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SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft put through its paces at orbital space station
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.
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.
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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The Tesla Semi is entering a new Pilot Program with Paper Transport, LLC (PTI), a Wisconsin-based transportation provider. The company will test the Semi’s Long Range configuration through “dedicated operations within the Chicago market.”
Chicago presents an interesting challenge for the Semi, as it will be a colder-weather climate that will test the Semi’s ability to operate in lower temperatures and in potentially large accumulations of snow. This is something Tesla has been testing with the Semi in Alaska and even in Northern California during the colder months, but Chicago will present a truly tough midwestern winter.
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PTI says it is using the Semi to evaluate its strategy of reducing transportation emissions while maintaining performance, reliability, and cost efficiency. These are major arguments for the Semi being introduced into new fleets.
CEO of PTI Tyler Ellison said:
“PTI has been a leader in sustainable transportation solutions for over 15 years. We take a consultative approach to helping customers identify and implement the right transportation solution for their network. Our partnership with Tesla expands our portfolio alongside renewable natural gas and intermodal, giving customers more ways to reduce Scope 3 emissions without compromising service or economics.”
PTI is far from the first company to adopt the Semi within a fleet, as Tesla entered strategic agreements with PepsiCo. and its subsidiary Frito-Lay for a Pilot Program that extended throughout the California region.
Tesla has let companies like those utilize the Semi to determine whether it would be suitable for their operations. Additionally, Tesla gets valuable information regarding the Semi’s performance, knowing what to improve and what is ideal for companies that will utilize the all-electric truck for regional and nationwide logistics.
PTI plans to utilize the Long Range configuration, which is priced at $290,000 and features a range of approximately 500 miles, a three-motor powertrain, up to 800 kW of drive power, and consumption of just 1.7 kWh per mile.
Tesla Semi pricing revealed after company uncovers trim levels
VP of Maintenance at PTI, Bryan Ellen, added:
“We are excited to partner with Tesla, leveraging their ever-evolving technology. We are bullish in our estimation of the parallels available between our dedicated model and the efficiency of their fully electric Class 8 tractor. We anticipate a growing synergy between our businesses as we work to facilitate this sustainable solution for our customers.”
PTI has logged more than 87 million miles using sources like compressed and renewable gas, but now is looking to take it a step further with fully electric operations.
Tesla revealed on Monday that it is building a new autonomous vehicle at Gigafactory Texas, its plant just outside of the City of Austin. This particular vehicle will be geared toward those who are in need of a wheelchair-accessible car that would require no human driver for operation.
According to a new report from Wired, Tesla’s Senior Policy Advisor, India Herdman, told members of the Washington D.C. City Council on Monday:
“We are in development for a purpose-built, wheelchair-accessible autonomous vehicle. We know that paratransit can be very difficult, and people who are confined to wheelchairs permanently should still be able to move around freely, so that is an active product being built by Tesla in Texas.”
This builds upon what CEO Elon Musk said last year on X, which confirmed the company was working on accessible rides within its Robotaxi platform, which currently is confined to the Model Y.
Absolutely
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 19, 2025
Tesla is also developing the Cybercab, which started employee rides last week. However, this vehicle is not necessarily geared toward wheelchair accessibility.
That leaves a major gap in the autonomous ride-sharing program that Tesla is attempting to build; the company has been pretty clear that it does not want to complicate its manufacturing lines by bringing in a wide array of body styles.
However, it seems necessary to have something larger that could help transport people to appointments when they cannot drive. For wheelchair accessibility, the Robovan, which was unveiled at the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, seems to be the most ideal solution:
Herdman did not indicate whether she was referring to the Robovan or if Tesla is building yet another body style that is geared toward full autonomy but also caters to the handicapped.
Tesla might need to develop something specifically for the handicapped in order to align with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prevents discrimination against people with disabilities in transportation services. Uber was hit with a lawsuit late last year for “refusing to reasonably modify its policies, practices, or procedures where necessary to avoid discriminating against riders with disabilities.”
Tesla would obviously like to avoid this.
It will be interesting to see what Tesla will do with this project, and whether it will introduce something new to the market or just continue with the Robovan.
Tesla weirdly confirmed that its steering wheel-less and pedal-less Cybercab vehicle is now in the process of giving employees rides, a huge milestone for the vehicle program.
But the entire thing was super strange. On Friday, Tesla released a video stating that there was “Cool news from Giga Texas” and that employees were now taking rides in Cybercabs that have no manual controls. The units seen on public roads are engineering vehicles that have manual controls inside, a necessity as Tesla moved through the testing phase.
However, Tesla removed the video and reposted it shortly after with a more vague title. It seems like the employee rides are still going, but the video was adjusted slightly. The initial upload showed employees doing things like watching movies and adjusting the climate, but these snippets were removed in the second upload.
Cool news from Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/gvbG456Tzw
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) July 11, 2026
Both images below were uploaded with the first video, but were removed after Tesla re-uploaded the announcement. These are not available in the second upload
Credit: Tesla
Credit: Tesla
Nevertheless, the announcement from Tesla is that the Cybercab is operating with employees inside who can control the vehicle’s audio, video, climate, and destination settings through their smartphone app.
Tesla has already been testing Cybercab engineering units, but last month, it was able to self-certify for SAE Level 4, which would enable unsupervised self-driving in Texas. The company is moving toward that, and the plans have always been to launch Cybercab rides this year.
The Cybercab is potentially looked at as the next generation of Tesla’s mobility leg. For the past 15 years, the company has been known as somewhat of an automaker, among many other things. However, these passenger vehicles that Tesla has manufactured are now moving into a new realm, as they will eventually drive themselves with no supervision thanks to the Full Self-Driving suite.
The Cybercab is just the next step of that: a true vehicle developed for the sole purpose of ride-hailing. It has no human controls, it has only two seats, and it will get passengers from Point A to Point B with no awkward driver, no need for manual inputs, and with no stress.
Tesla is moving forward with other developments related to the Cybercab project as well. However, the big announcement will come when Tesla finally announces that it is launching Cybercab rides to the general public, something that it plans to launch either late this year or early 2027.
Tesla Semi enters new Pilot Program with interesting challenge
Tesla is building a wheelchair-accessible Robotaxi
