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A 2021 SpaceX Odyssey: Dragon aces third astronaut launch, docks with space station
Early on Saturday morning, SpaceX Crew Dragon ‘Endeavour’ (capsule C206) – carrying four international astronauts – flawlessly docked with the International Space Station (ISS) for the second time in less than a year.
Capping off a smooth 24 hours of free-flight following an equally successful Falcon 9 launch on Friday, April 23rd, Dragon’s third crewed space station arrival was captured in spectacular fashion – thanks in part to the presence of a separate Crew Dragon vehicle already docked to the orbiting outpost. Recently swapped between the two ISS docking ports capable of supporting Dragons, Crew-1 NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins had – by far – the best view in the house of Crew-2’s space station rendezvous while looking out the window of the other Crew Dragon on orbit.
Former NASA flight director and Space Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale put it best, stating that SpaceX “[made] it look easy” with a “perfectly successful [Crew-2] launch and docking” – the company’s third astronaut launch and space station rendezvous since May 2020.
After a mere three days of delays – one for weather – from an April 20th (4/20) target set almost three months earlier, Crew Dragon lifted off on SpaceX and NASA’s Crew-2 mission shortly before dawn on April 23rd. As the rocket rapidly carried Dragon and its passengers from sea level to dozens of kilometers above the Earth’s surface, it sailed into sunlight, producing a spectacle that stretched across a vast swath of the pre-dawn sky as the sun lit up Falcon 9’s second stage exhaust plume.
The four astronauts aboard the flight-proven Dragon were equally amazed as the inky black vacuum outside their spacecraft’s windows turned to blinding, unfiltered sunlight. One spectacle and a flawless trip into orbit on Falcon 9 behind them, French European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet caught a glimpse of the rocket’s expended second stage effectively flying in formation a few miles below Crew Dragon.
After almost exactly 24 hours on its own and five major Draco thruster orbit-raising and trajectory-matching burns, as well as an unwelcome collision avoidance warning that ultimately turned out to be a false alarm, Crew Dragon capsule C206 completed its second space station docking without delay around 5am on April 24th. Pesquet has published several dozen excellent photos of the flight and docking, offering the best look yet at what life aboard a free-flying Dragon is really like for the four astronauts packed into a volume – as he himself notes – roughly equivalent to a large car’s cabin.
With its successful arrival, SpaceX – for the first time ever – had two separate Crew Dragon spacecraft docked to ISS simultaneously, marking the first of at least two more Dragon ‘hand-off’ milestones to come. Though NASA nominally planned to have Commercial Crew providers SpaceX and Boeing essentially take turns on operational astronaut ferry missions, the latter company’s Starliner spacecraft is more than a year and a half behind schedule and is unlikely to perform its first crewed demonstration flight before Q1 2022.
In other words, SpaceX has been forced to mature its Crew Dragon program much faster than expected to complete at least four back-to-back astronaut launches in ~17 months, while NASA is effectively dependent on the company to ensure the ISS remains fully crewed from May 2020 to sometime in 2022.
Following Crew-2’s smooth arrival, Crew-1’s Crew Dragon and its four-astronaut crew will return to Earth as early as April 28th. Sometime in October or November 2021, SpaceX will repeat that hand-off process once again when it launches Crew-3 and recovers Crew-2. There is a distant chance Boeing will have completed two successful test flights and be ready for Starliner’s operational astronaut launch debut in early 2022, but it’s arguably much more likely that SpaceX will also perform a third hand-off between Crew-3 and Crew-4 sometime in Q2 2022 before finally handing over the reins to Starliner.
Tesla has slimmed its Cybertruck offerings to offer only its most expensive trim: the Cyberbeast.
After announcing that the Cybertruck would no longer be produced and the company would wind down manufacturing sometime in the middle of 2027, Tesla started to eliminate some of the configurations offered to customers.
Tesla has stopped taking orders for the Cybertruck Premium AWD.
The Cyberbeast is now the only trim you can order, and its price went up $7,500 to $109,990.
Estimated deliveries have also slipped to March–June 2027 as the Giga Texas line heads toward its mid-2027 wind-down. https://t.co/o28epA0ZQl
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 10, 2026
Now, only one remains: the $109,990 Cyberbeast. This is truly what seems like Tesla’s last effort to deter any remaining orders from coming in: eliminate the cheap trims and leave only the high-dollar vehicle within the lineup of Cybertruck options.
Those who want to take advantage of this last-ditch opportunity to own Tesla’s symbolic pickup have to pay to play.
Tesla says the reason for the wind down is truly because of Cybercab and its importance to the future.
Despite cries for Tesla to continue production of the pickup, Musk says it is too difficult to ramp a high-volume line instead of ending the truck altogether. He also says Cybercab is what will take passengers around for the “majority of all miles in any jurisdiction where it is not prohibited by law.”
@PalmerLuckey @carlhancock Cybercab will do a majority of all passenger miles in any jurisdiction where it is not prohibited by law.
Obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 10, 2026
Tesla is going all in on autonomy, and that’s never been a secret. But the commitment to a two-door, two-seat Cybercab truly limits people from having options for labor or hobbies. It also limits people from having their entire family in a single car.
Parents with even a single child will be required to take multiple vehicles if Cybercab is truly the only option Tesla plans to have.
Elon Musk keeps justifying Tesla Cybertruck’s cancelation, but it’s confusing
Tesla has stated the Robovan will also be in production eventually, but it still does not seem like the most ideal vehicle to own. It seems like it is geared more toward commercial uses, but Tesla might have something in the pipeline for families.
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Tesla exec hints at a wild fix for Robotaxi’s biggest weather problem
Tesla VP Lars Moravy says focused lasers could keep robotaxi cameras clear instead of wipers.
Tesla may one day use lasers instead of wiper blades to keep its robotaxi cameras clear. Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, floated the idea in a new episode of Jay Leno’s Garage released Monday, where he and design chief Franz von Holzhausen walked Leno through the Model Y L.
“If you fire them in a focused area, you can clean the sheet of water and create a barrier,” Moravy said. “When you think about autonomy, it might be a good solution to only clean the area where the camera is.” He added that clearing an entire windshield would take too many lasers to be practical.
🚨 Jay Leno has released a new episode breaking down the Model Y L. You can watch it here: https://t.co/umMp85UEaB — TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 9, 2026
The comment brings back one of Tesla’s stranger patents. The company filed for “Pulsed Laser Cleaning of Debris Accumulated on Glass Articles in Vehicles and Photovoltaic Assemblies” in May 2019, and the U.S. Patent Office granted it in September 2021. An updated divisional version was granted on March 31, 2026. The system detects debris on the glass, identifies what it is, and pulses the laser at a calibrated rate so the beam never penetrates deeper than the glass itself. The filing names windshields, side windows, camera lenses and solar panels as possible targets.
Lasers were once rumored for the Cybertruck, which appeared at its November 2019 unveiling with no wipers at all. Tesla eventually settled on a single oversized blade, and Elon Musk admitted the wiper was the part of the truck that troubled him the most. That production line is now scheduled to shut down around mid 2027 to make room for more Cybercab output.
What has changed since then is who is in the vehicle. A privately owned car has a driver who can notice a smeared windshield and do something about it. A Cybercab heading to its next pickup has nobody on board to check. Tesla has been chipping away at that problem with conventional hardware. Model Y Robotaxis in Austin were spotted with washers on their side repeater cameras in January, and a lens cleaning patent granted in May describes a fluid and wiper assembly for vehicle cameras and Optimus’ eyes. A laser would remove the fluid and the blades, both of which need regular replacement across a fleet.
The same episode gave Leno his first ride on Full Self-Driving (Supervised). The Model Y L pulled over on its own when an ambulance approached with its sirens on. “We got it on self-driving mode! I’m not touching anything,” Leno said. Moravy and von Holzhausen also explained that owners remain responsible while using FSD (Supervised), while Tesla takes responsibility for Robotaxi rides because it acts as the operator. Tesla launched the Model Y L in the U.S. in July at $61,990.
Moravy gave no timeline, and he described the laser setup as something Tesla is considering rather than a confirmed feature. The fleet it would serve keeps getting bigger, though. Tesla launched unsupervised Robotaxi service in San Antonio on Monday, its eighth city, and expanded its Austin service area to roughly 443 square miles on the same day. Several of those markets, including Houston, Miami and Tampa, see heavy seasonal rain.
Tesla launched unsupervised Robotaxi service in San Antonio, Texas, on November 9, 2026, with the first rides beginning at 5 a.m. local time.
The company’s official Robotaxi account on X posted the announcement just after midnight, sharing a map that outlines a large operational zone covering much of the city. The geofence is roughly 274 to 275 square miles, making it Tesla’s largest day-one Robotaxi service area to date.
🚨 Tesla just announced that Robotaxi is available in San Antonio, TX
First rides at 5am local time! https://t.co/azck6NlD8H
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 9, 2026
The zone centers on downtown, covers nearly everything inside Loop 410, and extends north to Loop 1604 between Interstate 10 and U.S. 281, with further reach west past State Highway 151, east beyond I-35, and south toward I-37. This area encompasses about one million residents and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
San Antonio International Airport lies inside the geofence, though Tesla is not currently offering airport pickups or drop-offs. This hopefully will happen soon, as ride-sharing to and from the airport can be expensive.
The launch makes San Antonio Tesla’s eighth unsupervised Robotaxi city and its fifth in Texas, joining Austin, Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth. Florida markets in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa are also live.
🚨 Here’s every active geofence, by size (not including the Bay Area geofence):
• Austin: 435 sq mi (first ride Jun 22, 2025) · Cybercabs live, expanded today • San Antonio: ~275 sq mi (first ride Nov 9, 2026) • Houston: 254 sq mi (Apr 18, 2026) • Fort Worth: 143 sq mi (Nov 2, 2026) • Dallas: 81 sq mi (Apr 18, 2026) • Miami: 31 sq mi (Jul 3, 2026) • Orlando: 26 sq mi (Jul 21, 2026) • Tampa: 24 sq mi (Jul 21, 2026)
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 9, 2026
Service uses modified Model Y vehicles operating without a safety driver in the vehicle, consistent with recent unsupervised expansions. Cybercab two-seaters remain limited primarily to Austin for now. It’s worth noting that Dept. of Transportation officials in Texas have already ok’d the Cybercab’s operation in Austin, and one official called it “a tangible example of how quickly our transportation system is evolving.”
San Antonio was previously listed among near-term targets in Tesla’s October 2026 Robotaxi safety materials, alongside Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Jacksonville. The rapid Texas rollout follows Fort Worth’s unsupervised debut on November 2 and builds on Austin’s original launch in June 2025.
The 274-square-mile debut remains substantially larger than Waymo’s local footprint and marks continued progress in Tesla’s unsupervised autonomy efforts after starting the year with no such rides. The company has stated ambitions for broader 24/7 operations by the end of 2026 as vehicle counts and software reliability improve.
Tesla slims Cybertruck offerings to only its most expensive trim
Tesla exec hints at a wild fix for Robotaxi’s biggest weather problem
