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SpaceX-launched Uranus mission a top priority of new decadal survey
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have published their latest decadal survey of planetary science and astrobiology, revealing a recommendation that NASA prioritize the development of a flagship mission to Uranus baselined to launch on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.
Known as the Uranus Orbiter and Probe or UOP, the mission proposal has been under development by a team of NASA, University of California, and Johns Hopkins University scientists and engineers for several years. In fact, a very similar concept ranked third in the Academies’ 2013-2022 decadal survey flagship recommendations, reiterating its central importance and potential value in the eyes of the survey’s dozens of contributors. According to its creators, in its latest iteration, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe have the potential to fully or partially answer 11 of the 12 primary questions the latest Decadal Survey structured itself around.
Additionally, the survey indirectly states that if it weren’t for the existence of one specific technology, it would have been a wash between a mission to Uranus or Neptune. That keystone: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.
While the survey’s authors don’t explicitly point to SpaceX in the context of UOP, they do state that “a Uranus mission is favored because an end-to-end mission concept exists that can be implemented in the 2023-2032 decade on currently available launch vehicles.” In reality, there only appears to be one launch vehicle: Falcon Heavy. Three other alternatives do technically exist: United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and NASA’s own Space Launch System (SLS).
NASA’s Europa Clipper orbiter – originally manifested on SLS but later moved to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to avoid major launch delays – has helped demonstrate that SLS isn’t viable for non-Artemis Program missions without massive production improvements and significant workarounds or design changes. While capable in many regards, Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn rocket appears to have extremely poor performance beyond Earth orbit – well below what UOP requires – and is unlikely to launch before 2024 or 2025. It’s possible that an expendable New Glenn could suffice but Blue Origin has never mentioned the option and, even then, the rocket’s expendable performance could still fall short.
Finally, ULA’s expendable Vulcan Centaur rocket has yet to launch and its debut could easily slip into 2023. More importantly, according to official information provided by the company to a NASA-run performance calculator, even Vulcan’s most capable variant (VC6) with six solid rocket boosters (SRBs) simply doesn’t have the performance required to launch the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (7235 kg / 15,950 lb) on seven of the mission’s preferred trajectories. For three other secondary windows, Vulcan could potentially launch UOP but only with the inclusion of a Venus gravity assist that would require significant design changes to protect the spacecraft while traveling much closer to the sun.
According to NASA’s calculator, a fully-expendable Falcon Heavy rocket with a standard payload fairing could launch around 8.5-10 tons (18,700-22,000 lb) to UOP’s preferred trajectories, leaving a very healthy margin for spacecraft weight gain or launch underperformance and likely enabling a longer launch window for each opportunity.
If NASA agrees with the survey’s conclusions, decides to develop the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, and also plans on the Academies’ optimistic assumption of an ~18% budget increase on average from 2023 to 2032, work towards a preferred 2031 launch window could begin in earnest as early as 2024. Comprised of a namesake Orbiter and Probe, UOP would arrive in orbit around Uranus in late 2044 or early 2045 weighing around five metric tons (~11,000 lb). The primary science mission would begin by deploying a small atmospheric probe to directly analyze the composition and behavior of the planet’s exotic atmosphere, which is believed to be volatile, prone to vast and violent storms, and host to some of the most extreme winds in the solar system. The probe would weigh ~270 kilograms (~600 lb) and is only expected to survive for a few hours at most.
The orbiter, however, would continue on to tour the Uranian system for at least four years, observing and studying the ice giant and its rings, magnetosphere, and 27+ moons. Uranus itself resides in what may be the most common class of exoplanets in the universe, making a close study of it invaluable for exoplanet science as a whole. It’s also possible that – like several moons around Saturn and Jupiter – one or more Uranian moons have liquid water oceans created by tidal heating, adding to the list of extraterrestrial bodies that might feature habitable environments or alien life.
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
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Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
Tesla ended its Semi event with a Roadster teaser revealing a new front light bar.
Tesla closed out its Semi event in Nevada on Thursday night with a nod to its own history, dropping a short Roadster teaser that suggests the production car will look noticeably different from the prototype first shown in 2017.
“We can’t have a Semi event without the Roadster,” Tesla engineering executive Lars Moravy told the crowd before the clip played. The line was a deliberate callback. Tesla first revealed the next generation Roadster in November 2017 by driving it out of the back of a Semi trailer at the truck’s original unveiling in Hawthorne, California.
The new video opens on trailer doors swinging apart in the dark. A thin white light bar glows across what appears to be the nose of the car, Tesla and SpaceX logos flash over the frame, and the Roadster name appears before the clip ends on “See you next week.” Tesla posted the nine second clip on X after the livestream wrapped.
See you next week pic.twitter.com/BT52bGVxFu
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 25, 2026
The light bar is the most concrete design detail so far. The 2017 prototype used two separate curved headlamp pods, while a connected front light strip would bring the Roadster in line with the Cybertruck, Cybercab, Semi, and refreshed Model Y. Sawyer Merritt was among the first to point out what looked like part of a SpaceX logo in the video, something Tesla has not addressed.
That logo fits the buildup around the optional SpaceX Package, which Elon Musk has long said would use cold gas thrusters to improve acceleration and possibly allow the car to briefly leave the ground. Tesla’s “Go for launch” post on September 12 set the October 1 date, and invitations sent to reservation holders place the event in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Waco sits roughly 20 minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA has put a temporary flight restriction in place from September 18 through October 2, covering a 1.5 nautical mile radius from the surface up to 10,000 feet.
Tesla is also taking money ahead of the reveal. The company reopened Roadster reservations earlier this week with a $5,000 refundable card payment, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. That puts buyers at $50,000 committed before Tesla has published a price.
The original pitch set a high bar: 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds before any upgrades, 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and production in 2020. That timeline has slipped repeatedly, and Tesla has since pointed to production at Gigafactory Texas no earlier than 2027. The company has said next Thursday’s event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets, the three details original reservation holders have been waiting on for nearly nine years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s release in Europe is set to be delayed by at least a few months.
The European Union will not vote on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on October 6. The draft agenda for the 119th meeting of the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles lists only a 25-minute “continuation of discussions” on the Netherlands’ Article 39 request, not a decision. The next scheduled TCMV session is in December, which is now the earliest date a bloc-wide vote could occur.
Tesla Europe had pointed to October 6 as a possible EU-wide vote after the Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted the first European type approval on April 10.
That approval, under UN Regulation 171 plus an Article 39 exemption in EU Regulation 2018/858, is the legal file other member states have been recognizing one by one. The same committee has already discussed the request twice without voting.
Elon Musk’s reply to the delay was a single word: “Sigh.”
Sigh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2026
Seven EU countries have now cleared FSD Supervised on their own roads: the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia. Those seven states represent about 53 million people, or roughly 12 percent of the EU population. An EU-wide authorization still needs a qualified majority: at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population, about 292 million people.
Germany, France, Italy, and Spain remain the decisive markets. France has already rejected the current system; several other governments have flagged speed-limit compliance as the main sticking point.
The safety case Tesla is putting in front of those governments is now public. On September 1, Tesla Europe said FSD Supervised was in use by more than 70,000 customers, covering over 1 million kilometers a day, and was 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on EU public roads.
An earlier mid-year cut of the same fleet data, covering 65 million kilometers in five approved countries, put the collision advantage at 5.2 times, with zero highway collisions over 41.9 million kilometers. Tesla also reported far fewer automatic emergency braking events, harsh accelerations, and hard swerves than in comparable manual Tesla driving. Those figures are company-reported, not independently audited.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is taking over Europe: fourth country gets FSD approval
The public-health backdrop is harder to dispute. European countries recorded about 19,400 road deaths in 2025, or roughly 53 a day, most of them attributed to human error. FSD Supervised is not unsupervised autonomy; the driver remains legally responsible. But the software is already legal and in daily use across seven member states.
Until TCMV votes, the rest of the EU remains a patchwork: available in Prague and Amsterdam, locked behind review in Paris and Berlin. December is now the next chance to close that gap.
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
