News
SpaceX Falcon Heavy beats out ULA Vulcan rocket for NASA Moon rover launch
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket appears to have edged out competitor United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) next-generation Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle to send a NASA rover and commercial lander to the Moon in 2023.
Back in August 2019, not long after NASA first began announcing significant contracts under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, startup Astrobotic announced that it contracted with ULA to launch its first small “Peregrine” lander and a dozen or so attached NASA payloads to the Moon in 2021. Rather than the extremely expensive but operational Atlas V rocket, the startup instead chose to manifest Peregrine on the first launch of Vulcan Centaur, a new ULA rocket meant to replace both Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy.
Less than two years later, Astrobotic has decided to purchase a dedicated launch from SpaceX – not ULA – for even larger “Griffin” lander that aims to deliver NASA’s ice-prospecting VIPER rover to the Moon and kick off the exploration of permanently-shadowed craters at its south pole.
Back in August 2019, Astrobotic’s announcement stated that “it selected United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket in a [highly competitive commercial process].” It later became clear that the Peregrine lander – while still scheduled to be sent directly to the Moon on a trans-lunar injection (TLI) trajectory – would not be the only payload on the mission. None of Vulcan Flight 1’s other payloads are known, but the presence of other paying customers helps explain how Vulcan beat SpaceX for the contract.
More importantly, companies willing to risk their payload(s) on new rockets have historically been enticed to overlook some of that first-flight risk with major discounts. In other words, in the often unlikely event that a company manages to sell a commercial rocket’s first launch, it’s incredibly unlikely that the same rocket will ever sell that cheaply again.
That appears to be exactly the case for ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, which secured a lunar lander contract for its launch debut only to lose a similar lunar lander launch contract from the same company – well within the range of Vulcan’s claimed capabilities – less than two years later. If SpaceX’s relatively expensive Falcon Heavy managed to beat early Vulcan launch pricing, there is virtually no chance whatsoever that Vulcan Centaur will ever be able to commercially compete with Falcon 9.
In fact, back in 2015 when Astrobotic began making noise about its plans to build commercial Moon landers, the larger Griffin was expected to weigh some 2220 kg (~4900 lb) fully-fueled and – when combined with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 workhorse – be able to land payloads as large as 270 kg (~600 lb) on the Moon. It’s unclear if that figure assumed an expendable Falcon 9 launch or if it was using numbers from the rocket’s most powerful variant, which was still a few years away at the time.
Either way, NASA’s VIPER lander – expected to have a launch mass of ~430 kg (~950 lb) – is a bit too heavy for a single-stick Falcon 9 flight to TLI. It’s also reasonable to assume that Griffin’s dry and fueled mass has grown substantially after more than half a decade of design maturation and the first Peregrine lander reaching the hardware production and assembly phase. While Falcon 9 narrowly falls short of the performance needed for Griffin/VIPER, a fully recoverable Falcon Heavy is capable of launching more than 6.5 metric tons to TLI, offering a safety margin of almost 100%.
Astrobotic says it has purchased a dedicated Falcon Heavy launch for Griffin-1 and VIPER, but it would be far from surprising to see one or multiple secondary payloads find their way onto a mission with multiple tons of extra capacity. Presumably assuming that its Q4 2021 or early 2022 Peregrine Moon landing debut is successful, Astrobotic and SpaceX aim to land Griffin-1 and NASA’s VIPER rover on the Moon as early as “late 2023.”
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
SpaceX targets September 22 for Starship Flight 14, its first attempt to reach real orbit.
SpaceX has set September 22 as the target date for Starship’s 14th test flight, and this one carries a different goal than any of the 13 that came before it. Every previous Starship mission has intentionally flown a suborbital arc, reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launched. Flight 14 is designed to send the craft into a genuine orbit around Earth for the first time.
The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central time at Starbase in South Texas and runs for 75 minutes, pending regulatory approval, according to SpaceX’s mission description published Tuesday. If the flight goes as planned, Starship will circle the planet roughly six times at an altitude near 275 kilometers over about ten hours before a deorbit burn sends it toward a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a departure from the Indian Ocean recoveries used on the last several flights.
The mission also marks the first attempt to put a working batch of Starlink V3 satellites into actual service. Flight 13 carried 20 of the new satellites in July, but because that mission never left a suborbital trajectory, the payload reentered along with the ship instead of separating into orbit.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Each V3 satellite is rated for roughly one terabit per second of downlink capacity, so a successful deployment on Flight 14 would be SpaceX’s largest single jump in network bandwidth since Starlink began flying on Falcon 9.
Flight 13 still did the heavier lifting on the technical side. That July mission flew a deliberately more stressful reentry profile to test Starship’s heat shield, and the ship survived its softest splashdown yet, intact enough for drone inspections shortly after landing. Elon Musk said the flight delivered “all the heat shield data we needed and then some,” a result Teslarati covered in detail when he later said SpaceX had solved the vehicle’s biggest reusability challenge. Flight 14 is where SpaceX starts spending that confidence on an actual orbital insertion rather than another controlled fall back to Earth.
One thing Flight 14 will not attempt is a tower catch of the ship. Musk floated the idea right after Flight 13, but walked the timeline back in August, saying a catch attempt was more likely “in a few months.” The Super Heavy booster will still aim for its own recovery, targeting an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America, the same approach used on recent flights.
September 22 is SpaceX’s own target, not a locked date. Starship’s schedule has slipped before over hardware readiness and FAA sign off, and the company has said as much in its own mission notes. But the plan itself represents the clearest marker yet that Starship is moving from a suborbital test program into something meant to carry paying payloads and, eventually, people.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.
Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.
Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”
The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.
Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.
Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.
The Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who has been a big reason the product has such high expectations due to delayed timelines and a constant need to make it even more insane than before.
Tesla announced on September 12 that it would officially unveil the Roadster in Waco, Texas, on October 1, ending years of patience for fans and reservation holders who have waited for the all-electric supercar to enter production since 2017.
Musk has said that this event will be well worth the wait on several occasions, and last year on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said that there should be a closing chapter to supercars- the end of cars that aren’t focused on safety.
He said:
“Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable. My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I think if Peter wants a flying car, he should be able to buy one. I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever. This is some crazy technology in this car. Let’s just put it this way: if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
Musk’s teases have continued, and now that the event is roughly two weeks away, it seems like Roadster is finally going to show up and blow some minds:
It’s out of this world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Excitement guaranteed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Tesla has definitely dragged out the development of the Roadster, but there is a good reason for it.
Tesla has been working on many other projects, most notably self-driving efforts to increase passenger safety, and those simply took priority over the Roadster, a low-volume, high-performance sports car that has a lightning-fast acceleration rate of 0-60 MPH in just 1.1 seconds, could potentially fly, and contributes very little to the company’s mission.
However, many people have the Roadster on pre-order through the referral program or with their own money, and it is time that Tesla delivers on that.
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
