SpaceX
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon returns to port as NASA praises successful launch debut
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully returned to Port Canaveral aboard recovery vessel GO
The culmination of the better part of a decade of constant work and NASA support, the flawless success of SpaceX’s DM-1 Crew Dragon mission is a testament – above all else – to the many hundreds of thousands or millions of hours SpaceX employees have put into the spacecraft’s design, production, operation, and recovery. While just one half of a critical pair of demonstrations, DM-1’s success should translate into extremely good odds for Crew Dragon’s Demo Mission 2 (DM-2), in which SpaceX will launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on the company’s first crewed launch ever.
“I can’t believe how well the whole mission has gone. I think on every point, everything’s been nailed, all the way along—particularly this last piece. We were all very excited to see re-entry and parachute and drogue deploy and main deploy, splashdown—everything happened just perfectly, right on time the way that we expected it to. It was beautiful.” – Benji Reed, Director of Crew Mission Management, SpaceX
SpaceX Director of Crew Mission Management Benji Reed’s unqualified appraisal of Crew Dragon’s debut serves as a perfect example of the attitude almost universal throughout the company in the twilight of the mission’s completion. While sources suggest that there were more than a few hiccups during the mission, they were extremely mild and came as no surprise for what effectively amounted to the first shakeout mission of a brand new vehicle. According to CEO Elon Musk, Crew Dragon shares almost no hardware – aside from its Draco thrusters – with Cargo Dragon, the uncrewed orbital spacecraft SpaceX has now launched into orbit 17 times in the last eight years.
Crew Dragon approaches the ISS during its orbital launch debut, March 3rd. (NASA) 
Cargo Dragon is seen here attached to the ISS shortly before the completion of SpaceX’s CRS-16 resupply mission, January 7th. (NASA) 
Crew Dragon was successfully recovered aboard GO Searcher on March 8th. (SpaceX) 
Cargo Dragon completed its most recent mission, CRS-16, on January 13th. (SpaceX)
For such a complex spacecraft, not to mention an almost clean-sheet redesign, it’s nothing short of extraordinary that its debut launch was so utterly free of significant anomalies or unexpected behavior. Separated into the distinct phases of launch, free-flight, ISS docking/undocking, and recovery, Crew Dragon reportedly performed almost perfectly in all cases, “right on time” according to Mr. Reed. NASA’s CCP Deputy Manager Steve Stich was equally enthusiastic and elated about the spacecraft’s performance.
“On-orbit we got a lot of great data on the vehicle in terms of the thermal performance and power performance; the vehicle really did better than we expected. Then the rendezvous was phenomenal as we came in and checked out those sensors. Today; the undocking, watching how those systems performed, that went flawlessly. It’s a very tight sequence between undocking and de-orbit burn, how the nose cone performed, how the de-orbit burn was executed, then the entry was phenomenal.”
“I don’t think we saw really anything in the mission so far—and we’ve got to do to the data reviews—that would preclude us from having the crewed mission [DM-2] later this year.”
– Steve Stich, CCP Deputy Manager, NASA
Following Crew Dragon’s March 9/10 return to Port Canaveral, the spacecraft is expected to immediately enter into a post-flight analysis and data-gathering phase that will quickly transfer into refurbishment to prepare for the capsule’s second (albeit suborbital) launch, a critical in-flight abort (IFA) test that could happen as early as April according to Elon Musk. While official planning schedules point towards the IFA occurring closer to June or even July, it’s reasonable to assume that those official schedules are highly conservative. If Crew Dragon’s significantly waterproofing and reusability upgrades make a major difference, it’s far from inconceivable that the vehicle’s second abort test could actually occur ahead of schedule, although it’s unlikely.
The in-flight abort test will effectively be a repeat of SpaceX’s successful 2015 pad abort demonstration, albeit with the stationary launch pad replaced with a full Falcon 9 rocket – first and second stage – traveling at supersonic speeds. If Crew Dragon can safely abort in such challenging conditions, it’s almost guaranteed that it will be able to safely abort at any time during a Falcon 9 launch, all the way from the moment fueling begins on the ground into orbital operations. In fact, CEO Elon Musk recently suggested that the same SuperDraco abort thrusters that enable those safe escapes could potentially be used to add yet another level of redundancy during landing, standing in for parachute damage or failures to slow the capsule down and minimize or prevent injuries during splashdown.
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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 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.
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
