News
SpaceX’s most important Falcon 9 booster yet returns to port with a lean
On November 19th, what is likely SpaceX’s most important Falcon 9 booster yet returned to Port Canaveral with a surprise – perhaps the most dramatic lean ever observed on one of the recovered rockets.
Tilted a solid 10+ degrees from vertical, the lean was immediately visible as soon as the top of the rocket crest the horizon, and it later became clear that one of Falcon 9 booster B1061’s four landing legs had no contact at all with drone ship Just Read The Instruction’s (JRTI) deck. Four days prior, Falcon 9 (and B1061) became the first commercially-developed rocket in history to be certified to launch NASA astronauts, a feat it pulled off flawlessly. Crew Dragon safely delivered four astronauts to the International Space Station on November 16th, marking the culmination of more than half a decade of (mostly) uninterrupted work.
Even before Crew Dragon and Falcon 9’s momentous Crew-1 launch, though, NASA had already revealed some details that would make parts of Crew-1 even more important and the follow-up Crew-2 launch – scheduled as early as March 2021 – perhaps the most significant mission in SpaceX’s history.
In short, less than a month after SpaceX’s equally flawless Crew Dragon Demo-2 astronaut launch debut, NASA contract modifications revealed that the agency had permitted SpaceX to reuse both Dragon capsules and Falcon 9 boosters on upcoming astronaut launches.
“In a wholly unexpected turn of events, a modification to SpaceX’s ~$3.1 billion NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) contract was spotted on June 3rd. Without leaving much room for interpretation, the contract tweak states that SpaceX is now “[allowed to reuse] the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Crew Dragon spacecraft beginning with” its second operational astronaut launch, known as Post Certification Mission-2 (PCM-2) or Crew-2.”
Teslarati.com — June 9th, 2020
A few short months after that discovery, NASA itself specifically announced that it had given SpaceX the go-ahead to reuse Demo-2 Crew Dragon capsule C206 and Crew-1 Falcon 9 booster B1061 on Crew-2, the company’s second operational astronaut launch. Scheduled no earlier than March 31st, 2021, Crew-2 will most likely launch before the Crew-1 Crew Dragon departs the space station and returns its four crew members to Earth, a milestone expected sometime in April.
For almost anyone who has followed NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) and its attitude towards SpaceX’s reusability efforts from the beginning, the space agency’s rapid willingness to trust its most important cargo – humans – to flight-proven Dragons and Falcon 9 boosters came as a huge surprise. If SpaceX is able to reuse both capsule C206 and booster B1061 as planned, Crew-2 will without a doubt be the most significant milestone in commercial spaceflight history, simultaneously proving that astronauts can be safely launched on commercial flight-proven rockets and spacecraft.
Of course, while Demo-2 Crew Dragon capsule C206 may have already been successfully recovered, SpaceX still had to land Falcon 9 booster B1061 and safely return it to port after Crew-1 before it could consider reusing it on Crew-2. Based on the rocket’s appearance upon its arrival at Port Canaveral, B1061 had an extremely close call. With what can be intuited from observation alone, it appears that sometime after B1061 landed and before the drone ship’s tank-like ‘Octagrabber’ robot could secure the booster, a stray swell or sudden burst of high seas must have bucked Just Read The Instructions about, causing B1061 to slide around on the slippery deck.
That would explain why the Falcon 9 first stage arrived in port on one of the far corners of drone ship JRTI – also sign that B1061 likely hit the yellow barrier included specifically to prevent boosters from sliding off drone ship decks. At the same time, B1061 must have had a moderately rough landing, causing at least one of its four legs to expend a large portion of a single-use shock absorber called a “crush core,” leaving the booster sitting at an angle. Based on photos of the arrival, that tilt likely left JRTI’s Octagrabber unable to latch onto all four of Falcon 9’s hold-down clamps, forcing recovery technicians to improvise and manually chain the rocket to the deck where the robotic solution fell short.
Thankfully, the SpaceX recovery team’s apparent heroics and luck proved to be enough and the sturdy Falcon 9 booster was returned to dry land without issue, lifted off of JRTI’s deck around 24 hours after arriving in port. Based on photos of the crush cores at the bottom tip of each leg, B1061’s rough landing and eventful journey was fairly mild as far as they come and, as CEO Elon Musk notes, crush core replacement is likely all that’s needed to make the rocket good as new.
Had B1061 been lost at sea, Crew-2 would have almost certainly been delayed to give SpaceX enough time to come up with an entirely new Falcon 9 first stage. Luckily for SpaceX, that didn’t happen and the company’s plans to launch astronauts on the flight-proven booster are still in play.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to receive improvements to address its two biggest issues, according to a company engineer.
Director of Engineering at Tesla AI, Phil Duan, revealed in a post on X that improvements to both pothole avoidance and navigation “are coming,’ something we have heard many times in the past. However, there are a few things that seem to hint that things might be different this time around.
Improvements on both are coming.
— Phil Duan (@pduan) October 1, 2026
Pothole avoidance, navigation, speed control, and left lane camping are some of the most prevalent and frequently mentioned shortcomings of the Full Self-Driving suite. These are a few of the biggest issues that have kept Tesla Full Self-Driving as a Supervised suite, meaning drivers must remain attentive during operation.
Pothole Avoidance
Pothole avoidance was first mentioned as an “Upcoming Improvement” with the Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 update back in early April of this year. It was listed alongside “Expand reasoning to all behaviors beyond destination handling.”
It’s been six months since we first saw pothole avoidance explicitly mentioned, and it has not moved beyond that and joined the main release notes yet.
Tesla has not shed any light on why pothole avoidance has been such an issue for it to solve, but it also has issues identifying large bumps much of the time, so its modeling of sudden changes in road conditions is likely pretty weak at this particular point. I’ve had more issues with large bumps than potholes, personally, but both are issues that need to be resolved.
This is that big bounce that I mentioned in the quoted post.
It’s just a tad too drastic to take at the speed FSD wants to go over it. You can see me quickly swipe down into Sloth, but I intervened. https://t.co/K20PK9ysBg pic.twitter.com/81Oc82ZJcZ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 2, 2026
It makes sense that things might be pretty close to being released to the public, as we are going on such an extensive period of time between it being mentioned and it actually being deployed.
Navigation
Navigation is likely the most painful part of using Full Self-Driving, as it routinely takes strange routes, has trouble with local rules (like Except Right Turn Stop Signs in Pennsylvania), and sometimes does not realize that maneuvers it is suggesting are against the law. Turning out of my neighborhood, you cannot turn left, yet my Model Y still suggests it roughly 70 percent of the time when I’m leaving.
However, Tesla might be close to a breakthrough on this. With the Summer Update, Tesla added “Preferred Routes” alongside “Automatic Navigation.”
Preferred Routes prioritized roads that the driver had actually taken before, instead of always defaulting to what the vehicle believes is the most efficient path. This has already solved many of my issues. Formerly, I would turn off the Online Routing setting, and that would eliminate most of my complaints with routing, but then you lose out later on the Live Traffic Visualization.
Tesla’s Navigation has improved tremendously thanks to the Preferred Routes release with the Summer Update, but it still could use some polishing, as it still suggests strange routes from time to time, and it also has a lot of issues getting out of a parking lot. I find that those truly confuse FSD sometimes.
News
SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
Falcon Heavy launched its first NRO mission while SpaceX landed four boosters in one day.
SpaceX closed out one of its busiest days ever with a midnight Falcon Heavy launch from Florida, and the rocket’s two side boosters came home to finish off a landing record the company had never set before.
Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. ET Thursday carrying NROL-97, a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. It was the first time the NRO has flown on Falcon Heavy after 22 missions on Falcon 9, and the first NRO mission bought through the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 contract awarded in 2025, according to Spaceflight Now.
Falcon Heavy lifts off from pad 39A in Florida for the 14th time! pic.twitter.com/uuZLKNTdD7
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
Roughly eight minutes after liftoff, side boosters B1104 and B1072 touched down at Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, setting off double sonic booms across Brevard County. B1104 was flying for the second time and B1072 for the fourth. Both last flew on August 30 on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, making NROL-97 the quickest turnaround between Falcon Heavy missions to date. The brand new center core, B1106, was expended in the Atlantic so the payload could reach its high energy orbit, and SpaceX’s mission page noted the fairing had previously flown on the NROL-95 mission in July.
The two landings capped a record for SpaceX. Earlier Thursday, Falcon 9 booster B1101 returned to Landing Zone 40 after sending the Crew-13 astronauts to the International Space Station, and another Falcon 9 launched the Transporter-18 rideshare with 130 payloads from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Spaceflight Now reported it was the first time SpaceX has landed four boosters in a single day, wrapping up the triple header Teslarati previewed on Wednesday.
Falcon Heavy’s side boosters land on LZ-1 and LZ-2 pic.twitter.com/dBPcNeggFx
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
The mission also brought Landing Zone 1 back for what may be its final landing. SpaceX first landed an orbital class booster there in December 2015, but its lease on the former Launch Complex 13 site ended in 2025 as the company moved Florida landings to new pads at its own launch complexes. With LZ-40 already holding the Crew-13 booster, SpaceX brought LZ-1 back into service for one more night. Launch tracker Next Spaceflight listed NROL-97 as the final expected landing at the site.
NROL-97 adds to a fast growing stack of national security work for SpaceX. The company has flown four Space Force missions from Vandenberg since mid August, several believed to carry Starshield satellites, pushing its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion. Elon Musk was also named this week to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
The Florida doubleheader stood out for another reason. The Space Coast saw only one launch in all of September as SpaceX shifts more of its East Coast infrastructure toward Starship, which reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 just three days earlier.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported strong delivery figures that beat Wall Street guesses, and they were revealed alongside the company’s second-best quarter in terms of energy deployments ever.
Tesla announced this morning that it delivered 486,532 cars in Q3, while producing 464,391, exceeding analyst consensus, which sat around 462,000 units.
Meanwhile, Tesla reported 13.7 GWh of energy storage deployed for the quarter. That’s the second-best quarter Tesla has ever reported on that side of things.
🚨 Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating expectations at 464,391.
Big Q from the Tesla team, also 13.7 GWh of energy was deployed. pic.twitter.com/olioLWgG7a
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 2, 2026
Vehicle Deliveries
Deliveries were strong, and it was another quarter when Tesla had the opportunity to outshine the Wall Street pundits who are quick to criticize and slow to give credit. Tesla saw a slight decrease in deliveries compared to Q3 2025, but Tesla still had the $7,500 EV Tax Credit to use to help incentivize consumers to pick an EV.
A small decrease of 2.1 percent is pretty telling because it shows Tesla does not need massive federal credits to convince consumers to purchase its vehicles.
It was also the company’s third-best performance all-time in terms of deliveries, trailing that of Q3 2025 with 497,099 deliveries and Q4 2024, when the company handed over 495,570 cars.
We reported several days ago that Tesla Showrooms across the United States were completely bare of inventory or unclaimed units. Many locations also removed Demo Drive units, which had been bought by customers looking to take delivery sooner.
Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong
Energy Generation
Tesla’s Energy Generation performance in Q3 was also very strong, as the company deployed 13.7 GWh of energy storage over the past three months. The only quarter when Tesla reported stronger energy deployment figures was Q4 2025, when 14.2 GWh of energy storage was deployed.
Tesla’s Q3 performance in energy generation has continued to grow each quarter, with the company increasing its deployments by ten-fold since Q3 2021, when just 1.3 GWh was deployed.
It is also nearly double what it was in Q3 2024, when the company reported 6.9 GWh. This is one of Tesla’s quickest-growing divisions, and it flies under the radar with fans and analysts, as many are focused on self-driving or the vehicles themselves.
Tesla Stock
Shares rose 5.07 percent to $372.06 at just after 10 a.m. on the East Coast. This is a rarity for Tesla after a strong delivery report, as positive news usually brings the stock down. Many quarters with extremely robust delivery reports have not been as kind to the Teslanaires of the world.
Tesla says fixes on Full Self-Driving’s two biggest issues are on the way
SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
