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SpaceX’s Mr Steven spotted practicing Falcon 9 fairing catches with upgraded net

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SpaceX’s fairing recovery vessel Mr Steven was spotted on Monday, August 13 conducting the first fairing recovery tests to involve actually craning a fairing half onto the huge, upgraded net, and doing so repeatedly in a short period of time. That practice will likely prove invaluable by allowing SpaceX to better understand the characteristics of Mr Steven’s fairing-catching net, rigging winches, and general operational behavior.

As SpaceX gradually approaches their next Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, the company is also preparing for Mr Steven’s next fairing recovery attempt, itself the second operational use of the vessel’s massively upgraded arms and net. Known as SAOCOM-1A, the Argentinian space agency’s Earth-imaging satellite is expected to launch no earlier than late September according to local South American media. Mr Steven’s late-July upgraded net debut was largely foiled by unpredictable winds in the region the fairing was parasailing, with that uncertainty preventing the fairing from getting close enough to its targeted landing position for Mr Steven to catch it out of the air.

By all appearances, SpaceX is working hard to better understand how Mr Steven’s huge new net behaves when interacting with a Falcon fairing half, a reasonable goal in order to ensure that the first successful fairing catch is not foiled by something as simple as the half sliding down the net and cracking on Mr Steven’s deck. SpaceX’s fairings are incredibly fragile and are liable to irreparable crack at the slightest hint of off-nominal forces, meaning that all recovery efforts need to be extremely gentle if SpaceX ever hopes to recover and reuse those fairings halves multiples times, if at all.

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Still, even managing to reuse just one fairing half once for several launches (say, all California launches) would make a huge difference to the bottlenecked production line in SpaceX’s Hawthorne rocket and spacecraft factory, which is working around the clock to ramp up production of the upgraded Fairing 2.0 while also winding down the old Fairing 1.0 manufacturing apparatus. Intriguingly, it appears that SpaceX’s launch activity is likely to drop precipitously over the next several months, with no launches currently scheduled from the company’s two Florida pads in September or October – apparently due to a lack of payload availability rather than anything SpaceX-related.

Vandenberg will thus be the focus of SpaceX’s launch activities in September and October, hopefully supporting at least two missions. The first, SAOCOM-1A, is an Argentinian Earth observation satellite targeting a launch window in late September, reportedly delayed from September 5 to give SpaceX additional time to prepare Falcon 9. According to NASASpaceflight.com, SpaceX intends to refly Falcon 9 B1048 for this mission, giving the company just 6-8 weeks to refurbish the rocket and prepare it for the usual preflight static fire several days before launch. SAOCOM-1A will also likely mark the debut of SpaceX’s West Coast rocket landing zone, known as LZ-2.

While not yet solid, Iridium CEO Matt Desch acknowledged on August 13th that the company’s 8th and final SpaceX launch – Iridium NEXT-8 – would have its satellites ready no earlier than October, likely making it SpaceX’s subsequent payload after SAOCOM-1A. On the opposite coast, SpaceX’s next launch will be Telstar 18V – companion to 19V – on a new Falcon 9 Block 5 booster, currently scheduled for no earlier than 11:33 PM EDT, August 23. That Falcon 9 is already at Pad 40 preparing for a preflight static fire late this week or early next.

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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!

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy

The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.

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Ministério Das Comunicações, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.

The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.

X’s updates to its updates

As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks. 

“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.

The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.

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xAI and X

X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award. 

As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.

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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award

The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards

The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close. 

MotorTrend reverses course

MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.

According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.

Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.

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High cost and high capability

MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.

Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.

Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.

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Elon Musk’s Grokipedia surges to 5.6M articles, almost 79% of English Wikipedia

The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago.

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UK Government, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia has grown to an impressive 5,615,201 articles as of today, closing in on 79% of the English Wikipedia’s current total of 7,119,376 articles. 

The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago. Needless to say, it would only be a matter of time before Grokipedia exceeds English Wikipedia in sheer volume.

Grokipedia’s rapid growth

xAI’s vision for Grokipedia emphasizes neutrality, while Grok’s reasoning capabilities allow for fast drafting and fact-checking. When Elon Musk announced the initiative in late September 2025, he noted that Grokipedia would be an improvement to Wikipedia because it would be designed to avoid bias. 

At the time, Musk noted that Grokipedia “is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”

Grokipedia was launched in late October, and while xAI was careful to list it only as Version 0.1 at the time, the online encyclopedia immediately earned praise. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger highlighted the project’s innovative approach, noting how it leverages AI to fill knowledge gaps and enable rapid updates. Netizens also observed how Grokipedia tends to present articles in a more objective manner compared to Wikipedia, which is edited by humans.

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Elon Musk’s ambitious plans

With 5,615,201 total articles, Grokipedia has now grown to almost 79% of English Wikipedia’s article base. This is incredibly quick, though Grokipedia remains text-only for now. xAI, for its part, has now updated the online encyclopedia’s iteration to v0.2. 

Elon Musk has shared bold ideas for Grokipedia, including sending a record of the entire knowledge base to space as part of xAI’s mission to preserve and expand human understanding. At some point, Musk stated that Grokipedia will be renamed to Encyclopedia Galactica, and it will be sent to the cosmos

“When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote, adding in a later post that “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”

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