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SpaceX adds new ship to fleet after fairing catcher Ms. Tree nails second recovery in a row
In a telltale sign that SpaceX is growing much more confident in its ability to consistently recover Falcon 9 fairings, the company has accepted delivery of second recovery ship almost identical to GO Ms. Tree (formerly Mr. Steven) just days after nailing its second fairing catch in a row.
Previously known as M/V Captain Elliott, the new ship appears to have been acquired (or leased) by Guice Offshore (GO) from SEACOR Marine, who purchased Elliott from struggling marine services company Seatran Marine in 2017. One way or another, SpaceX now has a pair of Port Canaveral-based fairing recovery ships in hand – named Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief – and is thus making excellent progress towards catching and reusing both halves of the same Falcon 9 (or Heavy) fairing.
Splurging on ‘ships
Put simply, whoever is paying for or has paid for the two fast supply vessels (FSVs) that are now a part of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet has/had a tidy sum to spend. For ships as large, new, and high-performance as Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief, both completed in the mid-2010s, SpaceX or GO would be lucky to pay less than $10M apiece and each ship could easily cost more than $20M, depending on a variety of unknowns. Previous owner Seatran Marine is/was admittedly in dire financial straits, so that could have resulted in an effective fire-sale discount.
Regardless, this is to say that SpaceX was likely willing to splurge and open its wallet wide for extremely high-quality fairing recovery vessels because of just how expensive those fairings are. According to CEO Elon Musk circa 2017, it costs SpaceX $5-6M total to produce a set of Falcon fairing halves, equivalent to roughly 10% of the cost of a Falcon 9 launch ($50M-60M).
As an example, assume that SpaceX paid a full $50M for Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief – effectively a worst-case cost scenario. Assume that recovering and reusing net-caught Falcon fairings still costs half as much as building new fairings ($3M for two halves), also likely a worst-case scenario given the relative mechanical and propulsive simplicity of fairings.
In this mediocre-at-best scenario, it would still take SpaceX less than 20 launches with both halves recovered to completely recoup the cost of both fairing recovery ships. In the event that reusing caught fairings is only 25% as expensive as building new fairings, SpaceX could recoup its fleet investments in just 10 launches. In fact, cost reduction may even be a secondary consideration next to the potential for effectively doubling fairing production with the same facilities. From that perspective, spending, say, $50M on development and another $50M on cutting-edge recovery vessels could easily be a bargain, especially compared to the $1B+ SpaceX has spent deloping Falcon 9 booster reusability.
Fairing-catcher Mk4
With GO Ms. Chief’s August 10th arrival at Port Canaveral, SpaceX’s team of Florida-based recovery engineers and technicians will now be tasked with modifying the ship for Falcon fairing catching. SpaceX completed its first fairing recovery-focused modifications back in late 2017, likely producing what was the first version of fairing recovery tech (Mk1). The net proved to be far too small and was replaced in summer 2018 with a net and arms likely 4X larger (Mk2).
Roughly half a year and several missed catches after Mr. Steven’s Mk2 net was installed, the ship transited the Panama Canal and arrived at Port Canaveral in February 2019. Barely a week or two later, Mr. Steven suffered a failure at sea – well before a planned catch attempt – that saw the ship limp back to port missing the entirety of its net and two of four arms.
After another four months in port, SpaceX installed a third net and arms system on Mr. Steven, featuring distinct differences and apparent upgrades that likely make it Mk3. Shortly after installation and a quick renaming from Mr. Steven to GO Ms. Tree, Ms. Tree’s inaugural Mk3 recovery attempt culminated in SpaceX’s first and second successful fairing catches – back-to-back – on June 24th and August 6th.
Finally, this brings us to the blank slate that is GO Ms. Chief. Compared to Ms. Tree, both vessels are nearly identical: both are built by Gulf Craft, LLC, both are 205 ft x 34 ft (62m x 10m), both have decks rated for ~405 metric tons (900,000 lb), and have top speeds of 26-32 knots (30-37 mph, 50-60 km/h; fully-loaded vs. empty). The lone point of difference is power: Ms. Chief’s engines produce 500 more horsepower and its generators produce an additional 120 kW of power, respective improvements of 5% and 16% relative to Ms. Tree (Mr. Steven).
Despite both ships being nearly identical, SpaceX is unlikely to simply copy and paste Ms. Tree’s thus far successful arms and net, likely instead doing what the company is famous for and fabricating a new and improved variant of the fairing recovery mechanism. This would presumably translate to Mk4. Conveniently, SpaceX appears to be heading into a rare period of no launches, likely stretching almost three months from August 6th (AMOS-17) to late October.
If Mr. Steven and Ms. Tree’s transformations are anything to go by, that hefty chunk of time that should be more than sufficient to fully outfit Ms. Chief with a fresh fairing recovery mechanism, assuming SpaceX has been simultaneously fabricating the hardware in anticipation of Ms. Chief’s arrival.
For now, we’ll have to wait and see if SpaceX’s next launches – both believed to be 60-satellite Starlink missions – will mark the recovery debut of Ms. Chief, as well as the first attempted catch of both Falcon fairing halves. Additionally, following SpaceX’s second successful fairing half catch on August 6th, it’s possible that the company has two recovered halves capable of making a full, flight-proven fairing. Either way, a Starlink launch will likely support the flight-debut of a reused fairing and will almost certainly host the first attempted simultaneous recovery of both fairing halves.
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Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla released what analysts believe the company will report in terms of deliveries and energy deployments for Q2, but the figures seem to confirm a long-standing theory on the company’s vehicle division.
For years, Tesla was just looked at as a car company. Now that it has established itself as a powerhouse in energy, AI, and tech as a whole, the company is now less hellbent on achieving quarterly growth, on a sequential basis, at least from a major standpoint.
Tesla topped out its annual deliveries in 2023 at 1.81 million, and in the two years since, the company has reported a decrease in deliveries for the entire 12-month term both times.
With Tesla delivering 358,023 cars in Q1, a 6.3 percent increase over Q1 2025, but falling short of Wall Street expectations at 365,000-370,000 units, the narrative around vehicle deliveries and their importance continued to change earlier this year. Some might say it is convenient, but others might say it is the typical evolution of a company that continues to change over time.
For Q2, Tesla’s delivery consensus estimates sit at 406,024 units, analysts believe. They were surveyed from Daiwa, DB, Wedbush, Cowen, Canaccord, Baird, Wolfe, BMP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, RBC, Evercore ISI, Barclays, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Truist, UBS, Jefferies, JPM, Needham & Co., HSBC, and William Blair.
Credit: Tesla
Tesla is also expected to report deployments of 13.8 GWh this quarter.
The change to Tesla’s overall narrative now leans less on vehicle deliveries and more on its other projects. Most notably, Tesla’s Robotaxi project has taken the priority over most of its other business ventures, and investors and the public are more concerned about the deployment of vehicles into the fleet, the operation of a driverless ride-hailing service, Cybercab production and operation, and expansion into new cities.
Tesla analyst realizes one big thing about the stock: deliveries are losing importance
This big narrative switch happened when Tesla indicated it was looking at making transportation a service by launching a ride-hailing service that will operate using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite. Once unsupervised operation begins, Robotaxi could be a new way for people to get around, all without a driver in their car.
Instead, they will rely on the billions of miles Tesla has accumulated from its real-world fleet.
It is important to note that Tesla remains significant in the automotive sector, and deliveries must continue as they have for years. Tesla still has a strong automotive business and needs to execute further on all facets to keep its investors happy.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
