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SpaceX Dragon spacecraft heads to ISS as crewed version preps for debut
SpaceX’s third flight-proven Cargo Dragon spacecraft has arrived in orbit and is currently making its way uphill to the International Space Station for the 15th SpaceX resupply, scheduled for arrival around 7 am EDT July 2nd. Meanwhile, the company’s new Crew Dragon is undergoing its own earthbound trials, split between an artificial vacuum chamber and parachute drop tests over the California desert.
Following a twilight launch that brought to a spectacular close an era of older, less-reusable Falcon 9 rockets, the Cargo Dragon capsule trunk full of several tons of supplies and scientific instruments were placed into a parking orbit roughly 200 miles above Earth’s surface, trailed by a mesmerizing rainbow plume created by Falcon 9’s first and second stage over their nine-minute journey.
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- CRS-15 minutes before an early July 29 launch. (SpaceX)
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- Nine minutes after launch, Falcon 9’s upper stage shut off its main engine and Cargo Dragon detached. (SpaceX)
After arriving in orbit, Crew Dragon separated from Falcon 9’s second stage and officially commenced its second orbital mission roughly 25 months after its first, CRS-9 in July 2016. Alongside the three that have now flown successfully, all five of SpaceX’s remaining Commercial Resupply Services-1 (CRS-1) missions will be conducted with flight-proven Dragon spacecraft, two or three of which will see the already-reused capsules fly a third time before being officially retired.
After SpaceX’s first CRS contract comes to an end, currently scheduled for early 2020 with the CRS-20 mission, the upgraded Dragon 2 will take over all future cargo launches. Dragon 2’s cargo configuration is expected to be a slightly different version of the Crew Dragon capsule and trunk, scheduled to debut as early as late 2018, but the specifics are still somewhat hazy. Most probably, recovered Crew Dragon capsules – unlikely to ever been certified to fly NASA astronauts – will instead be refurbished after their first orbital missions, modified slightly to meet the cargo requirements, and then use to complete SpaceX’s CRS-2 contract alongside their crew transport missions.
At Naval Air Facility El Centro in Southern California, SpaceX recently completed its 16th test of Crew Dragon’s parachute system—verifying the system’s ability to slow Crew Dragon and ensure a safe landing in the unlikely event of a low altitude abort. https://t.co/OOQnAtNXJ3 pic.twitter.com/kFX7Qth3AK
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 26, 2018
While its predecessors continue to grow SpaceX’s experience in orbit, the Crew Dragon program is making its own impressive progress towards the first uncrewed and crewed launch debuts in late 2018 and early 2019. DM-1, the capsule tasked with that first uncrewed demonstration, is likely nearing the end of a suite of tests inside NASA’s huge Plum Brook vacuum chamber facilities, ensuring that the brand-new spacecraft behaves as expected in the extreme environment of space. If successful, the capsule will be sent on its way to Cape Canaveral, Florida to begin true prelight preparations for the first time ever, while its trunk – an expendable structure installed at the base of the craft with solar arrays, radiators, and bays for unpressurized cargo – will be sent back to the Hawthorne, CA factory to be outfitted with flight hardware, after which it will ship to Florida one to two months after the capsule arrives.
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- Crew Dragon parachute tests are likely to continue into the summer to ensure NASA certification in time for DM-1. (SpaceX)
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- Falcon 9 B1045 and it’s flight-proven Cargo Dragon head skyward, marking the end of last-gen SpaceX Falcon 9 launches. (Tom Cross)
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- CRS-15’s ‘jellyfish’ plume glowed as Falcon 9 flew above the terminator into the morning sun. (Tom Cross)
Meanwhile, the CRS-15 Dragon capsule currently orbiting Earth will dock with the International Space Station early Monday morning and is scheduled to depart, reenter, and return to Hawthorne, CA for Flight 3 refurbishment in early August, at which point the DM-1 Crew Dragon ought to have arrived in Florida. Aside from Dragon, SpaceX has three new Falcon 9 Block 5 launches scheduled between July 20 and August 2, the boosters of which will all be recovered aboard SpaceX’s fleet of drone ships
Follow us for live updates, peeks behind the scenes, and photos from Teslarati’s East and West Coast photographers.
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Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
