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SpaceX reveals Falcon fairing recovery progress as Mr. Steven barely misses catch

Mr. Steven appears to have just barely missed an attempted Falcon fairing catch during a controlled drop test. (SpaceX)

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SpaceX has offered an extraordinary glimpse into a stealthy program of Falcon fairing recovery research and development, which has utilized drop tests and iterative hardware and software upgrades to inch ever closer to fairing reuse over the last 6-9 months.

Short of a small handful of sparse comments made by executives in 2018, this is the first time SpaceX has officially acknowledged its continued attempts to optimize Falcon fairing recovery in the face of a number of missed post-launch catches. Given that the pictured fairing was so close to a successful landing that its parafoil actually became caught in Mr. Steven’s net, it seems that SpaceX has nearly solved the problems that have thus far prevented program success.

In the last six months of 2018, SpaceX has continued to tease its slow progress towards reusable Falcon fairings, originally planned to depend on a truly bizarre solution – Mr. Steven. An impressive vessel on its own, SpaceX has gradually added and extended and upgraded a range of recovery hardware on his deck, most notably including a vast net (likely tens of thousands of square feet or 2000+ square meters) supported by four huge arms and eight supporting booms. Despite increasing the usable area of the net, SpaceX has been unable to secure an operational fairing catch since it began attempts in March 2018.

In late May 2018, SpaceX provided the best look yet at the actual process of recovering Falcon fairings, showing off the guided parafoil (a wing-like parachute) and revealing that a fairing half – launched in support of Iridium-6/GRACE-FO – had splashed down just 50 meters (~165 ft) away from Mr. Steven’s net.

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However, in the months that followed, info about catch attempts became increasingly sparse and it eventually became clear that SpaceX was preparing to perform a range of controlled drop tests a few hundred miles off the coast of California. Ultimately, the company’s engineers and technicians hoped to use the controlled environment and a greater number of available drop/catch attempts to refine the hardware and software needed to finesse fairing halves into Mr. Steven’s net.

It may be almost absurdly large relative to any other conceivable thing that exists in the real world, but a few thousand square meters is actually more like a needle in a haystack for a piece of rocket traversing a 500-800 km arc at top speeds of more than 2 km/s.

 

In December 2018, following another sadly unsuccessful fairing recovery attempt on the West Coast, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed that engineers were also apparently looking into backup plans in case closing that last 50-meter gap turned out to be more expensive or complicated than it was worth. Most notably, he implied that SpaceX was interested in finding ways to waterproof and ultimately refly Falcon fairings even after soft-landings in seawater, whereas fairings are already capable of reliably landing intact in the ocean but cannot be reused due to seawater contamination and cracking caused by impact.

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Given just how close Mr. Steven appears to be to a successful in-net fairing recovery, it now seems implausible that SpaceX will choose just one of the two options at hand, likely instead progressing both development programs to points of success. Once fairings can both be successfully waterproofed and caught in Mr. Steven’s net, SpaceX will almost certainly have itself a foolproof solution to easy and reliable recovery and reuse even in bad sea states and stormy weather.

With the company’s first launch of 2019 probably just a few days away, chances seem good that SpaceX will attempt at least one more post-launch fairing recovery with Mr. Steven. Fingers crossed!


For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet 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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Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing

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(Credit: Starlink | X)

Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.

Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.

Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.

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The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.

A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.

Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.

Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.

Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.

The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.

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Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration

Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.

The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.

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Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update

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Credit: @jojje167 on X

Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.

Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.

The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.

Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.

When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.

Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.

The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.

Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.

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For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.

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Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard

Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.

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Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with  a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.

The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.

Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents

Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.

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On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a  Halloween Mode.

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