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SpaceX wins launch contract for NASA mission to study unique metal asteroid
SpaceX has been awarded a $117 million launch contract for NASA’s Psyche mission that will study a unique metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.
The NASA mission to loft a 5,750-lb. (2,608-kg) spacecraft atop of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Rocket will study a mineral-rich asteroid named 16 Psyche. The mission is expected to take place sometime in 2022 and launch from NASA’s historic Launch Pad 39A in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Falcon Heavy will launch @NASAPsyche! The mission, for which @NASA requires the highest level of launch vehicle reliability, will study a metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter to help humanity better understand the formation of our solar system’s planets https://t.co/mvrgx6dvaW pic.twitter.com/FqMaRKscQ4
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 28, 2020
Psyche is an intriguing, metallic world orbiting in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. Most asteroids are made of rock and ice, but not Psyche — it’s composed of iron and nickel. That’s what makes it an interesting target.
Scientists want to study it because they believe Psyche could provide insight into how planets form. Terrestrial bodies, like the Earth, have metallic cores deep in their interior, below the outer layers like the mantle and crust. Psyche could be one of these metallic cores: the remnant of a violent collision with another planetary body billions of years ago.
We’re unable to study the Earth’s core directly, so Psyche could provide a lot of insight into our own planet as well as how other rocky planets form.
The Psyche mission was selected in 2017 as part of NASA’s Discovery Program, which also includes historic missions like the Kepler Space Telescope, and the InSight Mars lander.
This mission is one of true exploration because scientists aren’t exactly sure of what we will find. Ground-based measurements indicate that Psyche could be as large as Mars, and is probably shaped like a potato. But is this hunk of metal the dead, exposed heart of an ancient protoplanet or could it be a weird iron-rich alien world?
The spacecraft is packing a suite of four instruments that will enable the science team to determine what happened to 16 Psyche over its lifetime. Right now the team postulates that Psyche is the metallic core of a planetary body that was destroyed billions of years ago through an incredibly violent collision with another world. There’s evidence to indicate that Psyche was once molten, and cooled after having its crust stripped away.
Planetary impacts, such as a meteor slamming into the Earth, have been studied for as long as scientists have been studying planets. Understanding these events are a fundamental aspect of planetary science. They can tell us the age of a planetary surface, and much more. Historically, impact studies have focused on rocky worlds, and recently icy bodies. But what happens on a metal world? No one knows.
If Psyche was once a molten world, as the science team believes, it could join the list of volcanic worlds in the solar system. We’re all familiar with the volcanoes that we see here on Earth. Mars had similar ones in its past, like Olympus Mons. But these are not the only types of volcanoes we see in our cosmic backyard. Icy worlds like Pluto and Ceres have evidence of cryovolcanoes.
These are different than what we see on Earth because they spew icy materials instead of lava. Psyche could be even more strange, with evidence of molten metals such as iron and nickel on its surface.
Psyche will test an experimental laser technology that will aim to improve communications with spacecraft over vast distances. It will also launch with two secondary payloads: Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE), which will study Mars’ atmosphere and the process by which it’s being lost to space; and Janus, which will focus on binary asteroids and how they form.
This is SpaceX’s 8th contract from NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP) and the first for Falcon Heavy. SpaceX’s workhorse, the Falcon 9 has several science missions under its belt, having launched NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and will launch the upcoming PACE mission, which is designed to study the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI Director Ashok Elluswamy celebrated Christmas Eve by sharing personal experiences with Robotaxi vehicles that had no safety monitor or occupant in the driver’s seat. Musk described the system’s “perfect driving” around Austin, while Elluswamy posted video from the back seat, calling it “an amazing experience.”
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Elon and Ashok’s firsthand Robotaxi insights
Prior to Musk and the Tesla AI Director’s posts, sightings of unmanned Teslas navigating public roads were widely shared on social media. One such vehicle was spotted in Austin, Texas, which Elon Musk acknowleged by stating that “Testing is underway with no occupants in the car.”
Based on his Christmas Eve post, Musk seemed to have tested an unmanned Tesla himself. “A Tesla with no safety monitor in the car and me sitting in the passenger seat took me all around Austin on Sunday with perfect driving,” Musk wrote in his post.
Elluswamy responded with a 2-minute video showing himself in the rear of an unmanned Tesla. The video featured the vehicle’s empty front seats, as well as its smooth handling through real-world traffic. He captioned his video with the words, “It’s an amazing experience!”
Towards Unsupervised operations
During an xAI Hackathon earlier this month, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla owed be removing Safety Monitors from its Robotaxis in Austin in just three weeks. “Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. So there will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks,” he said. Musk echoed similar estimates at the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting and the Q3 2025 earnings call.
Considering the insights that were posted Musk and Elluswamy, it does appear that Tesla is working hard towards operating its Robotaxis with no safety monitors. This is quite impressive considering that the service was launched just earlier this year.
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
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NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
