says it was preparing for one of the last system-level Crew Dragon parachute tests planned before the spacecraft can be declared ready for human spaceflight. These final tests are reportedly focused on corner cases, referring to unusual but not impossible scenarios the spacecraft might encounter during operational astronaut landing attempts. Those likely include parachute deployment scenarios that are far more stressful than a nominal reentry, descent, and landing would allow.
Regardless, things did not go as planned during Tuesday’s test attempt. SpaceX primarily uses cargo planes, helicopters, and large balloons to carry its Crew Dragon test articles (not actual functional spacecraft) to the altitudes and speeds needed to achieve certain test conditions. On March 24th, SpaceX was using a helicopter – either a civilian Blackhawk or a much larger Skycrane.
For unknown reasons, the helicopter carrying the Crew Dragon test article on March 24th began to experience “instability”, likely referring to some sort of resonance (wobble, sway, oscillation, etc). Out of an abundance of caution, the pilot – likely highly trained – decided the instability was becoming an unacceptable risk and chose to drop the cargo load (a Crew Dragon mockup). Unsurprisingly, the parachute test article was not ready to drop and plummeted to the Earth without any kind of parachute deployment, likely pancaking on the desert floor shortly thereafter.
Again, it needs to be noted – as SpaceX did above – that the loss of the Crew Dragon parachute test article was entirely unrelated to the performance of the spacecraft or the parachutes it was testing. The mockup destroyed in the incident is essentially just a boilerplate mass simulator shaped like a Crew Dragon capsule to achieve more aerodynamically accurate test results. As such, it’s far simpler and cheaper than an actual Dragon spacecraft and shouldn’t take long at all to replace if SpaceX doesn’t already have a second similar mockup ready to go.
Thankfully, that means that the loss of the test article should have next to no serious impact on Crew Dragon’s inaugural astronaut launch schedule. Planned no earlier than (NET) mid-to-late May according to NASA’s latest official statement, SpaceX and the space agency still have at least a month and a half to work through a final parachute test campaign, complete an investigation into Starlink L6’s Falcon booster engine failure, and finish several trees worth of paperwork and reviews. Delays remain likely but they shouldn’t be more than a few weeks, barring any future surprises.
Energy
Tesla Semi factory is getting a celebration nobody expected
Tesla will inaugurate its Nevada Semi factory September 24, five months after production quietly began ramping.
Tesla says it will officially inaugurate its new Semi factory in Nevada next month. The Tesla Semi account posted the announcement on X, sharing a graphic titled “Semi Rollout” with a date of September 24. No further details were given about the format of the event or who would attend.
While Tesla’s dedicated Semi plant in Sparks, adjacent to Gigafactory Nevada, opened back in April, with the first trucks rolling off the high volume line on April 29, the timing for the factory inauguration comes at a surprise. The ribbon cutting event five months into production is a break from how Tesla has usually handled its other factories, where the first truck or car off the line typically served as the milestone moment.
Inauguration of new Semi factory in Nevada next month pic.twitter.com/a8kAlxrOOn
— Tesla Semi (@tesla_semi) August 24, 2026
The 1.7 million square foot factory was built as part of a $3.6 billion expansion Tesla announced in early 2023, and it shares a site with the battery cell lines that feed the Semi’s structural pack, a decision meant to remove the supply bottleneck that delayed the truck for years. The plant is designed for 50,000 trucks a year at full ramp. Semi program director Dan Priestley has said production “is now ramping” rather than claiming it has reached scale.
Nine years passed between the Semi’s 2017 unveiling and this stage of production, with the truck slipping from an original 2019 target through hand built pilot units for PepsiCo and a slow build out of the Nevada plant. An inauguration event now gives Tesla a stage to talk up that ramp and reset expectations for how many trucks it can begin delivering at scale.
The September date also lines up with the Semi’s next milestone. Tesla confirmed the truck is heading to Europe with a full unveiling at the IAA Transportation trade show in Hannover, Germany, running September 15 through 20. Between the Nevada event and the Hannover reveal, Tesla has roughly a week and a half in September to make the case that the Semi is now a truck being built and sold on two continents rather than tested in a handful of fleets.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Elon Musk says SpaceX will finally retire Falcon 9 once Starship flies reliably every week.
Elon Musk gave the clearest timeline yet for retiring Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket.
The comment came in a reply on X, where Musk wrote that “once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to shift super scarce SpaceX engineering and production resources to Starship to get launch rate to several times per day, which means winding down Falcon.” He was responding to physicist Casey Handmer, who noted that NASA is reportedly uneasy about SpaceX phasing out Falcon after building what Handmer called the most successful launcher ever, with the fleet nearing 1,000 total launches.
Now @SciGuySpace reports NASA is in a tizzy because after running the most successful launcher ever for more than a decade and nearing 1000 launches, @SpaceX is planning to retire Falcon in favor of Starship in a few years.
Sorry, NASA, you’ve had 15 years to burn down the… https://t.co/uCNoMwK0v9
— Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer) August 22, 2026
Falcon 9 is still SpaceX’s busiest vehicle by far. The company is on pace for roughly 140 to 145 Falcon flights this year, following 165 in 2025, president Gwynne Shotwell told Time earlier in 2026. She has already said Falcon flights would “tail off” as Starship comes online, while reports indicate that SpaceX has stopped booking new Falcon 9 launches past 2028 and halted production of some expendable Falcon hardware, according to Bloomberg.
It’s worth noting that Musk’s post is a condition, and not a countdown on when Falcon will retire. Starship has not yet flown weekly, let alone daily. Its most recent flight in July ended with a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, a milestone Musk pointed to earlier this month when he said the vehicle’s heat shield problem was effectively solved. SpaceX towed that ship to Christmas Island for inspection, and the next flight, Flight 14, is aimed at putting Starship into orbit for the first time. A tower catch attempt for the upper stage has been pushed back to what Musk has called “a few months” away.
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
The gap between Falcon’s role today and Starship’s promised role tomorrow matters most to NASA. Falcon and its Dragon capsule remain the only way the agency rotates astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and Starship is not certified to carry NASA crews. Musk’s post did not address how that handoff would work if Falcon winds down before a crew-rated Starship variant exists. The timing lines up with Musk’s other recent Starship comments. Two days before the Falcon post, he told a different X user that SpaceX is aiming for more than 30 Starship launches a day by 2030, or roughly 10,000 a year, a figure tied to the Trump administration’s new push for higher national launch cadence. Falcon, which took over a decade to reach its first 100 launches, was never built to approach that kind of volume.
For now, Falcon 9 keeps flying at a near-record pace while Starship works to prove it can do the job Musk has already picked out for it.
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
Tesla Semi factory is getting a celebration nobody expected
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
