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SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft sails home after flawless in-flight abort test

Pictured here, Crew Dragon C201 returned to Port Canaveral on March 10th, 2019. After completing a flawless in-flight abort test, Crew Dragon C205 has itself returned to port on January 19th, 2020. (Teslarati)

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SpaceX’s newest Crew Dragon spacecraft has successfully returned to port aboard one of the company’s dedicated recovery vessels, neatly wrapping up what appears to have been a completely flawless in-flight abort (IFA) test.

Designed to prove that Crew Dragon can safely escape a failing Falcon 9 rocket at essentially any point from the launch pad to orbit, SpaceX voluntarily chose to perform a full-fidelity IFA test – something NASA left up to both it and Boeing. Boeing instead decided to extrapolate from a pad abort test – which SpaceX completed in 2015 – and a presumably large number of digital simulations to verify that Starliner would survive an in-flight abort.

To be clear, NASA is explicitly okay with this, but space agency officials did not shy away from openly embracing the superiority of integrated flight testing at several points both before, during, and after SpaceX’s second Crew Dragon launch. Although it will almost certainly remain (publicly) unsaid, there should be little doubt that for astronauts scheduled to fly on either Crew Dragon and Starliner, the successful completion of in-flight abort and pad abort tests almost certainly engenders at least a little more confidence in the vehicle they will be entrusting their lives to.

It’s worth noting that although NASA argues – perhaps soundly – that digital modeling, a pad abort test, and an orbital flight test are enough to determine whether any given spacecraft is safe enough to launch US astronauts, the unspoken reality – or at least a large part of it – is that cost is a major concern. At this point in time, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) contracts are expected to cost a total of $3.1B for SpaceX and $5.1B for Boeing – both including at least four total orbital launches of their respective spacecraft.

In simpler terms, despite the fact that SpaceX has received a full $2 billion (~40%) less than Boeing to accomplish the same tasks in the same time, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon completed a flawless orbital launch debut and space station rendezvous with Crew Dragon almost 10 months before Boeing’s Starliner suffered a serious partial failure in space. Simultaneously, for $2 billion less, SpaceX has now given NASA a seemingly flawless full-up in-flight abort test of Crew Dragon before the space agency will fully entrust the spacecraft with the safety of its astronauts.

In the last 10 or so weeks, Boeing has thus suffered a minor Starliner parachute failure, a far more concerning spacecraft failure during its first orbital flight test (OFT), has no plans to perform an in-flight abort test, and nevertheless still wants Starliner’s next launch to carry NASA astronauts.

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A clear path ahead

SpaceX, on the other hand, has now completed two seemingly-flawless integrated launches of Crew Dragon on a Falcon 9 rocket – one of which successfully rendezvoused with the ISS and returned to Earth; the other of which has now proven that Crew Dragon can whisk astronauts to safety from a failing supersonic rocket. SpaceX says it will carefully inspect capsule C205 and eventually refurbish the spacecraft, although it’s entirely unclear what kind of mission the company could foreseeably reuse it on in the near future.

Crew Dragon lifts off for the first time on Demo-1, March 2019. (Pauline Acalin)
With its successful In-Flight Abort test, Crew Dragon has now performed two flawless launches on Falcon 9 rockets. (Richard Angle)

Speaking shortly after Crew Dragon’s second flawless launch, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that he had spoken with NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine just prior to the post-launch press conference and together came up with a response to the most obvious question: when will SpaceX fly astronauts? In short, Musk was almost certain that all the hardware needed for the Demo-2 astronaut test flight – Falcon 9 booster, F9 upper stage, Crew Dragon capsule C206, and a Dragon trunk – will be completed, tested, and delivered to Cape Canaveral by late-February 2020.

If everything goes exactly as planned, NASA – prior to launch – indicated that an early-March 2020 launch was actually within reach. After launch, Musk tempered expectations, stating that SpaceX would almost certainly launch its first NASA astronauts sometime in Q2 – perhaps as early as April. Regardless, it looks like we wont have to wait more than a few months to find out.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade

Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.

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Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)
Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)

Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.

The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”

The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.

It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.

The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.

For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.

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Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next

Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.

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Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.

Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.

RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.

Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.

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Elon Musk roasts India’s billionaire Mukesh Ambani as Starlink fight heats up

Elon Musk sarcastically calls Mukesh Ambani ‘Prime Minister’ as the Starlink India standoff escalates again.

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Elon Musk escalated his public fight over Starlink’s launch in India on Friday, addressing Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani” in a sarcastic post on X. “Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India,” Musk wrote, before accusing Ambani of “monopolistic exploitation” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete.” In follow up posts, he said Starlink has proven essential during natural disasters and would help parts of India with no internet access.

The post came two days into a fight that Musk sparked up on Wednesday, when he said Starlink was “being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people.” He called it “a crime against the people of India” and left the names out, adding only, “You can guess who they are.” Jio and Airtel together hold more than 80% of India’s telecom market. On Thursday, Musk asked whether Ambani is “the real boss of India” and said Starlink has spent five years complying with “every single law and requirement” of the Indian government.

India’s government has pushed back each time. The Ministry of Communications called the suggestion that its framework is unfair or discriminatory “baseless and misconceived.” Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Friday that three companies hold satcom licenses: Starlink, Jio Satellite Communications, and Bharti backed Eutelsat OneWeb. Amazon’s Kuiper, now Amazon Leo, is still going through the process. None can launch until regulators finalize satellite spectrum pricing and the Home Ministry signs off on each company’s security compliance. Scindia said the telecom regulator and the Department of Telecommunications are close to a decision on pricing, The Hindu reported. Bharti chairman Sunil Mittal also said OneWeb is still waiting on approvals.

Starlink received its operator license in 2025 after a three year wait, and the space regulator IN-SPACe granted what industry executives called the last approval needed in July. The holdup since then centers on security, particularly concern that foreign operators could bypass Indian gateways.

Musk and Ambani have been on opposite sides of this before. In late 2024, Ambani argued for auctioning satellite spectrum, which Musk criticized as out of step with the rest of the world, and India chose administrative allocation instead. By March 2025, the two sides had signed a deal to sell Starlink devices in Reliance stores, and Starlink secured its telecom license that June. That partner is now also a competitor. Jio is reportedly weighing a constellation of 1,600 to 1,650 satellites costing an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion, while Akash Ambani has told shareholders Jio plans to lease capacity from global providers to move quickly.

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