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SpaceX nails second Falcon 9 landing in 48 hours, fairing catch foiled by weather

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8 years ago

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Just a handful of days after SpaceX’s second-ever successful launch and landing of their upgraded Falcon 9 Block 5, the company has completed the same feat on the opposite side of the United States, debuting the Block 5 rocket with a launch and booster recovery from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB).

The booster in question, Falcon 9 B1048, is the third Block 5 booster to roll off of SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA assembly line and is now the first Block 5 rocket to launch from the company’s California launch facilities. On the opposite coast, SpaceX’s second Block 5 Falcon 9 booster (B1047) completed its own successful launch and landing, lofting the heaviest commercial satellite to ever reach orbit (Telstar 19V).

While weather during camera setup was absolutely spectacular, the predawn launch window meant that no sun was available to force the ever-present VAFB fog back over the ocean. (Pauline Acalin)

Seven months, fourteen launches

Today’s near-flawless predawn mission saw Falcon 9 place 10 Iridium NEXT satellites in a polar Earth orbit, during which the rocket’s Block 5 booster completed the first landing on Just Read The Instructions in nearly ten months and Mr Steven made his first attempt at catching a parasailing Falcon fairing with his massive net and arms upgrades. Those upgrades, tracked tirelessly by Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin for the better part of July, took barely a month to go from a clean slate (old arms and net fully uninstalled) to operational, fairing-catching status, an ode to the incredible pace at which SpaceX moves.

Sadly, the vessel’s Iridium-7 fairing catch attempt was sullied from the start by inclement weather – primarily wind shear –  that significantly hampered the accuracy of each fairing halve’s parafoil guidance, meaning that Mr Steven’s crew did see the parasailing halves touch down, but too far away to catch them in Mr Steven’s large net. Falcon 9 B1048 had its own difficulties thanks to what engineer and webcast host John Insprucker described as “the worst weather [SpaceX] has ever had” for a Falcon booster landing. Nevertheless, Falcon 9 appeared to stick an off-center but plenty accurate landing aboard drone ship JRTI, although SpaceX technicians are likely going to wish they had the same robotic stage securer located aboard OCISLY on the opposite coast.

 

Just Read The Instructions, on the other hand, was similarly tracked but primarily to verify that nothing was happening – the vessel’s last operational trip to the Pacific Ocean dates back to the first half of October 2017. Since then, SpaceX began a process of intentionally expending Falcon 9 boosters that had already flown once before, choosing to essentially start from scratch with a fresh fleet of highly reliable and reusable Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters rather than recover older versions of the rocket and attempt to refurbish them beyond the scope of their designed lifespans.

The Block 5 design, however, has taken the countless lessons-learned from flying and reflying previous versions of Falcon 9 and rolled them all into one (relatively) final iteration of the ever-changing rocket. With any luck and at least a little more iteration, Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters should be capable of launching anywhere from 10 to 100 times, 10 times with minimal or no refurbishment and 100 times with more regular maintenance, much like high-performance jet aircraft do today.

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With three successful launches of new Block 5 boosters now under the new version’s belt, it’s safe to say that the rocket is off to an extremely good start. The most important milestones to watch for over the next several weeks and months will be the first reflight of a recovered Block 5 rocket, the first reuse of a Falcon 9 payload fairing, and then the first third/fourth/fifth/etc. reuse of Block 5 booster. On the horizon, of course, is SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s challenge to launch a Falcon 9 Block 5 booster two times in less than 24 hours, and do so before the end of 2019.

Roughly 3,000 miles to the East, SpaceX’s just-recovered Florida Block 5 booster wrapped up a picture-perfect arrival in Port Canaveral aboard drone ship Of Course I Still Love You at the exact same time as another Block 5 rocket was launching (and landing) on the opposite coast.

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For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet (including fairing catcher Mr Steven), check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!

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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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Elon Musk

Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab

Musk says Tesla and SpaceX will build and run Terafab, with TSMC limited to renting.

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5 hours ago

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October 7, 2026

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SpaceX Terafab rendering

Elon Musk has drawn a firm line around who will be in charge of Terafab, the giant chip factory Tesla and SpaceX are planning in Texas.

Musk replied to a post on X arguing that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) would most likely end up owning and operating the plant. “No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that,” Musk wrote. “Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.”

In plain terms, a sublease means TSMC could rent a section of the complex to make chips, similar to a tenant renting one floor of an office tower. The building, the equipment decisions and the daily operation would stay with Tesla and SpaceX.

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The comment shuts down speculation that started last week. On October 2, tech journalist Tim Culpan reported that TSMC was exploring ways to help run Terafab’s factories. Musk responded the next day that it was “just discussions, but something may come of it,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That left room for a scenario where the world’s largest contract chipmaker took the wheel. Musk’s latest post closes that door.

Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner

Some background helps explain why this matters. Tesla designs its own AI chips today but pays outside companies like TSMC and Samsung to manufacture them. Musk unveiled Terafab in March as a joint project between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, arguing that existing suppliers cannot expand fast enough to meet his companies’ future demand. The goal is to produce enough chips each year to supply one terawatt of computing power, roughly 50 times what the entire global AI chip industry produces now.

Those chips are meant for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, the Cybercab and Full Self-Driving computers, along with chips for SpaceX’s planned data centers in orbit. Owning the factory means Musk’s companies would not have to compete with every other chip customer for time on someone else’s production lines.

Intel is still part of the picture. The company signed on in April to help design, build and package chips for the project, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg this week that Intel will keep working on Terafab despite the TSMC chatter.

The project moved from concept to construction planning over the summer. In August, SpaceX confirmed the Grimes County site about an hour from Houston, sent the county a $10 million payment under its tax abatement deal and said civil work would begin shortly. The first phase carries a $16.8 billion price tag, and total spending across all phases could reach as much as $119 billion.

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TSMC chairman C.C. Wei has said a new fab typically takes two to three years to build and another one to two years to reach full output. Tesla and SpaceX have never run one, which is why TSMC’s expertise drew so much attention. Musk’s answer suggests he would rather learn that process in house than hand control of a project this central to Tesla’s robotics and autonomy plans to an outside company.

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Elon Musk

Trump to hand Elon Musk a top honor that traces back to JFK

Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at Thursday’s White House summit.

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12 hours ago

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October 7, 2026

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elon musk and donald trump in front of a tesla cybertruck at the white house

Elon Musk is set to receive the highest honor the U.S. government gives to scientists and engineers.

President Donald Trump will present Musk with the National Medal of Science on Thursday at the White House’s Science: A New Golden Age Summit, Fox News Digital first reported on Wednesday. Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su will receive the same medal, while Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. A White House official later confirmed the list to Reuters.

“The Trump administration is grateful for the contributions of these incredible leaders in science and technology. These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News.

It will be the first time Trump has presented either medal in his two terms. Congress created the National Medal of Science in 1959, and the National Science Foundation, which administers it, says 529 scientists and engineers have received it since. A presidential committee reviews nominees, but the president makes the final call.

Thursday’s group of medalists run or founded companies, and three of them sit at the center of the Super Intelligence hardware race that Musk competes in. Huang’s Nvidia supplies the GB300 chips filling SpaceX’s Colossus 2 cluster, while Su’s AMD is Nvidia’s biggest rival in data center GPUs.

Worth noting that Trump’s uncle, MIT physicist John G. Trump, received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan for his work on ionizing radiation and its uses in medicine and industry.

The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future

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For Musk, the medal is the latest sign of how far his relationship with Trump has come since their 2025 split over the “Big Beautiful Bill” and his exit from DOGE. Last week, he sat at Trump’s left during a White House lunch where AI executives signed a voluntary safety accord, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named him to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare. Musk has also adopted the administration’s new vocabulary, saying on Sunday that SpaceXAI will be renamed SpaceXSI after Trump ordered federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence.”

Musk has collected science honors before, including the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in 2019.

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Lifestyle

Tesla FSD changed its mind mid-intersection, and it may have saved a life

Tesla shares dashcam footage of FSD Supervised stopping mid intersection to avoid a T-bone crash.

Published

17 hours ago

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October 7, 2026

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Credit: @BLKMDL3/X

Tesla is putting another Full Self-Driving save in front of its 24.8 million followers on X.

On Tuesday morning, Tesla’s main account shared a dashcam clip with the caption “FSD Supervised preventing T-bone crash.” The footage came from an owner posting as TheNewGrid, who described what happened at a stop sign: “I looked at the car coming to the stop sign figured they would stop, my car went, then came to a stop mid intersection as they flew by. Had I been manually driving this would have resulted in a crash.”

The sequence is the notable part. FSD had already started crossing when the other driver ran the stop sign. Instead of pressing on, the car braked hard in the middle of the intersection and let the crossing vehicle pass in front of it. By the owner’s own account, they had made the same assumption the software initially made, that the other car would stop, and would not have corrected in time.

The clip is the latest in a run of safety posts Tesla has amplified over the past several days. On Saturday, the company shared a video from Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim, who sold his Bentley for a Model Y and said he was buying Teslas with FSD for 10 of his employees. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla AI, followed up by writing that Tesla self-driving “reacts to other people cutting into your path with super-human response times.” On Monday, a Cybertruck owner posted footage of FSD moving across three lanes from a red light to clear a path for an ambulance approaching from behind.

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This recent clip also lands a few weeks after Tesla began shipping Automatic Collision Evasion with FSD v14.3.9, a feature that can activate FSD on the driver’s behalf when a frontal collision is imminent or the driver appears distracted. Elluswamy said in September that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” are coming with v15, the release Tesla has tied to round the clock Robotaxi operation.

The safety messaging matters beyond social media. Tesla has said FSD Supervised was 4.1 times less likely to crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on European roads, and it has been putting those figures in front of regulators. Eight EU countries have now approved FSD Supervised, with Croatia the most recent, but the EU’s bloc-wide vote originally set for October 6 has been pushed to December at the earliest.

FSD Supervised is still a Level 2 system, and the driver remains responsible at all times. Even heavy users find reasons to step in. Teslarati’s Joey Klender, who uses FSD for about 76 percent of his driving, laid out five recurring issues on Tuesday that still prompt him to intervene. Clips like this one show the other column of that ledger: moments where the software caught a mistake a human was about to make.

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