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SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 Block 5 returns to port in pristine condition

Published

7 years ago

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SpaceX’s first launched and landed Falcon 9 Block 5 booster has returned to port after a handful of days at sea, hopefully marking the beginning of a long and storied future of commercial missions. The booster – numbered B1046 – appears to be in extraordinarily good shape, more or less unscathed after a relatively high-energy reentry. Photographer Tom Cross documented the historic return in person at Port Canaveral.

B1046 arrives at Port Canaveral after an eventful inaugural launch and landing. (Tom Cross)

After detaching from the rocket’s second stage, which went on to successfully inject Bangladesh’s first communications satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit, B1046 reached a peak of around 110 km before reentering Earth’s atmosphere. Traveling 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) per second, Block 5 eventually completed a soft landing 500 miles off the Florida coast on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. The 25th successful Falcon 9 booster recovery, B1046 marked that historic achievement in proper style, dressed with large, black sections of the new SpaceX-developed thermal protection system, among dozens of other major improvements included in the launch vehicle’s “Block” upgrade.

While not visible, the most significant improvements are likely to be found at the base of the first stage’s octaweb – now assembled with bolts instead of welds – in the form of a dramatically improved heat shield around its nine Merlin 1D engines (also upgraded, of course). One of the Falcon recovery technicians showed some exceptional interest in the shield and Merlins, likely documenting their condition in extreme detail to inform engineering reviews of the pathfinder rocket after its first flight test. Per CEO Elon Musk’s pre-launch phone call with members of the press, SpaceX means to do an extremely thorough disassembly and analysis of B1046 in order to (hopefully) validate many thousands of hours of design, engineering, modeling, and testing. If those reviews are promising, it’s extremely likely that B1046 will be reassembled and flown many more times, perhaps one day becoming another historic monument to SpaceX’s reusability program and Block 5 upgrade.

Meanwhile, this mission also marked another routine operation for SpaceX’s robotic stage-securing robot, unofficially nicknamed Roomba or Octagrabber. This custom-built robot is used to better ensure the safety of SpaceX’s recovery crew by allowing them to remain on an accompanying vessel while securing the booster robotically, significantly lowering the chances of it sliding around or tipping over in high sea states.

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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 takes first step in sunsetting Model S and X with drastic move

Tesla won’t be taking custom orders of the Model S or Model X in Europe any longer.

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3 hours ago

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July 30, 2025

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Credit: @supergeek18 | X

Tesla has seemingly taken the first step in sunsetting two of its older vehicles, the Model S and Model X, by ending international orders.

The flagship sedan and SUV from Tesla are the two oldest cars in the company’s lineup. They account for a very small portion of overall sales, and several years ago, CEO Elon Musk admitted that Tesla only continues to build and sell them due to “sentimental reasons.”

Earlier this year, there were calls for Tesla to end the production of the two cars, but Lars Moravy said that the Model S and Model X were due to get some love later in 2025. That happened, but the changes were extremely minor.

Tesla launches new Model S and Model X, and the changes are slim

Some took this as an indication that Tesla has kind of moved on from the Model S and Model X. A handful of people seemed to think Tesla would overhaul the vehicles substantially, but the changes were extremely minor and included only a few real adjustments.

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In Europe, customers are unable to even put a new order in on a Model S or Model X.

We noticed earlier today that Tesla pressing the ‘Order’ button on either of the flagship vehicles takes you to local inventory, and not the Design Studio where you’d configure your custom build:

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Tesla simply does not make enough Model S or Model X units to justify the expensive logistics process of shipping custom orders overseas. It almost seems as if they’re that they will essentially build a bunch of random configurations, send them overseas every few months, and let them sell before replenishing inventory.

Inversely, it could also mean Tesla is truly gearing up to sunset the vehicle altogether. It seems unlikely that the company will fade them out altogether in the next couple of years, but it could absolutely think about ending international orders because volume is so low.

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Energy

Tesla inks multi-billion-dollar deal with LG Energy Solution to avoid tariff pressure

Tesla has reportedly secured a sizable partnership with LGES for LFP cells, and there’s an extra positive out of it.

Published

8 hours ago

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July 30, 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has reportedly inked a multi-billion-dollar deal with LG Energy Solution in an effort to avoid tariff pressure and domesticate more of its supply chain.

Reuters is reporting that Tesla and LGES, a South Korean battery supplier of the automaker, signed a $4.3 billion deal for energy storage system batteries. The cells are going to be manufactured by LGES at its U.S. factory located in Michigan, the report indicates. The batteries will be the lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, chemistry.

Tesla delivers 384,000 vehicles in Q2 2025, deploys 9.6 GWh in energy storage

It is a move Tesla is making to avoid buying cells and parts from overseas as the Trump White House continues to use tariffs to prioritize domestic manufacturing.

LGES announced earlier today that it had signed a $4.3 billion contract to supply LFP cells over three years to a company, but it did not identify the customer, nor did the company state whether the batteries would be used in automotive or energy storage applications.

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The deal is advantageous for both companies. Tesla is going to alleviate its reliance on battery cells that are built out of the country, so it’s going to be able to take some financial pressure off itself.

For LGES, the company has reported that it has experienced slowed demand for its cells in terms of automotive applications. It planned to offset this demand lag with more projects involving the cells in energy storage projects. This has been helped by the need for these systems at data centers used for AI.

During the Q1 Earnings Call, Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja confirmed that the company’s energy division had been impacted by the need to source cells from China-based suppliers. He went on to say that the company would work on “securing additional supply chain from non-China-based suppliers.”

It seems as if Tesla has managed to secure some of this needed domestic supply chain.

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Lifestyle

Tesla brings perhaps the coolest interior feature to cars in latest update

Tesla adds on to the “fun” aspect of its vehicles.

Published

9 hours ago

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July 30, 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has brought perhaps the coolest interior feature to its cars in a new update that is rolling out to vehicles now.

The feature will require a newer vehicle that has interior ambient lighting, which is present on the new Model S, Model X, Model 3 “Highland,” and Model Y “Juniper.” The Cybertruck also has ambient lighting strips throughout.

Tesla Model Y’s ambient lighting design changes revealed in leaked video

With the Version 2025.26+ Software Update, Tesla is rolling out a new “Sync Accent Lights w/ Music” feature, which is available on the Tesla Toybox:

To enable the feature, you’ll access the Toybox, choose “Light Sync,” and then choose “Sync Accent Lights w/ Music.”

Although it does not improve the performance of the vehicle, it is yet another example of Tesla making one of the coolest cars out there. This is truly a cool add-on that can be used to impress your friends and family.

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