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SpaceX Falcon Heavy to launch Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster into Mars orbit

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While it initially appeared to be an Ambien-induced Twitter troll from the famous CEO, Elon Musk has announced that the inaugural launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, now aiming for January 2018, will carry his personal cherry red Tesla Roadster as cargo.

Musk’s classic embellishments and hyperbole triggered some understandable skepticism, claiming that the Tesla would head to Mars while playing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” and would remain in deep space for “a billion years” if it survived the launch.

While the Mars and “Space Oddity” aspects have yet to be verified, SpaceX’s head of new product introduction, Joy Dunn, subtweeted Musk’s original announcement, assuaging any doubts about the claim’s legitimacy. Much remains unknown, but the information from Dunn and Musk points to a humorous heavy payload being placed into a high Earth orbit, if not on a trajectory to Mars, and will feature plenty of camera coverage in space.

In all fairness, sending a Roadster to Mars would be par for the course for Musk and SpaceX, who in a frankly underappreciated turn of events sent a massive wheel of cheese into orbit with the first launch of a Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX intends to attempt recovery of all three first stages of the first Falcon Heavy, with the two side boosters landing at Cape Canaveral’s LZ-1, and the center core landing aboard the Of Course I Still Love You droneship. The attempted recovery of all three cores would appear to preclude the possibility of a Mars mission, as it is understood that Falcon Heavy’s payload to Mars in its fully reusable configuration would be ~4000kg. Sending a 1500kg Roadster, especially one stripped of its battery, is still within the realm of possibility, but the burden would be on Falcon 9’s second stage to survive the several month long coast period between Earth and Mars.

Elon Musk with a comical grin while sitting in his red Tesla Roadster. (SFGate)

In the meantime, we can speculate with all due haste as to what the first space-faring Tesla Roadster (confirmed to be Roadster 1.0) will carry on its exceptional journey.

One can imagine that the footage garnered along the way would be all the advertising material Tesla could ever possibly need for the indefinite future, particularly for the company’s next generation Roadster.

Many giddy Twitter and Reddit users almost immediately let loose a stream of potential ridiculous slogans: “the first production car to orbit Mars,” “new Tesla Roadster upgrade has a range of 54 million kilometers,” “Fastest production car,” etcetera. Comic relief aside, the sheer shock value of orbital sunrise or even Mars from the cockpit of a Tesla Roadster certainly can’t be denied outright, even if the absurdity is rather high.

Time will tell if SpaceX has chosen to risk a more productive use of Falcon Heavy’s inaugural launch, perhaps as soon as next month. While it was later removed at the request of SpaceX, a photo taken Thursday by California-based space journalist Sandy Mazza showed Falcon Heavy’s second stage and all three first stage boosters preparing for launch inside the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) at LC-39A. The public will almost undoubtedly get its first view of an integrated Falcon Heavy within the next few weeks, certainly before Christmas if things go as planned.

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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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Why automakers keep turning down Elon Musk’s Tesla Full Self-Driving offer

Elon Musk confirms no automaker has ever accepted Tesla’s offer to license Full Self-Driving software.

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Elon Musk gave a brief answer on X Monday that confirmed that Tesla’s standing offer to license Full Self-Driving to other automakers still has zero takers. Sawyer Merritt wrote that “Tesla has for years openly invited other automakers to license FSD. None of them have accepted,” responding to a prediction from Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl that Tesla would eventually open FSD the way it opened its Supercharger network to rival brands. Musk’s reply to Merritt was one word: “Exactly.”

It is not the first time Musk has made this point. He said something similar in November, when he called legacy automakers reluctance to adopt FSD “crazy,” and Tesla has floated the offer publicly since at least 2021. Scholl’s prediction touches on something real. Once NACS became the de facto charging standard, adoption from Ford, GM, Rivian and others followed within about a year. FSD licensing was supposed to work the same way once Tesla built enough of a lead that switching made sense for everyone.

The case for licensing now is stronger than it was two years ago. Waymo and Zoox are logging hundreds of thousands of unsupervised autonomous miles, along with Tesla’s own Robotaxi fleet. Every automaker still selling driver assist systems that lag FSD has given the robotaxi conversation to Tesla, Waymo and Zoox by default. Licensing FSD would let a GM or a Ford compete on the same field without spending a decade and billions of dollars building a stack from scratch, the same argument Tesla made when it opened the Supercharger network to bring more EVs onto its chargers.

But FSD is not a connector standard. As one reply to Musk’s post pointed out, licensing FSD is not a software license the way NACS was a plug spec. It requires adopting Tesla’s eight camera layout and its onboard compute architecture, meaning a licensee’s cars would effectively become Tesla hardware wearing someone else’s badge. That is the visible obstacle. The less visible one is data. A licensed FSD stack would report back the same telemetry Tesla collects from its own fleet, giving Tesla a continuous read on how a competitor’s cars are actually driven, where they struggle, and how often drivers intervene. For an automaker trying to build its own autonomy program, or simply trying to keep its build quality and safety record private, handing Tesla that visibility could be a bigger cost than the hardware bill. It is the reason the Supercharger comparison only goes so far. Opening a charging plug cost Tesla very little. Opening FSD would cost a rival something it cannot get back.

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Tesla Roadster is available for order once again following brief hold

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(Credit: luxunsheep/Instagram)

Tesla has reopened reservations for its long-delayed next-generation Roadster, asking buyers for a $50,000 deposit just days before an October 1 reveal event in Waco, Texas. The move revives a reservation process first launched in 2017 and later paused when Tesla pulled pricing from its website in 2021.

The reservation page requires an immediate $5,000 credit-card payment, described as fully refundable, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days, which is identical to what was expected previously. Reservations are not considered final until the wire clears.

The structure matches the 2017 terms Tesla used when it first collected deposits after unveiling a prototype. Tesla has not published a confirmed retail price or production start date on the order page.

The October 1 event is scheduled in Waco, about 90 minutes north of Tesla’s Austin headquarters and near SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site. Tesla sent invitations to existing reservation holders and posted a “Go for launch” teaser on September 12.

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) established a temporary flight restriction over the McGregor area from September 18 through October 2, consistent with plans for a demonstration involving SpaceX-designed cold-gas thrusters. Elon Musk has previously described the optional package as enabling extreme acceleration or brief hovering. Tesla has said the event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets.

The second-generation Roadster was first shown in November 2017 during Tesla’s Semi launch. Musk promised production in 2020, with claimed performance of 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds, more than 250 mph top speed, and roughly 620 miles of range.

Those targets have slipped repeatedly.

Tesla later pointed to 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025-2026 before indicating production would not begin until 2027 or 2028 at Gigafactory Texas. Design work has continued, with reports of a sharper, Cybertruck-influenced look replacing the original curvy prototype.

Original reservation holders who paid $50,000 in 2017, or $250,000 for the Founders Series, have waited nearly nine years without a production car. Some high-profile customers canceled. Tesla’s decision to reopen orders now, after previously shutting them down, tests whether new buyers will commit substantial funds before seeing a finalized production vehicle. The October 1 event is intended to answer remaining questions about what those buyers will actually receive and when.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving expands to another European country

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is heading to Czechia after the Czech Ministry of Transport recognised the Dutch RDW’s provisional type approval, making the country the seventh EU member state to clear the system for public roads. Tesla Europe announced on 21 September 2026 that “FSD Supervised is now approved in Czechia” and that rollout “will begin soon.”

The decision marks a notable reversal. Earlier in 2026, Prague had declined to automatically recognise the Netherlands’ April approval, citing concerns over speed-limit compliance, traffic-sign recognition and driver-attention monitoring, and arguing that a coordinated EU approach was preferable. Officials said months of expert review, talks with Tesla and other member states, and real-world data from countries already using the system resolved those issues.

“Safety remains the top priority,” the ministry stated.

FSD Supervised remains a Level 2 driver-assistance system: the driver must stay engaged and is legally responsible. Eligible vehicles need AI4, the company’s most up-to-date hardware version. Tesla is expected to push the feature over the air in the coming days, following the pattern seen after earlier national approvals.

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Europe’s rollout began when Dutch regulator RDW issued a provisional EU type approval on 10 April 2026 after extensive testing. Mutual recognition then produced a rapid cascade: Lithuania (20 May), Estonia (29 May), Denmark (9 June), Belgium (10 June) and Slovenia (7 September). Czechia now completes that list of seven.

The approvals cover only a modest share of the EU population, but they add political weight ahead of a 6 October vote by the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles. A qualified majority, at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the EU population, could open the remaining markets, including large ones such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain that have so far preferred to wait for a bloc-wide decision.

For Czech Tesla owners, the immediate prize is access to the same supervised highway and city driving already available in the other six countries. For Tesla, each new market generates additional European driving data and strengthens the case that FSD Supervised can operate safely under the continent’s varied road rules. The Czech approval is therefore both a local milestone and another incremental step toward a wider European launch.

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