

News
SpaceX Falcon 9 booster sails into port after historic third launch and landing
Although a sister rocket did not fare nearly as well during a separate landing attempt 48 hours later, SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 booster B1046 nailed its third successful launch and landing on December 3rd and arrived in Port of Los Angeles a bit less than 48 hours later.
Greeting the rocket after its milestone third reuse was a rare Los Angeles rainstorm, lending a lovely reflective sheen to all uncovered surfaces as low clouds and an obscured sun bathed everything in a stark and uniform off-white light.
That’s one scorched booster, still standing on JRTI at the moment, in the rain. B1046.3 arrived back at port earlier this morning after launching and landing for the 3rd time during the SSO-A mission. What. A. Sight. #spacex pic.twitter.com/EhHY9HK9cD
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) December 5, 2018
It is difficult to conceive of a set of conditions that might serve to better emphasize the well-worn patina of soot and charring now fully covering the once-shiny white exterior of B1046’s fuel and oxidizer tanks, a sort of literal badge of honor for the three orbital-class launches the booster has now supported in the last six months. Functionally speaking, cleaning a Falcon 9 booster from top to bottom would be an unbelievably tedious, time-consuming, and largely pointless task, requiring careful spot-cleaning of something like 400 square meters (4300 square feet).

While SpaceX did repaint recovered Falcon 9 boosters a handful of times around the start of commercial reflights, it always served more of an aesthetic purpose over anything seriously utilitarian. Furthermore, aerospace-grade paint like that used by SpaceX is quite heavy potentially weighing several hundred kilograms per booster and requiring a week at minimum to fully apply a new coat. Some followers like to point out the lost benefits of Falcon 9’s reflective white paint, serving as a mild thermal insulator for Falcon 9’s tanks when filled with supercool propellant. While it certainly exists, the additional heating induced by soot coatings is completely negligible for Falcon 9, which is constantly topped off with chilled propellant prior to launch.
As such, sooty boosters will be around as long as the kerolox-power Falcon family remains in operation. Not too long from now, shiny new Falcon rockets will likely be as rare as the expendable rocket launches they partially represent – the launch vehicles of the future will be rugged workhorses more comparable to the 737s that fill the ranks of airliner fleets than to single-use works of art. Nevertheless, soot is by no means an innate feature of rockets, reusable or otherwise, instead deriving from Falcon 9’s pragmatic choice of kerosene as fuel – soot is simply an inevitable byproduct of kerosene combustion.
- Falcon 9 B1049 lifts off for the first time at SpaceX’s LC-40 pad in September 2018. (Teslarati)
- B1048 bares its sooty skin the morning before launch. (Pauline Acalin)
- A gif of Raptor throttling over the course of a 90+ second static-fire test in McGregor, Texas. (SpaceX)
- SpaceX’s subscale Raptor engine has completed more than 1200 seconds of testing in less than two years. (SpaceX)
A long and sooty future
Whenever it begins flying, the sole byproducts of the combustion of BFR/Starlink/Super Heavy’s methane-oxygen (methalox) propellant are water vapor and carbon dioxide, although true methane supplies will inevitably have slight impurities and thus cause the negligible production of some less pleasant byproducts. Raptor, the methalox rocket engine that will power BFR, has been performing hot-fire tests for more than two years, and the sheer differences between the exhaust of Merlin and Raptor are a striking example of the different chemistries at work. As a result of much cleaner combustion, BFR may produce no soot byproducts whatsoever – enjoy it while it lasts!
In the meantime, Falcon 9 will continue to fly and refly for the foreseeable future. B1046’s third successful launch and recovery is a huge step in that direction and the very fact that the most noticeable difference is a new coating of soot at least partially hints at the efficacy of Block 5’s reusability-minded upgrades. Even when twice-flown Block 5 octaweb heat shields are glimpsed, it’s all but impossible to tell the difference between an unflown or twice-flown example, while the new jet-black thermal protection on Block 5 interstages and octawebs only exhibit subtle scarring after reentry heating.
It almost goes without saying that the real killer in multi-use aerospace products – fatigue – is rarely visible to the naked eye, so the external appearance of Falcon boosters is more of a swoon-worthy placebo than anything else. Still, Falcon 9 Block 5 continues to demonstrate that its external appearance is almost equally indicative of truly robust reusability engineering.
- B1046. (Pauline Acalin)
- . . . (Pauline Acalin)
- ENHANCE! (Pauline Acalin)
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
Cybertruck
Tesla launches Cybertruck orders in a new market with a catch

Tesla is launching Cybertruck orders in a new market, but there’s a bit of a catch.
The Cybertruck was launched in the Middle East earlier this year, as Tesla launched the ability to place a reservation for the all-electric pickup in the United Arab Emirates. It would be the first market outside of North America that would have the ability to place an order for the Cybertruck.
Tesla confirms Cybertruck will make its way out of North America this year
Other markets where the vehicle has been widely requested, like Europe and Asia, have still not approved the vehicle to be sold to the public, mostly because of size and design restrictions.
However, in the UAE, Tesla is opening up the ability for those who placed reservations for the vehicle to finally put in their order. The Order Configurator is only available to those who have already placed a reservation; it is not yet available to the public.
Tesla said it would open up the public online configurator across the Middle East in the coming weeks:
If you’re in the UAE and you have a Cybertruck reservation, you can now order your new truck
The public will get access in the coming weeks. https://t.co/KJaP7NEfiT
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 16, 2025
The UAE is not the only country that will have access to the Cybertruck, as fans in other Middle Eastern countries will also be able to place orders soon. Tesla announced back in April that Saudi Arabia and Qatar would also have Cybertruck deliveries.
These vehicles will be built at Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas plant just outside of Austin, as Gigafactory Berlin and Gigafactory Shanghai, two factories located in the same hemisphere as the Middle East, do not have established lines for Cybertruck production.
As for the other markets, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has hinted that the company could develop a smaller Cybertruck for those markets, as he admitted that in the long term, it likely made sense to build a more compact version for regions where roads are traditionally tighter.
Elon Musk hints at smaller Tesla Cybertruck version down the road
There has been no evidence of Tesla developing this more compact version, but it could eventually happen.
News
Tesla rolls out new life-saving feature for kids in Europe
On average, 37 children die every year from being left in vehicles unattended.

Tesla is rolling out a new life-saving feature in the European market, one that has been available in the United States for some time and can be considered potentially invaluable.
One of the most preventable causes of death for children is being left in cars unattended. On average, 37 children die every year after being left in hot vehicles. The cause of death is usually heatstroke, and it is incredibly avoidable.
Tesla rolls out new crucial safety feature aimed at saving children
However, there are instances where kids are left in vehicles and lose their lives, something that many companies have tried to fight with alerts and features of their own.
Tesla is one of them, as it has rolled out features like ultrasonic sensors to detect heartbeats, interior cameras to detect movement, and alerts to notify parents if they leave someone in the car.
A few months ago, Tesla rolled out a new feature called “Child Left Alone Detection” in the United States. It was described as:
“If an unattended child is detected, the vehicle will flash the exterior indicator lights, play an alert tone, and send a notification to your Tesla app. This will repeat at regular intervals until you return to your vehicle. Cabin data is processed locally and is not transmitted to Tesla.
This feature is enabled by default. To disable, go to Controls > Safety > Child Left Alone Detection.”
This feature was only rolled out in the U.S. at the time. It is now making its way to the European market, according to Not a Tesla App, which detected the rollout in the 2025.32.6 software update.
The rollout of this feature could specifically change many unfortunate situations. For many of us, it seems hard to think about leaving something as precious as another human life in a hot car. Many of us won’t leave our vehicles without our cell phones, so it seems unlikely that someone would do it without a child.
News
Tesla gets another NHTSA probe, this time related to door handles
“Although Tesla vehicles have manual door releases inside of the cabin, in these situations, a child may not be able to access or operate the releases even if the vehicle’s driver is aware of them.”

Tesla is facing another investigation into its vehicles by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), this time related to an issue with its door handles.
In a new Open Investigation named “Electronic door handles become inoperative,” the NHTSA says that it has received nine complaints from owners of the 2021 Tesla Model Y stemming from “an inability to open doors.”
These issues were reported after “parents exited their vehicle after a drive cycle in order to remove a child from the pack seat or placing a child in the back seat before starting a drive cycle.” Parents said they were “unable to reopen a door to regain access to the vehicle.”
Tesla door handles become unlikely hero as they stump road rager
Four of the nine complaints ended with having to break a window to regain access to the cabin.
🚨 Model Year 2021 Tesla Model Y vehicles are under a preliminary investigation by the NHTSA due to a potential issue with door handles, with nine owners reporting an inability to open doors from the outside
“The most commonly reported scenarios involved parents exiting the… pic.twitter.com/u0qBBiu9LT
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 16, 2025
The NHTSA goes on to explain that, while Teslas do have a manual door release inside the cabin, a child may not be able to access it:
“Although Tesla vehicles have manual door releases inside of the cabin, in these situations, a child may not be able to access or operate the releases even if the vehicle’s driver is aware of them. As a result, in these instances, an occupant who remains inside a vehicle in this condition may be unable to be rapidly retrieved by persons outside of the vehicle.”
It appears that the agency is attributing the issue to a low voltage in the vehicle’s 12V DC battery. This would mean there needs to be some sort of notification to the driver that the battery is running low on power and should be replaced to avoid this issue.
The NHTSA estimates that 174,290 vehicles are potentially impacted by this issue. It plans to assess the scope and severity of the condition, the agency says. The NHTSA also wants to see what approach Tesla uses to supply power to door locks and the reliability of the applicable power supplies.
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