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SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft put through its paces at orbital space station

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SpaceX’s first human-proven Crew Dragon spacecraft is being put through its paces in orbit by NASA and even Roscosmos astronauts, according to senior agency leader.

Promoted to lead NASA’s Human Spaceflight Office (HEOMD) days ago, former Commercial Crew Program (CCP) manager Kathy Lueders primarily spoke about her new job – guiding the Artemis Moon landing program – but did manage to answer some questions about her former post. Successfully launched on May 30th, SpaceX’s inaugural Crew Dragon astronaut mission also marked NASA’s first domestic astronaut launch since June 2011, an achievement that unsurprisingly helped catapult Lueders up the ranks just a few weeks later.

Thus far, SpaceX’s first crewed launch is arguably the crowning achievement of both the company and the commercial spaceflight industry it’s largely come to represent. The mission isn’t over yet, however, and International Space Station (ISS) astronauts are reportedly hard at work as they continue to test the historic Crew Dragon spacecraft and push it to a whole new genre of limits.

Crew Dragon C206 and NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley completed a flawless ISS arrival on May 31st. (SpaceX)

According to Lueders and backed up by a different NASA executive about a week prior, “Crew Dragon has been doing great” over the ~20 days it’s spent docked to the ISS. NASA and its orbiting astronauts have already done a significant amount of work to verify that the spacecraft is in good health and capable of serving as a lifeboat – at a moment’s notice – for the space station’s crew. In the coming weeks, it’s likely that Bob Behnken, Doug Hurley, Chris Cassidy, and (maybe) a Russian cosmonaut will explicitly rehearse such an emergency, testing Crew Dragon’s ability to depart the ISS in a matter of minutes.

As part of that work, Lueders says NASA astronauts are waking Dragon up and performing checkouts weekly before returning the spacecraft to a mysterious “sleep mode”. In the coming weeks, NASA will further test Crew Dragon by boarding four of the space station’s five current astronauts, including one of two Russian cosmonauts.

Crew Dragon already has a flawless uncrewed orbital launch, reentry, and landing under its belt – the latter phase pictured here in March 2019. (NASA)

SpaceX hasn’t crossed the finish line just yet, though. Lueders also shed additional light on that critical section of Crew Dragon’s astronaut launch debut, confirming that NASA still plans to have the spacecraft return to Earth with Behnken and Hurley in early August. Two opposing goals will continue to tug at that date. On one hand, having both astronauts on the ISS as long as possible helps NASA maximize the efficient use and maintenance of the ultra-expensive orbital laboratory. However, the sooner Crew Dragon is able to complete its first crewed reentry, splashdown, and recovery; the sooner SpaceX and NASA and can fully debrief from the mission, analyze the recovered hardware, and complete paperwork for SpaceX’s next astronaut launch.

Known as Crew-1, SpaceX will send three NASA astronauts and one JAXA (Japanese) astronaut to the ISS for a full six months (~180 days), beginning what could be years of operational Crew Dragon astronaut ferry missions. Crew-1 is currently scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) August 30th but that date is heavily contingent upon post-Demo-2 reviews and is mainly a placeholder. For now, Crew Dragon C206 is in good health and thus has at least another month and a half to look forward to at the International Space Station.

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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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FAA kicks off review of SpaceX’s bid to fly Starship nearly every day

FAA is reviewing SpaceX’s plan for 456 Starship launches a year, up from 25 today.

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Rendering of Elon Musk overlooking a Starship fleet (Credit: Grok)

The FAA said Tuesday that it will prepare an environmental impact statement on SpaceX’s proposal to run as many as 456 Starship launches and 912 landings a year from Starbase, Texas. SpaceX is currently authorized for 25 launches and 50 landings annually, which makes the request roughly 18 times the existing ceiling. The notice of intent is set to publish in the Federal Register on Wednesday.

The plan comes in two phases. Phase 1 would allow up to 100 launches and 200 landings a year, on any day and at any hour. Phase 2, which the FAA says could arrive within several years, would raise the limit to the full 456 launches, still at any hour but only on weekdays. The agency noted that 912 landings is the upper limit for the Texas facility no matter where a given mission begins, and that Starship and Super Heavy could come down at the launch site or in the Gulf and open ocean.

A draft statement will be released for public comment at a later date, and the FAA has not said when. According to the Federal Registar, written comments are due November 30 on regulations.gov under docket FAA-2026-12808, with in person scoping meetings on November 17 in Brownsville and November 19 in Port Isabel, plus a virtual session on November 18. The review will weigh air quality, wildlife, coastal resources, water, noise, and aviation, and the FAA said any increase beyond this proposal would need its own separate review.

The numbers look large next to what Starbase has actually done. Starship has flown three times from Texas this year, including Flight 14 on September 28, the first orbital flight, which deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites. Bloomberg reported that Starbase has never launched more than five times in a calendar year. The current cap of 25 comes from an FAA approval in May 2025. In February, the agency also approved up to 44 Starship launches a year from Launch Complex 39A in Florida, so Phase 1 in Texas alone would more than double that allowance.

Musk has said Starship could eventually fly more than once per hour within less than a decade, per Bloomberg. The nearer term target is Flight 15. Musk said on October 10 that it is hopefully four to six weeks away and will try to catch the ship with the tower, as Teslarati covered. That flight still runs under the existing 25 launch limit, and so would every Starbase launch for as long as the new review takes.

As of mid morning Pacific time on Tuesday, SpaceX had not posted about the filing on its own account.

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Tesla Roadster livestream: everything Tesla has revealed before Thursday night

Tesla will stream the Roadster event Thursday at 7:55 p.m. Central. Here is what’s known.

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Concept rendering of a Tesla Roadster with SpaceX Package via Grok

Tesla will stream its next generation Roadster event live this Thursday, October 15, at 7:55 p.m. Central, according to a post from the official Tesla account shared late Monday. Texas is on daylight time, and outlets have read the post as local Central time, which puts the Tesla Roadster livestream at 8:55 p.m. Eastern and 5:55 p.m. Pacific. The stream is expected on Tesla’s X account, where the announcement went up.

This is the second date for the event. Tesla posted a “Go for launch” image on September 12 that set the unveil for October 1, and invitations sent to reservation holders placed it in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern, for guests 21 and older with tickets that could not be transferred. Until this week, Tesla had not said the event would be broadcast at all.

On September 28, Tesla moved the event to October 15, citing severe weather and the fact that the demo can only be held outdoors. Elon Musk then said the cause was high winds, a comment that pushed speculation that the car will leave the ground on stage.

The event will be held in Waco, which sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA closed airspace up to 10,000 feet from September 18 through October 2 for the original date. Another restriction covering Wednesday, October 14, has been reported near the site, which could mean a rehearsal, though that is unconfirmed.

What Tesla will actually show comes from speculative reports that the vehicle will be unmanned, and spectators will be kept several hundred yards back for safety. A SpaceX package is reportedly code named A71, and linked to what Musk has hinted at in the past – thrusters that could bring 0 to 60 mph down to about one second, compared with the 1.9 seconds quoted for the base car in 2017. Tesla also closed its Semi event with a Roadster teaser suggesting a design that looks different from the original prototype, and has said the event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets.

The 2017 figures remain the only official ones: 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and prices of $200,000 for the base car and $250,000 for the Founders Series. Tesla reopened reservations last month with a $5,000 card payment followed by a $45,000 wire within ten days, and the deposit is refundable. Production is expected at Giga Texas in 2027 or 2028.

Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, six days after the stream, so whatever price or timeline appears Thursday night will land just ahead of that call.

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SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan

SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.

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SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.

There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.

The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.

That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.

Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant

For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.

The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.

The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.

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