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SpaceX stuns with two simultaneous rocket landings, Musk’s Tesla heads to Mars
In a jaw-dropping tour de force, SpaceX has successfully completed the vast majority of Falcon Heavy’s inaugural test launch. In short, the massive rocket soared through the riskiest components of its first flight with apparent ease, placing its Tesla Roadster payload into a parking orbit around Earth and landing at least two (if not all three) of its first stage boosters.
After lifting off the pad atop a fireball the likes of which Kennedy Space Center has not seen for the better part of a decade, Falcon Heavy smashed through Max-Q (peak atmospheric pressure), saw its side boosters separate perfectly, and finally sent the second stage and Tesla on its way to orbit as all three first stages began to return to land (and sea). Nearly flawless live coverage gave a million or more viewers an extraordinary ride alongside the rockets, with simultaneous views provided of all three booster recoveries, as well as the second stage’s journey to orbit.
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- Falcon heavy roars towards orbit. (Tom Cross)
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- As the rocket rises above Earth’s atmosphere, the rocket’s exhaust plume starts to expand. (Tom Cross)
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- Finally, FH’s side boosters separate from the center core and begin their return to land. (Tom Cross)
Ultimately, the booster stages of Falcon Heavy flew back to Cape Canaveral just like any other “routine” Falcon 9 recovery, albeit with a synchronization so perfect that it looked exactly as if SpaceX had simply duplicated the live feed from one booster. After several minutes of burns and coasts, the booster returned to Earth almost simultaneously at Landing Zones 1 and 2 (LZ-1/LZ-2) in a spectacle without precedent. It’s best that I let the livestream speak for itself through screen captures – it must be witnessed to fully appreciate how incredible it was.
BEHIND THE SCENES: SpaceX Falcon Heavy’s breathtaking leap towards Mars in photos
In the background of the livestream was a near-constant stream of cheers from hundreds (probably thousands) of SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory employees, and the sheer excitement conveyed by the livestream’s hosts and SpaceXer audience was quite literally contagious – I know I was certainly grinning uncontrollably for a solid half an hour. While it is not yet clear if the center booster survived its own recovery attempt, SpaceX (or Elon Musk) will certainly provide an update as soon as possible as to its status. Fingers crossed that it managed to survive its landing aboard the autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY).
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- Falcon Heavy roars through Max-Q. (SpaceX)
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- Side boosters separate and return back towards their landing pads. (SpaceX)
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- (SpaceX)
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- Landing burns begin for the side boosters! (SpaceX)
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- Nearing the pads, landing legs deploy on both boosters. (SpaceX)
In the meantime, Falcon Heavy’s second stage is set to perform several orbit boosting maneuvers as it circles the Earth, eventually pushing its Roadster and Starman payload beyond Earth orbit and on its way into deep space. While it won’t end up orbiting Mars, the heliocentric (sun) orbit it will be placed in is intended to pass very close to Mars at certain points. Stay tuned as SpaceX releases additional information on the state of the center booster and the upper stage’s progress towards deep space.
Upper stage restart nominal, apogee raised to 7000 km. Will spend 5 hours getting zapped in Van Allen belts & then attempt final burn for Mars.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2018
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- (SpaceX)
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- Roadster and Starman in orbit. (SpaceX)
SpaceX employees went wild after the incredibly successful mission. (SpaceX)
Follow along live as launch photographer Tom Cross and I cover these exciting proceedings as close to live as possible.
Teslarati – Instagram – Twitter
Tom Cross – Instagram
Eric Ralph – Twitter
Tesla Robotaxi is among its biggest projects currently, but many have been quick to point out the fact that the company has definitely been slow to expand its fleet.
However, there is definitely a method to that madness. CEO Elon Musk answered several concerns during last night’s quarterly earnings call that some might have about that slow rollout of the Robotaxi suite, maintaining the company’s narrative on prioritizing safety and wanting to avoid injuries to anyone, including animals.
Musk said:
“With Robotaxi, our goals are very ambitious for Robotaxi, but we do need to be cautious about causing any accidents or causing any harm to anyone. Although there are, I think, 30,000 to 40,000 automotive deaths per year in the U.S. alone, most of those do not generate any press or maybe, you never really read about almost any of those. If we injure even one person, it’ll be worldwide headline news, and regulators will immediately clamp down on our activities.
We don’t want to injure anyone. We’re going as fast as humanly possible in scaling Robotaxi, but while trying to ensure that we do not harm anyone at all, and ideally do not even run over a pet. That’s really the constraint is we want to grow as fast as possible with Robotaxi without harm to anyone.”
Tesla has maintained an exemplary safety record with its Robotaxi suite, according to internal data. VP of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the Robotaxi suite has driven more than 380,000 miles unsupervised without any incidents.
0 notable incidents across over 380,000 miles traveled by Robotaxi
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Analyst Colin Langan of Bank of America also pushed Tesla executives for answers regarding the company’s decision to add cities across several states with dozens of vehicles “as opposed to hundreds.”
Elluswamy said there’s a bigger advantage to do it the way Tesla has been because it ensures that its software stack “is a very general one:”
“The reason we have been expanding across different cities instead of just doubling down on a single city, is that we want to make sure that our stack is a very general one. It is a general one. We just want to both prove to ourselves and to other folks that it is working across a lot of different cities without too much effort per city. That’s what we see internally.”
In the past, we have written about Tesla’s decision to be incredibly conservative with its Robotaxi rollout, especially with the incredibly small fleet size compared to competitors. However, there really is not a price anyone can put on safety for those utilizing the platform or pedestrians, so what Tesla is doing is justified.
A year into the Robotaxi program being active, Tesla has made major strides, but many investors and fans would like to see the fleet expand as quickly as the program has to other cities and states.
Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
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 Robotaxi’s slow rollout gets explanation from Elon Musk
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