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SpaceX wraps up a decade of reusable rocketry with fastest booster recovery yet
SpaceX has completed its 13th and final launch and landing of the year and decade, marked by a Falcon 9 booster’s successful return to Port Canaveral and subsequent processing to prepare it for another orbital-class mission.
Over the course of that recovery, SpaceX broke the record for the fastest Falcon 9 processing by several hours, a small but significant step towards the company’s ultimate goal of launching and landing the same Falcon 9 booster in less than 24 hours. Additionally, SpaceX appears to have finished processing booster B1056 on December 21st, the 4th anniversary of Falcon 9’s first successful landing after an orbital-class launch.
Since that first success on December 21st, 2015, SpaceX has rapidly moved through several distinct iterations of Falcon hardware, constantly improving components, systems, and the overall fit, finish, and reliability of the rocket. Over the last four years, SpaceX has landed an incredible 47 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters as part of 60 orbital-class launches, while the company recently launched Falcon 9 B1048 for the fourth time and flew the same two Falcon Heavy boosters in April and June. Ultimately, 2019 has been a spectacularly successful year for SpaceX, and – by the numbers – 2020 is set to be several times more ambitious, still.
On December 20th, less than a day after arriving in Port Canaveral, SpaceX technicians began the process of retracting Falcon 9 booster B1056’s four deployed landing legs. As it turns out, B1056 – returning to port for the second time after its third launch – became the first Falcon 9 booster to have all of its landing legs successfully (and semi-permanently) retracted in May 2019. To accomplish the feat, SpaceX designed a custom retraction mechanism that simultaneously serves as the crane jig used to lift the booster while vertical.
“The crux of the need for a relatively complex crane-and-jig method of leg retraction rests on SpaceX’s landing leg design. Put simply, after rapidly deploying with a combination of gravity and hydraulics, Falcon 9 landing legs have no built-in way to return to their stowed state. Each of the four legs are quite large, weighing around 600 kg (1300 lb) and stretching about 10m (33 ft) from hinge to tip. They use an intricate telescoping carbon fiber deployment mechanism to give them legs enough strength to stand up to the stresses of Falcon 9 booster landings.
Combined, the legs’ size and telescoping mechanism makes the addition of an onboard retraction mechanism impractical. All the needed hardware would struggle to find a good place for installation and would quite literally be dead weight during launches and landings, stealing from Falcon 9/Heavy payload capacity and generally serving no purpose until a booster has been lifted off the ground with a giant crane.”
Teslarati — May 7th, 2019
Impressively, SpaceX took less than an hour and a half to successfully retract all four of thrice-flown Falcon 9 B1056’s also thrice-flown landing legs. Less than three hours after the rocket’s legs were snugly retracted, SpaceX immediately attached a second crane and brought the booster horizontal. Altogether, this made Falcon 9 B1056’s third recovery the fastest SpaceX has ever performed by 3-6 hours – seemingly small progress but still no mean feat.
SpaceX’s fastest-ever Falcon 9 recovery – from the drone ship berthing to the booster departing the port on a transporter – occurred with B1049 after its third launch and landing, taking just 2.01 days (48.25 hours). Falcon 9 B1056’s third recovery appears to have beaten that record by at least several hours, brought horizontal and installed on a SpaceX transporter perhaps less than 1.75 days (42 hours) after arriving in port – more than 10% faster than B1049’s previous record.
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Meanwhile, SpaceX lifted a fairing half recovered off the surface of the Atlantic Ocean by GO Ms. Tree, appearing unharmed after having potentially been dropped when the ship’s secondary (fairing) fishing net tore while moving the Falcon 9 hardware.
With any luck, that fairing half will be in good enough shape to be reused on a future Starlink mission, seemingly unlikely but proven to be well within the realm of possibility after SpaceX’s very first fairing reuse involved two halves recovered off the ocean surface after Falcon Heavy Block 5’s April 2019 debut. B1056, however, is all but guaranteed to fly again – this time on its fourth launch – in the near future. SpaceX has dozens of launches planned in 2020, so there will be plenty of opportunities.
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Elon Musk
Tesla FSD takes owner on a 20,000+ mile joy ride
Tesla owner David Moss just pushed his intervention free FSD streak past 20,000 miles total.
Tesla Model 3 owner David Moss has spent the better part of eight months turning his vehicle into a rolling stress test for Full Self-Driving, and this week he pushed his single, continuous FSD streak past 20,000 miles without a human intervening.
Moss, a Tacoma, Washington resident who sells LiDAR scanning equipment for a living, first drew wide attention in December 2025 when he logged 10,000 consecutive miles on FSD v14.2. Days later he drove from the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, covering 2,732 miles in two days and 20 hours with zero disengagements, the first verified coast to coast autonomous drive in Tesla’s history. Tesla even featured the trip as an official customer story in March. That original streak eventually reached 12,961 miles across 30 states before ending in rural Wisconsin in January, when snow and single digit temperatures forced Moss to take over.
Tesla FSD successfully completes full coast-to-coast drive with zero interventions
He started over, and this run has gone further. In late May, Moss drove 3,760 miles across Canada with two companions, from Horseshoe Bay in Vancouver to a Tesla showroom in Halifax, again without a single intervention, a trip Tesla AI software VP Ashok Elluswamy publicly congratulated him for on X. In June, he pushed the same unbroken streak south, aiming to link the Canadian border to the Mexican border, and crossed 10,000 miles on Tesla’s newly added in car streak counter along the way, the first driver to do so since Tesla began showing confetti animations for the feature.
20,000 Mile Tesla FSD Screen Streak!
Special thank you to @DevinOlsenn, @scotsrule08, & @OwenSparks for helping co drive during all these fun adventures these last couple of months
Also thank you to @wholemars for always tracking me along the journey verifying it all with his… pic.twitter.com/CZ2yO6Ev0X
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) July 27, 2026
It’s worth noting that every mile is logged through the FSD Database, a community run tracker built by Tesla influencer Omar Qazi, well known as @WholeMars on X, that pulls telemetry straight from the car and records disengagements down to a tenth of a mile. That verification is what separates Moss’s numbers from casual claims on social media.
The streak itself is a fairly recent addition to Tesla’s software. FSD v14.2 introduced a Self Driving Stats panel tracking the ratio of autonomous to manual miles, and v14.3.4 added the live streak counter in June, which resets the moment a driver brakes, wrenches the wheel or cancels navigation. Reaching 20,000 miles on that counter means a single Tesla drove itself through countless highways, city grids, construction zones and Supercharger stalls without a single reset.
Moss has said the goal was never to set a record for its own sake, but to show, mile by verified mile, what the software can already do.
Elon Musk told The Economist that artificial intelligence will likely surpass the combined intelligence of every human on Earth within about five years, and that humans may not remain in charge once that happens. In a wide-ranging interview with editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, recorded at Giga Texas for the outlet’s Insider series, Musk compared the widening gap between AI and human intelligence to the gap between humans and chimpanzees.
“It’s hard to imagine that the chimpanzee would be in charge,” he said, addressing what happens to human authority once AI moves far beyond us.
Elon Musk reiterates his most optimistic prediction yet with “UHI” forecast
Musk’s timeline stretches out from there. Five years for AI to out-think humanity combined, ten years before humans lose meaningful control, and by 2036, he says, money itself may stop mattering.
Musk notes that if robots and AI produce more goods and services than people could ever consume, currency loses its purpose. He told Beddoes that governments could respond with direct payments, what he called “universal high income,” a term he first used in an X post last August describing a future where “everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else.”
There will be universal high income (not merely basic income).
Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else.
Sustainable abundance.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2025
He also floated a more surprising prediction that deflation, and not inflation, would become the bigger economic problem, since expanding the supply of goods and services faster than the money supply grows would push prices down rather than up.
None of this is new territory for Musk, who has spent years describing an “age of abundance” built on Optimus and autonomous vehicles. What’s notable is the timing. The interview landed the same week Tesla shares dropped roughly 19 percent following a second quarter earnings report that beat on revenue but missed badly on profit, and as SpaceX stock continues to slide from its post-IPO peak.
Musk’s own net worth has fallen close to $700 billion since mid-June, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, even as he describes a future where personal wealth stops being the point.
Musk did not dodge the risk side of the equation either. He put the odds of AI contributing to human extinction somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range, then arrived at what he called his “philosophical conclusion” since the technology cannot realistically be stopped and the arguably better response is to keep building it and hope the outcome leans toward abundance rather than catastrophe. “I’ve gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI,” he told Beddoes, “even intraday.”
Tesla is adding a new “Traction Control Modes” feature to its cars for better handling in any conditions. These features will roll out to the Model 3 and Model Y, the two vehicles in Tesla’s lineup that typically do not have drive modes for various conditions.
Tesla did include this in the Model S and Model X, as well as the Cybertruck.
The new feature will roll out with the 2026 Summer Update, which Tesla announced last week and subsequently started rolling out to some owners today. The Summer Update is the latest iteration of the usual four seasonal releases the company rolls out throughout the year. These releases typically feature some owner-requested features, as well as improvements to things like the Full Self-Driving suite.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
This release is no different. Among the changes are improvements to Navigation, new customization options with wraps and how they can be shared and stored, more functionality with the Tesla smartphone app, and new gamification with self-driving.
However, Tesla announced today that it was adding another feature to the Summer Update. Traction Control Modes will now be available with the release
Tesla describes them:
“Choose from three updated Traction Control Modes: Auto for normal driving conditions, Slippery Surface for icy or wet roads, Stuck Assist when stuck in snow, mud, or sand. The mode resets to Auto at the start of each drive. To select, go to Controls > Dynamics > Traction Control Mode.”
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update also includes new Traction Control Modes
📸: @PatchesHQ https://t.co/N9cD2lGP14 pic.twitter.com/ogLC5ROIgc
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 26, 2026
The use of these modes will help improve a Tesla’s overall performance in less-than-ideal conditions. Typically, these traction control modes monitor wheel speed through sensors and track engine power to adjust responsiveness in various conditions.
These drive modes are not an ultimate solution to all driving conditions; just because there is a “Stuck Assist,” doesn’t mean your Tesla will dig itself out of a foot-and-a-half trench during a blizzard. It is important to remember that some of these scenarios also require some assistance from the driver. For example, driving in sand requires tires to be aired down significantly to increase traction and control.
However, this will be a welcome addition for those who use the Full Self-Driving suite and might not be convinced of its performance in adverse conditions. Some of us prefer to be in control in rain, snow, or ice, which is totally understandable. However, adjusting the Traction Control Mode while utilizing FSD in snow, rain, or ice could increase confidence and overall experience.
Tesla’s Summer Update is already rolling out to some owners, so it should be making its way to most of the fleet over the next several weeks. The Spring Update rolled out at a very conservative pace, so if you don’t have it by the end of August, don’t be too upset. It might just be Tesla’s method.
Tesla FSD takes owner on a 20,000+ mile joy ride
Elon Musk explains what happens when AI outsmarts all of us
