NASA has certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 (likely F9 v1.2) to launch the space agency’s most valuable and critical scientific spacecraft, opening up the floor for SpaceX to routinely compete for missions comparable to Hubble Space Telescope, the Curiosity Mars rover (Mars Science Laboratory), Cassini (a Saturn orbiter), and James Webb Space Telescope, among many others.
As SpaceX nears the Falcon family’s 35th consecutive launch success, this certification serves as a pragmatic endorsement of the years of work the company has put into optimizing Falcon 9 for performance and reliability.
SpaceX announces that NASA’s Launch Services Program has given Category 3 certification to the Falcon 9, making it eligible for “NASA’s highest cost and most complex scientific missions,” according to its statement.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) November 8, 2018
Although Falcon 9 is capable of extremely impressive performance beyond Earth orbit, that performance only becomes truly competitive with ULA’s Atlas V rocket when Falcon 9 is launched as a fully expendable vehicle. Regardless, both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are all but guaranteed to cost far less than a comparably capable Atlas V, even assuming no recovery attempt is made. Given the rarity of such valuable NASA launches, typically no more than two annually at best, SpaceX would undoubtedly be more than happy to expend as much hardware as necessary to give NASA a competitive offer for the performance it needs.
“LSP Category 3 certification is a major achievement for the Falcon 9 team and represents another key milestone in our close partnership with NASA. We are honored to have the opportunity to provide cost-effective and reliable launch services to the country’s most critical scientific payloads.” – Gwynne Shotwell, COO and President of SpaceX
Still, the fact remains that most – if not all – of NASA’s high-value “Class A or B” missions end up being extremely heavy spacecraft, either as a result of large and expensive scientific instruments, a need for lots of extra onboard propellant, or some combination of the two. Saturnian orbiter Cassini, launched in 1997, weighed a full ~5700 kg (~12,600 lbs) and had to make its way from Earth to Saturn, a journey of many hundreds of millions of miles. Hubble, placed in a medium Earth orbit, weighed 11,100 kg (24,500 lbs) at liftoff. The Curiosity rover – including cruise stage, reentry hardware, and rocket crane – weighed ~3900 kg (~8600 lbs) at launch.
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- NASA LSP’s launch vehicle classification.
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- The corresponding spacecraft classifications, ranging from low-value to high-value.
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- Falcon Heavy’s first static fire, Feb. 2018. (SpaceX)
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- SpaceX and NASA’s most recent science spacecraft launch, TESS. (SpaceX)
Paving the way for Falcon Heavy
Falcon 9 routinely launches payloads as heavy as that but only to comparatively low-energy orbits around Earth – to launch the same massive payloads beyond Earth orbit requires far more energy and thus rocket performance. Perhaps the most encouraging part of this NASA certification is the demonstration that NASA’s trust in SpaceX rockets has grown to the point that Falcon Heavy certification is likely just a matter of time. In order to qualify for “LSP Category 3” certification, any given rocket must launch anywhere from 3-6 times depending on what the certification board feels is necessary.
SpaceX has at least two Falcon Heavy launches scheduled for 2019. Combined with the rocket’s nearly flawless February 2018 launch debut, those two launches – commsat Arabsat 6A and the Air Force’s STP-2 mission – could satisfy NASA LSP and allow the agency to certify Falcon Heavy for flagship science missions. If/when that occurs, SpaceX will be able to offer NASA all the performance they will conceivably need for the foreseeable future, ensuring that NASA will be able to compete most future launch contracts. At worst, a ULA victory would force the company to significantly lower their prices.
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Elon Musk
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.
Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.
Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.
Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.
Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s next Uranium in Uranus merch is Boring Company’s weirdest tease yet
Elon Musk teased a glowing new Boring Company merch idea, complete with a Geiger counter.
Elon Musk teased the next piece of Boring Company merchandise on X Saturday, and it is exactly as unserious as fans of the company’s product history have come to expect. “The next @boringcompany merch will put Uranium in Uranus,” Musk wrote in a thread posted early Saturday morning. He followed up by explaining that the item would glow in the dark, “because otherwise how could you find it,” and that a Geiger counter would be sold separately as “an optional strap-on.”
Musk closed the thread with a line that doubles as a mission statement for the tunneling company’s merchandise arm: “It’s not easy coming up with something that is both outrageously unsellable and yet extremely popular.”
The Boring Company has built a small but consistent side business out of novelty items that start as jokes and end up selling out. The company’s Not-a-Flamethrower raised roughly $10 million in a few days back in 2018, moving all 20,000 units it produced. Its Burnt Hair perfume, priced around $100 a bottle, sold out fast enough that scalpers were flipping units on eBay for ten times the retail price. Boring Bricks, made from tunneling spoil, followed the same playbook of teasing a product on X months before it became real.
Musk has not said what the actual item will be, only that it involves uranium and glows in the dark. Given the pattern, that vagueness is probably intentional. Past merch announcements have started as one-line jokes and taken weeks or months to turn into an actual product listing on the company’s site, and there is no guarantee this one follows through at all.
The timing lines up with a period of real momentum for the Boring Company outside of the joke merchandise. The company said last week it plans to double the number of operational stations on its Vegas Loop by the end of the year, a target tied to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers. Prufrock-5, one of the company’s tunnel boring machines, also just wrapped a test tunnel in Bastrop, Texas, and is expected to relaunch on its next assignment in November.
Whether the uranium joke turns into an actual product remains to be seen. Musk’s post did not include a price, a shipping date, or even a name for the item, which has historically meant a Boring Company website page goes up quietly, password protected, sometime before an announcement.
News
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
NASA just gave SpaceX a $946 million contract for three more astronaut missions through 2030.
NASA has awarded SpaceX a $946 million contract modification covering three more astronaut missions to the International Space Station, according to an announcement the agency published Friday. The award adds Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s existing Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract, bringing the agreement’s total value to $5.92 billion across 17 flights.
SpaceX confirmed the award on X, writing that it was excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the Space Station from Florida. The new missions cover ground, launch, in orbit, and return operations, along with cargo transport and a lifeboat capability while docked at the station, and the period of performance runs through 2030.
We’re excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch @NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the @Space_Station from Florida https://t.co/Qm16vVK9F3 pic.twitter.com/drg3s7GtuM
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 18, 2026
The award follows a notice of intent NASA issued in May, when the agency first signaled it would purchase up to six additional post certification missions from SpaceX. Teslarati covered that filing at the time, noting NASA cited technical issues and schedule delays encountered by Boeing as a driving factor. Friday’s contract modification locks in three of those six missions, with the remaining three left open for NASA to award later, potentially to Boeing if Starliner clears certification.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has still not flown an operational crew rotation mission for NASA. The spacecraft’s most recent crewed test flight in 2024 ended without the astronauts returning aboard Starliner, and the company has spent the time since working through thruster problems. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said this week that SpaceX is not retiring Crew Dragon today, for sure, while stopping short of committing to fly it past 2030.
Crew-12 is currently docked at the space station, and NASA has said Crew-13 is targeting a launch in the coming weeks. The newly awarded Crew-15 through Crew-17 missions extend SpaceX’s role as NASA’s primary way of getting astronauts to and from orbit well into the back half of the decade, regardless of what happens with Starliner or Starship in the meantime.
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Elon Musk’s next Uranium in Uranus merch is Boring Company’s weirdest tease yet
