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SpaceX to nearly double fleet of reusable Dragon spacecraft by end of 2022

SpaceX's current fleet of four reusable Dragon spacecraft is set to double by mid-to-late 2022. (NASA/Mike Hopkins/ESA/Thomas Pesquet)

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Comments from NASA and SpaceX officials during a briefing ahead of Crew Dragon’s third operational astronaut launch have offered a more detailed picture of the fleet of reusable Dragon spacecraft the company plans to build and cycle to support NASA missions.

As part of the briefing, SpaceX Director of Dragon Mission Management Sarah Walker revealed that NASA’s imminent Crew-3 mission will debut a new Crew Dragon capsule (likely C210), which will be carried into space on top of once-flown Falcon 9 booster B1067. B1067 debuted on June 3rd, 2021, sending SpaceX’s second upgraded Cargo Dragon spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) before returning to Earth and sticking a landing on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. While far from breaking SpaceX’s own turnaround records, B1067’s Crew-3 launch will be the second time NASA has flown astronauts on a flight-proven commercial rocket.

SpaceX flew NASA astronauts on a flight-proven booster (Falcon 9 B1062) for the first time in April 2021 as part of Crew-2 – Dragon’s second operational crew launch and first crew ‘rotation.’ Crew-2’s Crew Dragon was also flight-proven, having supported SpaceX’s inaugural Demo-2 astronaut launch in mid-2020 – perhaps an even more impressive feat.

Five months later, SpaceX launched the world’s first all-private group of astronauts as part of a primarily philanthropic mission known as Inspiration4. Once again, a flight-proven booster launched an orbit-proven Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts, pushing human-rated reusability even further with the first use of a twice-flown Falcon 9 on a crewed mission.

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Crew-3 will thus continue the brand new trend of launching professional NASA and international astronauts on flight-proven SpaceX rockets. Scheduled to lift off no earlier than 2:43 am EDT (06:43 UTC) on Saturday, October 30th, a successful launch will mean that SpaceX has launched more crewed Dragons on flight-proven Falcon 9s than on new boosters – and despite the fact that the company completed its first astronaut launch ever less than a year and a half ago.

B1067’s June 2021 launch debut also carried new Cargo Dragon 2 capsule C209 to orbit. (Richard Angle)

While Crew-3 won’t be the third crewed launch of a flight-proven Dragon, it will still play the important role of debuting a new vehicle as SpaceX works to assemble a fleet of reusable, orbital spacecraft. The spacecraft – likely Dragon 2 Capsule #10 (C210) – will be the third Crew Dragon to join SpaceX’s fleet of two operational crew capsules, which currently includes C206 (Endeavor) and C207 (Resilience). SpaceX’s Walker further confirmed that Crew-4 – recently scheduled to launch NET April 2022 – will also debut a new Crew Dragon capsule, growing the company’s crew capsule fleet to four vehicles by mid-2022.

Each certified to fly at least five NASA missions apiece, those four spacecraft should be enough to sate at least a few years of SpaceX’s near-term Crew Dragon launch demand. If an extended certification beyond five flights is impossible or if the company continues to fly public and private astronauts on Dragon well into the mid to late 2020s, however, it’s possible that several more capsules will be needed. But in theory, if Boeing’s Starliner finally reaches operational readiness in 2023 and NASA continues to operate the ISS to 2030 and beyond, SpaceX will only be tasked with supporting one NASA Crew Dragon launch annually by 2023.

Crew Dragon capsule C207 on its first orbital mission, January 2021. (NASA)
Crew Dragon Endeavour’s (C206) second ISS arrival, April 2021. (NASA)
Cargo Dragon 2 capsule C208 approaches the ISS for the second time, August 2021. (Thomas Pesquet/ESA)
Cargo Dragon 2 capsule C209, July 2021. (NASA/ESA – Thomas Pesquet)

On the uncrewed side of things, Walker also revealed that SpaceX will debut at least one more new Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft in 2022, raising the company’s uncrewed Dragon fleet to four capsules strong. As long as the ISS remains operational, SpaceX will likely continue to deliver cargo biannually, requiring around 12-18 more Cargo Dragon launches between now and 2030. It’s possible that Starship will quickly replace Dragon as soon as it’s operational and NASA-certified for routine crew and cargo missions, but that milestone is several years away at best, likely ensuring that Dragon will continue to operate for at least the next 5-10 years.

In the meantime, SpaceX’s fleet of reusable Dragon spacecraft looks set to almost double from four to seven capsules by Q4 2022.

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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 stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days

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Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.

Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.

On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.

The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.

The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.

Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.

Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.

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Elon Musk

SpaceX’s Elon Musk relieves worries about orbital data centers

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

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently confronted worries about orbital data centers and launching satellites in mass quantities in space, as some voiced concerns about crowding.

Musk’s SpaceX plans to combat the issue of needing data centers by launching them into space instead of taking up valuable real estate on Earth. It has been a major point of SpaceX’s future, including its looming IPO, which could be the largest ever.

In a recent interview filmed at SpaceX’s Starlink terminal factory in Bastrop, Texas, Elon Musk directly addressed concerns that deploying large numbers of AI satellites for orbital data centers could crowd Earth’s orbit. His message was straightforward and reassuring: space is vast beyond human intuition.

“Space is really big,” Musk said. “It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the Earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” He emphasized that even zooming in makes a satellite appear large, but from a planetary perspective, they are minuscule specks.

Musk pointed to SpaceX’s real-world experience operating roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites as evidence that large constellations can be managed safely. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of how to operate just really large constellations and do it safely,” he noted. SpaceX remains the only operator with meaningful experience at this scale, giving the company unique insight into tight orbital packing without compromising safety

The discussion highlighted SpaceX’s plans for “AI1” satellites—essentially orbiting racks of AI compute powered by massive solar arrays and cooled via radiative panels in space’s vacuum.

These satellites leverage proven Starlink V3 technology, making them simpler to design than communications satellites. A first-generation unit targets around 150 kW peak power, with a 70-meter wingspan for solar panels and radiators. Laser links will connect them to each other and the Starlink network, delivering low-latency access (on the order of a few milliseconds from low-Earth orbit).

FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan

Musk framed orbital data centers as a practical solution to Earth’s constraints on AI growth. Ground-based facilities face power shortages, water demands for cooling, and grid limitations. In space, constant sunlight (no day-night cycle), vacuum radiative cooling, and abundant solar energy offer clear advantages.

Production will ramp up at an expanded “Gigasat” factory in Bastrop, with solar manufacturing already underway and full AI satellite output expected at reasonable volume by the end of 2027. Starship’s rapid, high-volume launch capability, aiming for multiple flights per hour, will make massive deployment feasible.

Critics sometimes raise risks like space debris or Kessler syndrome, but Musk’s response underscores scale: even a million satellites would represent an imperceptible fraction of available orbital volume when viewed against Earth’s size. SpaceX’s automated collision avoidance and deorbiting designs for Starlink further mitigate concerns.

This vision ties into broader ambitions. Musk sees orbital AI compute as a step toward harnessing more of the Sun’s energy, advancing humanity on the Kardashev scale from a Type 0 civilization toward Type 1 and eventually Type 2. By moving power-hungry data centers off-planet, SpaceX aims to unlock orders-of-magnitude more compute while preserving Earth’s resources.

Musk’s comments should ease public anxiety. With proven operational expertise, incremental engineering, and the immensity of space itself, orbital data centers represent not overcrowding, but smart expansion into the final frontier.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla Full Self-Driving hits Level 4? One analyst says yes

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.

However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.

Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.

Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.

Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.

He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.

Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.

Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.

That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.

Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.

“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.

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