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SpaceX Falcon rocket aces 100th consecutive rocket landing
SpaceX has successfully launched its first batch of next-generation Starlink V2 satellites, likely kicking off a new era of affordability for the constellation.
Simultaneously, demonstrating just how far SpaceX is ahead of its competitors and the rest of the spacefaring world, the Starlink 6-1 launch culminated in the 100th consecutively successful landing of a Falcon rocket booster. As a result, SpaceX’s landing reliability now rivals the launch reliability of some of the most reliable rockets ever flown. That extraordinary feat bodes well for SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket, which is designed to propulsively land humans on the Earth, Moon, Mars, and beyond.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
SpaceX’s landing reliability milestone is made all the more impressive by the lack of immediate competition. More than seven years after SpaceX’s first successful Falcon 9 booster landing and six years after the company’s first successful Falcon booster reuse, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are still the only reusable orbital-class rockets in operation.
Blue Origin has had some success reusing the first stage of its suborbital New Shepard rocket. Rocket Lab has also recovered small Electron rocket boosters from the ocean, but it’s yet to catch a booster with a helicopter – a necessity for cost-effective reuse. Many other companies have announced or begun developing their own partially or fully-reusable rockets. But even in a best-case scenario, the most promising of those potentially competitive rockets are still a year or two from their first launch attempts, let alone their first successful recoveries and reuses.
SpaceX debuted the Falcon 9 rocket behind most of its successful booster recoveries and reuses in June 2010. SpaceX recovered a Falcon 9 booster for the first time in December 2015 and reused a (different) booster for the first time in March 2017. It completed nearly all of that risky development work during launches for paying customers.
Even after the first success, many unsuccessful landing attempts followed as SpaceX pushed the performance envelope and discovered new failure modes. Falcon’s most recent landing failure occurred during a Starlink launch in February 2021 and was caused by a hole in a flexible ‘skirt’ meant to keep Earth’s superheated atmosphere out of the flight-proven booster’s engine section.
However, every landing since Falcon 9’s Starlink-19 landing failure has been successful. On February 27th, 2023, almost exactly two years after that failure, Falcon 9 booster B1076 touched down on one of SpaceX’s three drone ships, marking the rocket family’s 100th consecutively successful landing. Starlink 6-1 was also the Falcon family’s 183rd consecutively successful launch, as a Falcon landing failure has never prevented the completion of a mission’s primary objective.
Launch-wise, Falcon 9 and the Falcon family have already become the most statistically reliable rockets in history. Very few rockets in history have managed 100 consecutively successful launches, let alone landings. For example, according to spaceflight reporter Alejandro Romera, the next most reliable American rocket – the McDonnell Douglas Delta II – narrowly achieved 100 consecutively successful launches before its retirement in 2018. The landing reliability of SpaceX’s Falcon rockets is thus tied with the launch reliability of the most reliable American rocket not built by SpaceX.
Additionally, SpaceX Falcon booster landings are now statistically more reliable than the launches of United Launch Alliance’s much-touted Atlas V rocket, which has (more or less) successfully launched 97 times.
Falcon’s landing reliability is an encouraging sign for SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket. For Starship to fully achieve SpaceX’s goals, it will eventually need to be able to propulsively land humans on Earth and at other destinations throughout the solar system. SpaceX currently has no plans no plans to develop an independent crew escape system for Starship, meaning that the rocket itself will instead have to demonstrate extraordinary overall reliability. SpaceX executives have stated that Starship will only be deemed safe enough to launch humans once it has completed “hundreds” of successful launches and, presumably, landings.
Falcon has managed 100 successful landings in a row despite large gaps in redundancy. Most landing burns are conducted with a single Merlin 1D engine. Any issue with that engine would likely result in a failed landing. Falcon boosters also have four landing legs and four grid fins powered by a single hydraulic pump. The failure of that pump or one of four legs have demonstrably doomed earlier landings.
Starship’s much larger size and excess performance could provide a larger margin for error and allow for more redundancy. But Falcon has demonstrated that that even a rocket with multiple glaring single-points-of-failure can achieve 100 consecutively successful landings.
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: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever
