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SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster spotted at Kennedy Space Center
SpaceX has been spotted transporting a Falcon Heavy booster through NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) facilities, offering a slight glimpse behind the scenes amid a seemingly unending series of launch delays for the most powerful operational rocket in the world.
Continuing a recent surge of Falcon Heavy booster appearances at or around SpaceX facilities, the latest instance saw the company transporting new, unflown Falcon Heavy center core south through KSC to its HangarX rocket storage and processing facilities. While it does not appear that this particular Falcon Heavy center core is the same core believed to be assigned to the rocket’s next launch, its movement is still significant.
First, it’s not entirely clear where the Falcon Heavy center core came from. SpaceX maintains several fragmented processing and storage facilities in hangars strewn throughout the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), though SpaceX’s new HangarX facility – located within KSC ground – was presumably meant to organize booster and fairing storage, outfitting, and refurbishment under one roof.
Regardless, the new Falcon Heavy center core moved to HangarX on March 9th, 2022 was missing at least a few essential parts, suggesting that it could merely be headed there to be fully outfitted for an upcoming launch. However, it could also have been moved to HangarX for longer-term storage after waiting too long at a satellite storage facility. Due to seemingly unrelenting delays impacting at least three of several Falcon Heavy launches planned in 2022, SpaceX has been stuck shuffling more and more Falcon Heavy cores over the last six or so months.
As of September 2021, all three new Falcon Heavy cores meant to support USSF-44 – set to be the rocket’s first launch in more than two years – were already inside the integration hangar at Pad 39A, the only launch site able to support Falcon Heavy. Originally meant to launch in late 2020, both USSF-44 and USSF-52 have been more or less indefinitely delayed ever since. In September, USSF-44 – one or several geostationary US military satellites – was expected to launch as early as October 2021. Soon after, the launch was delayed to “early 2022.” As of March 2022, the US military now refuses to offer even a vague public estimate for the mission’s latest launch target.
Combined with a series of either two or three Dragon launches – all of which need Pad 39A – planned as early as late March, mid-April, and early May, it’s now all but guaranteed that Falcon Heavy will have to wait until May or June 2022 for its first launch since June 2019 – a staggering three-year gap. Due to those delays, SpaceX is currently juggling an unprecedented fleet of six (soon to be seven) unflown, ready-for-flight Falcon Heavy boosters on top of another dozen flight-proven Falcon 9 and Heavy boosters.
On top of the military’s USSF-44 and USSF-52 missions, both of which are now years behind schedule, satellite communications provider ViaSat also recently announced the latest in a long line of ViaSat-3 launch delays, pushing its Falcon Heavy launch from this spring to no earlier than “late summer” – i.e. late Q3 2022. Ironically, of Falcon Heavy’s near-term missions, only NASA’s Psyche spacecraft – designed to orbit and explore an exotic asteroid tens to hundreds of millions of miles from Earth – has survived the last year or two without a major launch delay. It remains on track to launch in August 2022.
In fact, given that there is apparently so much uncertainty surrounding USSF-44 and USSF-52 that the US military is no longer willing to offer any public schedule estimate, it’s starting to look likely that Psyche – barring its own delays – could launch before USSF-44, USSF-52, and ViaSat-3. If that’s the case, SpaceX has almost half a year to prepare for the launch and it would only make sense to move all Falcon Heavy cores to longer-term storage until schedule confidence improves.
Unfortunately, that means that until there are signs of tangible preparations or actual military payloads arriving at Cape Canaveral, it’s very likely that SpaceX will have to wait until August 2022 at the earliest for Falcon Heavy’s first launch in more than three years.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla is starting to prepare for the launch of the Optimus robot in its smartphone app, new coding strings show. Elon Musk has referred to Optimus as what will be the greatest-selling product of any kind of all time, and now, Tesla is getting ready for its launch.
Tesla’s smartphone app had several first-time mentions of the Optimus program, according to Tesla App Updates, who intially reported on the appearance. Here’s what they found:
A Dedicated “Robot” Phone Key Authentication
Tesla is working on a Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE, authentication that is specifically for robots. This does not only apply to Optimus, though, as Robotaxi, which is Tesla’s autonomous ride-hailing platform, might also identify vehicles within the fleet as robots as well.
Tesla shows rapid teardown of Model S and X lines, paving the way for Optimus at Fremont
Essentially, pairing your phone as a key to anything Tesla identifies as a robot to a “whitelist” of authorized devices. Optimus, Robotaxi, or other products that fall into this category will only respond if the device trying to communicate with it is authorized.
This is a great security feature that will eliminate at least face-value and low-level threats.
Home Data Collection and System Alerts
This appears to be somewhat of a neural network for Optimus within your house. There will be a dedicated screen that asks for consent to collect both video and spatial data while Optimus performs in-home tasks. Everything from vacuuming, washing dishes, dusting, and other activities will be tracked.
There will also be a comprehensive alert system that will track everything from low battery to mechanical issues.
Other Changes
Most of the changes tracked in this particular app update are related to Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, and include things such as image assets for new features, a preview of the new custom wraps feature, and other unique features.
You can check out our coverage on what is included with the 2026 Summer Update here:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results:
Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever
