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SpaceX, NASA announce date for next Crew Dragon astronaut launch
SpaceX and NASA have settled on October 3rd for the company’s fifth operational astronaut launch, a mission that will also mark the first time a Russian cosmonaut flies on Crew Dragon.
Initially scheduled to launch in early September, NASA announced in July that SpaceX’s Crew-5 launch was slipping to late September after the company accidentally ran its new Falcon 9 rocket booster into a bridge. Luckily for SpaceX, the incident only damaged the top of the booster and was easily resolved with a replacement interstage, but the unplanned repairs still took time and delayed the start of qualification testing in McGregor, Texas.
Ultimately, the damage triggered a delay of about a month, pushing the launch to September 29th. About a month later, NASA and SpaceX have refined that date to 12:55 pm EDT (16:55 UTC) on October 3rd to ensure “extra separation with spacecraft traffic” at the busy International Space Station (ISS).
After such an inauspicious start to its life outside the walls of SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California factory, Falcon 9 booster B1077 was repaired and completed a 78-second static fire test without issue in early August. As of now, the booster is likely almost ready to ship from McGregor, Texas to Cape Canaveral, Florida if it hasn’t left already.
Crew-5 is the second Dragon mission in a row to be significantly delayed by issues with SpaceX hardware after CRS-25 – an uncrewed space station cargo delivery – slipped from June 9th to July 11th because of a leaky Cargo Dragon thruster. Delays of more than a few days caused by SpaceX’s pad, rockets, or spacecraft have become a rarity as the company gains more and more near-term experience operating them around the clock.
In a strange decision, NASA also decided to uphold old plans to swap seats between Soyuz and Commercial Crew vehicles, allowing a Russian cosmonaut to fly on Crew Dragon as the country continues to commit war crimes, kidnap and expatriate vast numbers of legal citizens, and terrorize tens of millions more with its illegal war on Ukraine. Worse, Russia has repeatedly used the International Space Station and its cosmonauts to disseminate propaganda about the war and boast about the new territories it continues to steal from the sovereign nation. Nonetheless, NASA has allowed the deal to continue, and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina is on track to launch alongside NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada and Japanese (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata.
Crew-5 will be SpaceX’s eighth astronaut launch overall, seventh astronaut mission to the space station, and sixth astronaut transport mission for NASA. Once docked to the ISS, Crew-5 will take over from Crew-4, who will depart the station soon after in their own Crew Dragon and return to Earth sometime in October.
Due to a string of issues that have caused years of delays for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which was developed simultaneously alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon as part of the NASA Commercial Crew Program, SpaceX has been tasked with continuously ensuring the presence of NASA astronauts at the ISS since November 2020. Equivalent to Crew Dragon’s May 2020 Demo-2 mission, Boeing’s first crewed Starliner flight test (CFT) is scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) February 2023. SpaceX is thus guaranteed to be NASA’s sole path to the ISS until Q3 or Q4 2023, but that period could easily stretch into 2024 if Boeing runs into any additional issues with Starliner over the next year.
Tesla’s dreams of operating a fully autonomous ride-hailing platform just took a massive step toward reality, as two separate events have indicated the company is perhaps closer than ever to achieving self-driving as a product.
On Thursday, Tesla was granted authorization by the State of Texas to operate driverless vehicles in a commercial manner. On May 28, Senate Bill 2807, passed by the 89th Texas Legislature, took effect after being passed back on September 1, 2025.
The bill establishes a statewide regulatory framework requiring authorization from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles for companies to operate automated vehicles commercially on Texas roads.
This covers driverless, or SAE Level 4+, operations for passenger transport, meaning Robotaxi, or freight.
Tesla and other companies can self-certify their vehicles and tech as long as they:
- Operate in compliance with Texas traffic laws
- Maintain proper registration, title, and insurance
- Use compliant automated driving systems
- Record onboard activity and handle system failures and glitches safely.
The new authorization, which was first reported by James Stephenson on X, allows companies to utilize their own processes to determine if their vehicles are ready to operate without drivers.
🚨BREAKING:
Tesla has been authorized by the State of Texas to operate driverless vehicles commercially under the new law that took effect today, May 28th, 2026. Tesla has officially self-certified the software running on its robotaxis as Level 4. $TSLA pic.twitter.com/KSJdsvlaW5— James Stephenson (@ICannot_Enough) May 28, 2026
It is a rule that expedites the entire approval process, keeping agencies out of a usually long, lengthy, and frustrating task that is essential to technological advancements.
On the very same day, Tesla continued the momentum as CEO Elon Musk shared a video of Cybercab units autonomously driving off the property at Gigafactory Texas. This is a major step in the story of the Cybercab.
Mass production of the Cybercab started at Giga Texas in April, and it is already heading out of the factory on its own.
Cybercab driving itself out of the GigaTexas factory pic.twitter.com/EwAMVVDjYy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 28, 2026
These two major events mark a drastic step forward in Tesla’s progress toward Cybercab and the permissions it needs to operate a self-driving ride-hailing service. Tesla is now able to operate autonomously under Texas law by self-certifying, and with the potentially imminent rollout of Cybercab, Tesla’s autonomous dreams are starting to take serious shape.
Elon Musk
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Tesla and SpaceX may be closer to merging than Wall Street or either company is admitting.
Elon Musk has reportedly discussed merging Tesla and SpaceX with people close to him, according to CNBC, which cited sources familiar with the conversation. Tesla employees have long expected such a transaction and the topic is openly discussed internally, according to internal sources. With SpaceX is days away from kicking off its Wall Street roadshow for what could be the largest IPO in market history, this would be the first time the company will have public market currency to execute a stock-for-stock deal with Tesla.
The financial logic for a merger would make sense. A combined SpaceX and Tesla would create a conglomerate spanning rockets, satellites, electric vehicles, AI infrastructure, and energy storage valued at roughly $3.35 trillion to $3.6 trillion based on SpaceX’s IPO target range and Tesla’s current market capitalization. The two companies are already more intertwined than most people realize. SpaceX bought $697 million worth of Tesla Megapack systems for xAI data centers and $131 million worth of Cybertrucks. Tesla invested $2 billion in xAI, which subsequently merged with SpaceX. Past transactions also include Tesla selling solar equipment and parts to SpaceX, and SpaceX helping with Cybertruck materials.
Will Tesla join the fold? Predicting a triple merger with SpaceX and xAI
Musk himself signaled where this was heading in November 2025 when he posted on X, “My companies are, surprisingly in some ways, trending towards convergence.” Tesla and SpaceX announced a joint semiconductor fabrication facility in Austin called Terafab on the Gigafactory Texas campus, covering two advanced chip factories, with one serving Tesla’s AI needs for vehicles and Optimus robots, the other targeting space-based data centers under SpaceX’s infrastructure vision.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives places the probability of a merger at 80% to 90% with a target completion in the first half of 2027. The mechanics of a deal became possible the moment SpaceX filed its S-1. Legal experts said a merger likely would not spark antitrust issues but would raise concerns among shareholders in each company, with questions around which company would be the parent, how a stock swap would take place, and who determines the appropriate price. Musk holds about 20% of Tesla’s equity but controls 85.1% of SpaceX’s voting power through a super-voting share class, meaning he would largely be negotiating the terms with himself.
Not everyone is convinced the timing is imminent. Traders on Kalshi place only 33% odds that a merger will happen before May 2027. The more immediate concern for Tesla shareholders is whether the SpaceX IPO pulls capital and Musk’s attention away from Tesla before any merger consolidates the upside for both.
What is clear is that the structural groundwork is already being laid. The Terafab announcement, the xAI merger, the shared supply chain, the cross-company balance sheet transactions, and now the IPO all point in the same direction. Whether the merger follows in 2027 or later, the two companies are already operating more like divisions of a single entity than independent competitors.
Elon Musk
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
The Space Force just handed SpaceX $2.29 billion to build the military’s space internet backbone.
The U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion contract on May 26, 2026 to build the backbone of its Space Data Network, a satellite-based communications system designed to keep American military forces connected anywhere on Earth in real time. The contract is firm-fixed-price and requires SpaceX to deliver a fully operational prototype by the end of 2027.
In plain terms, the SDN Backbone is the plumbing behind the military’s space-based internet. It functions as a low Earth orbit satellite constellation providing robust, high-capacity, and low-latency data transport for the Joint Force, connecting sensors and weapons systems continuously, globally, and securely. Think of it as a private, hardened version of Starlink built specifically for battlefield communications, one that soldiers, ships, and aircraft can rely on even in contested environments where ground-based networks have been disrupted.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
The Space Force was direct about why SpaceX was selected. “The SDN Backbone leverages the best of commercial innovation and delivers a strong foundation for the SDN mission set — a huge benefit and enabler for our warfighters,” said USSF Col. Ryan Frazier.
“We aren’t trading speed for scale; we are demanding both. By using rapid prototyping and Other Transaction Authorities, we are ensuring our advanced solutions are integrated and delivered to the warfighter as fast as possible,” added USSF Lt. Col. Fry, SDN Backbone system program manager.
The SDN Backbone will work alongside the Space Development Agency’s Transport Layer, with the two systems forming a unified open architecture to provide critical data transport for current and future Department of War missions.
As Teslarati has reported, this is not SpaceX’s first Space Force contract of 2026. In April, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $178.5 million to launch missile tracking satellites, and SpaceX is already embedded in the Golden Dome missile defense software group. The $2.29 billion SDN Backbone award puts SpaceX at the center of how the American military communicates in space, a position with direct implications for its reported $1.75 trillion IPO valuation as the company heads toward a public offering as early as June 2026.
Tesla’s Robotaxi dreams just took a massive step toward reality
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
