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SpaceX wins NASA approval to launch astronauts on reused rockets and spacecraft
SpaceX appears to have won NASA’s approval to launch astronauts on reused Falcon 9 rockets and Crew Dragon spacecraft a matter of days after the company’s astronaut launch debut went off without a hitch.
Ever since SpaceX began landing and reusing orbital-class Falcon 9 boosters some 15 months after it won a NASA contract to develop Crew Dragon, the obvious possibility that the two groundbreaking technologies might one day meet has always floated just under the surface. Almost without fail, most joint NASA/SpaceX press conferences will receive a question or two about whether either party is thinking about or working towards astronaut launches on flight-proven spacecraft. Encouraged by the fact that partner Boeing’s separate Starliner spacecraft was sold to NASA with reusability in mind from the start, those questions continued up until (and after) the day SpaceX became the first private company in history to launch astronauts into orbit.
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. Given the spectacular, hiccup-free success of SpaceX’s inaugural astronaut launch and International Space Station (ISS) arrival just 3-4 days prior, it’s safe to say that NASA is extremely happy with the results of the mission.
Without a shred of doubt, SpaceX has worked tirelessly for years to earn enough of NASA’s technical trust to permit crewed launches on flight-proven hardware, a possibility that even the optimists in the crowd assumed was distant at best. It has almost always been an uphill battle for SpaceX – a fact made especially clear when framed beside partner Boeing. An inherently conservative organization, NASA has repeatedly given Boeing and its more traditional Starliner spacecraft and development approach the benefit of the doubt while frequently tearing into the nooks and crannies of SpaceX and Crew Dragon over half a decade of cooperation.
While functioning more like an anchor when SpaceX finds itself working with conservative, stubborn organizations like NASA and US military branches, the company’s wholly non-traditional style of development has secured technical success after technical success. Over the course of the second half of SpaceX’s 20-mission NASA Commercial Resupply Services 1 (CRS1) contract, the company has still managed to successfully launch dozens of tons of cargo to the space station with flight-proven spacecraft and boosters. From CRS-11 to CRS-20, five missions featured reused Falcon 9 boosters and all but one of those 10 flights featured once or even twice-flown Cargo Dragon spacecraft.
In short, SpaceX has demonstrated more than a dozen times to NASA that it’s fully capable of building, launching, and reusing orbital-class rockets and spacecraft. Additionally, before an unrelated design flaw destroyed the spacecraft during post-recovery testing, SpaceX successfully launched, recovered, and refurbished Crew Dragon capsule C201 in March 2019, demonstrating its dramatically improved reusability. While suborbital, Crew Dragon C205’s January 2020 In-Flight Abort (IFA) test also likely helped demonstrate the new spacecraft’s reusability and gave NASA more experience with the reuse of Falcon 9 Block 5 rockets as B1046’s fourth launch.
Every step along the way, SpaceX has put its money where its mouth is and proven that it’s more than capable of doing what much larger, more traditional companies have only claimed to be capable of – and often months or even years before its competitors and for hundreds of millions to billions of dollars less. While it’s much more likely that NASA has yet to actually certify SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 boosters for flight-proven astronaut launches, the June 3rd contract modification – at a minimum – signifies the space agency’s expeditious intent to do so. What is unambiguous is the schedule it lays out: SpaceX could potentially launch astronauts on a flight-proven rocket and spacecraft as early as its second operational taxi mission to the ISS.
Known as PCM-2 or Crew-2, the mission is scheduled to follow Crew Dragon’s first operational astronaut launch – Crew-1 – by roughly six months. Contingent upon Crew Dragon Demo-2’s safe return of NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley later this year, Crew-1 is tentatively scheduled to launch on August 30th, although it could potentially launch even sooner. If successful, Crew-2 should follow as soon as mid-2021 and could potentially reuse Crew-1’s Falcon 9 booster and the Demo-2 or Crew-1 Dragon capsule.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
Elon Musk says Grok Bot can manage your finances through linked bank and investment accounts.
Grok Bot now wants access to your wallet, with SpaceXAI rolling out a new Finance integration for its agent platform that lets users link bank, credit card and investment accounts thereby letting their Bots help manage spending, investments and more. Elon Musk amplified the announcement on X with a short endorsement, “Grok Bot can manage your finances.”
The feature builds on two earlier steps. In early September, Grok gained the ability to answer questions about spending, savings, investments and cash flow using accounts connected through Plaid, starting with users in the U.S. Before that, on August 28, SpaceXAI let Grok Bot buy things online through Link, with users approving every spend request and the Bot receiving a single use card for each payment.
Musk has already shown how far he wants users to push it. In late August, when Tesla investor account Teslaconomics said he was weighing whether to give Grok Bot access to his bank accounts, Musk replied, “Try it out. If Grok Bot messes up, we will make you whole.” That promise goes beyond SpaceXAI’s consumer terms, which make users responsible for what their agents do and generally cap the company’s liability at the greater of fees paid or $100. SpaceXAI’s own documentation recommends requiring approval for purchases and financial transfers.
For Tesla owners, the update lands five days after Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles, letting drivers hand off errands by voice while FSD (Supervised) handles the road. Bot access inside the car is currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, though Connectors are open to anyone signed into Grok. With Finance linked, a driver could ask for a spending summary or a check on upcoming bills during the commute.
Grok’s role in the car has grown quickly since Tesla’s Summer Update let it control cabin features by voice. We have been using Grok Bot in our own Tesla for several weeks, and here’s how our latest test went.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
The FAA has cleared Starship Flight 14, setting up SpaceX’s first orbital attempt on Monday.
SpaceX has cleared the last regulatory hurdle standing between Starship and its first trip to orbit. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the launch license for Starship Flight 14 late Saturday, keeping the mission on track for liftoff Monday, September 28, from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas.
The 75 minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central, and Boca Chica Beach closures are also scheduled for September 29 and 30 as backup dates. This will be Starship’s first revenue generating mission.
The license was the missing piece after SpaceX completed a full wet dress rehearsal with Booster 21 and Ship 41 on September 24. At the time, the company said the flight remained on track pending regulatory approval. Because Flight 14 flies an orbital profile, the FAA had to sign off on a modified license that met its safety, payload and financial responsibility requirements.
Observers combing through the new FAA paperwork also noticed that lightning no longer appears among Starship’s listed launch hazards. If that holds, it matters more for where Starship is headed than for Monday’s attempt. Florida and Louisiana, home to LC-39A and the planned Starbase Louisiana site, see some of the most frequent lightning in the United States.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Flight 14 is the mission SpaceX has been building toward for months. Ship 41 will carry 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational V3 units to be deployed, and attempt roughly six orbits at about 275 kilometers over a flight lasting just under 10 hours. SpaceX says the ship will only perform its orbital insertion burn after flight controllers confirm enough hardware redundancy remains for the deorbit burn at the end of the mission. Ship 41 is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile, while Super Heavy will return to the Gulf of Mexico.
The date carries some symbolism as well. A Monday launch would come 10 years and one day after Elon Musk first presented the Interplanetary Transport System, the design that became Starship, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
SpaceX has not announced what comes next, but air traffic planning slides reported this week, list Flight 15 no earlier than October 19 and a first Starship launch from LC-39A in Florida no earlier than October 30. Both dates depend on how Monday goes.
News
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
