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NASA chooses SpaceX to launch a self-propelled space station to the Moon
Days after SpaceX won a NASA contract to launch a galaxy-mapping space telescope, the space agency has selected Falcon Heavy to launch a small space station to the Moon some four years from now.
Loosely known as Gateway, NASA and a few of its ‘centers’ have been floating the concept for years – partially on its merits as a potential platform to dip toes into crewed deep spaceflight and explore the Moon but mostly as a way to give the bloated Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft a destination for destination’s sake. Weighed down by an extremely inefficient European Service Module (ESM), NASA couldn’t use Orion to replicate its famous Apollo Moon missions if it wanted to.
Lacking the necessary performance to safely place Orion and its astronauts into the Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) optimal for a new round of crewed Moon landings, Orion/ESM on its own is limited to higher, more exotic lunar orbits with less immediate value. As a result, NASA’s Lunar Gateway will be delivered to a “near-rectilinear halo orbit” (NRHO) where it will orbit the Moon’s poles at altitudes between 3,000 and 70,000 kilometers (1,900-43,000 mi).
Bureaucratic machinations and sunk-cost fallacies aside, any space station orbiting the Moon would be an impressive technical feat and an undoubtedly exciting venture. NASA says SpaceX’s combined Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics Outpost (PPE/HALO) Falcon Heavy launch contract will ultimately cost approximately $332 million, although that figure includes vague “other mission-related costs” that could have nothing to do with SpaceX and be separate from the company’s actual launch services.
Less than a year ago, NASA awarded SpaceX $117 million to launch Psyche – a scientific spacecraft with an overall cost similar to PPE/HALO – on Falcon Heavy.
Possibly contributing to the unusually high cost is the fact that Falcon Heavy will need a stretched payload SpaceX is already working on for the US military to launch the massive PPE/HALO stack, which will stand around 15 meters (50 ft) tall and weigh ~14 metric tons (~31,000 lb) when combined. While heavy, that payload mass is somewhat mundane for SpaceX, which has launched 17 16-metric-ton batches of Starlink satellites since November 2019.
What isn’t mundane for SpaceX is launching such a large payload beyond Starlink’s low Earth orbit (LEO) destination. According to a virtual presentation recently given by a Northrop Grumman HALO engineer, PPE/HALO will be delivered to an elliptical orbit similar but lower than the geostationary transfer orbit (GTO; ~250 km by ~36,000 km) traditional for commercial communications satellites.
That low target orbit thankfully means that PPE/HALO wont be SpaceX’s first fully expendable Falcon Heavy launch. Depending on how far below GTO NASA is willing to accept, SpaceX could potentially launch PPE/HALO and attempt to land all three first boosters at sea, a configuration that leaves enough performance to send 10 metric tons to GTO. If SpaceX proposed Falcon Heavy with an expendable center core, the rocket could feasibly launch PPE/HALO beyond GTO, cutting the amount of time it would take for PPE to slowly spiral out to the Moon with its electric thrusters.
NASA says the launch is scheduled no earlier than (NET) May 2024 – decidedly optimistic given that the space agency has yet to even award HALO’s production contract.
Tesla has reached a notable benchmark in its autonomous driving program after its Robotaxi fleet surpassed one million miles of unsupervised operation. The company made the announcement during its Cybercab event in Austin on September 3.
Tesla Vice President of AI Ashok Elluswamy told attendees he was happy to report the fleet had achieved one million miles of unsupervised Robotaxi operation as a testament to safety.
The new total marked a sharp increase from the 380,000 unsupervised miles Tesla disclosed during its second-quarter 2026 earnings update in late July.
In roughly six weeks, the company added about 620,000 miles. That acceleration followed Tesla’s decision to remove in-vehicle safety monitors from most of its operations outside the San Francisco Bay Area.
Credit: Tesla
Tesla first launched Robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025 with safety drivers present. It later began fully unsupervised rides and expanded into Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. The San Francisco Bay Area remains the exception, where a safety monitor still rides in the vehicle under California permitting rules.
The company has not released a city-by-city breakdown of the one million unsupervised miles.
The milestone arrived as Tesla began offering public Cybercab rides in Austin. The purpose-built vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals and is designed only for autonomous ride-hailing. Production versions joined the existing fleet of modified Tesla vehicles already operating in the service.
Tesla’s unsupervised mileage is growing at a double-digit weekly rate according to earlier company comments, yet its fleet size remains modest compared with established competitors. Waymo has accumulated more than 200 million fully autonomous rider-only miles. Tesla has described its own unsupervised operations as having recorded zero notable incidents in the period leading up to the July update.
The one-million-mile figure reflects Tesla’s shift from supervised testing to broader driverless service in multiple states. It also highlights the company’s strategy of using both existing Model Y vehicles and the new Cybercab to scale its network.
Credit: Tesla
Whether the rapid recent growth continues will depend on further city expansions, regulatory approvals, and the performance of the purpose-built Cybercab in everyday paid rides. Tesla has not specified how many of the latest miles involved the new vehicle versus the rest of the fleet.
The announcement underscores Tesla’s progress toward a larger robotaxi network while illustrating the remaining gap in total autonomous experience relative to longer-operating rivals.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this week that 24-hour Robotaxi service is close. Replying on X to a rider who wanted Cybercab trips all night, he wrote that the capability would arrive “next month or so” once “the next tech to merge on the v15 plan” is ready.
The comment landed on September 4, one day after Tesla opened public Cybercab rides in Austin. It is the clearest near-term timeline yet for overnight unsupervised operation. Tesla’s paid Robotaxi network currently runs from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week across Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.
next month or so. the next tech to merge on the v15 plan will enable it.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 4, 2026
That 16-hour window is shorter than the 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. schedule the company used for much of the prior year.
Elluswamy did not name the specific feature or say whether the change would apply first to purpose-built Cybercabs, the existing Model Y fleet, or both. He also offered no city-by-city rollout list. The link to Full Self-Driving v15 is nevertheless significant.
Tesla has described v15 as a step-change architecture with seven parallel improvement tracks and roughly ten times more parameters than earlier builds. Early versions of that software already operate on the Robotaxi fleet and contain about 40 percent of the planned gains.
By July 2026, the unsupervised fleet had logged more than 380,000 miles across six cities in two states with what the company called an impeccable safety record and no notable incidents caused by the vehicles themselves. Tesla has repeatedly argued that camera-based end-to-end neural networks, rather than extra sensors, are the core of the solution.
Overnight service would test that claim in lower-light conditions and would also raise vehicle utilization, a key variable for Robotaxi unit economics. The company has already begun using public Superchargers at night and is building dedicated Robotaxi charging sites.
Riders have asked why software must change if the cars already drive in the dark. The practical answer appears to be reliability and scale: Tesla has held back mass expansion until more of the v15 stack is merged, citing the need for higher confidence before putting thousands of unoccupied vehicles on streets around the clock.
If the next module arrives on the timetable Elluswamy sketched, 24-hour service could begin in October 2026 in at least some markets.
That would mark a shift from a daytime-bounded pilot to a service that can run whenever demand exists, including the late-night hours that have so far remained out of reach.
Tesla is beginning to roll out Full Self-Driving Supervised v14.3.9 with a new active safety layer that can take control even when the driver is operating the car manually.
Tesla AI said the software can activate FSD on the driver’s behalf when an imminent collision is detected and Automatic Emergency Braking may not be enough. It may also engage if the system detects heavy distraction or an accidental FSD disengagement.
FSD Supervised v14.3.9 starting to roll out shortly
This release includes a new active safety feature set: FSD Supervised can now activate on your behalf when an imminent collision is detected and Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) may not be enough.
It may also engage if we…
— Tesla AI (@Tesla_AI) September 4, 2026
The capability is essentially Automatic Collision Evasion. However, unlike conventional AEB, which mainly applies the brakes in a straight line, this feature can use steering, braking, and acceleration together if the car calculates that stopping alone will not prevent impact and a safer path exists. The system may change lanes or move toward a shoulder when conditions allow, then continue driving after the immediate threat is handled rather than simply coming to a stop.
The intervention is meant as a last-resort safety net, not a replacement for attentive driving.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.7 early review: FSD saved me from an accident
Tesla’s own description still frames FSD as supervised assistance. Secondary reports on internal release notes say the feature can fire while the car is being driven manually if cabin-camera monitoring suggests the driver is not sufficiently attentive, such as reaching toward the back seat, or if FSD appears to have been turned off unintentionally.
After the emergency maneuver, the car is expected to alert the driver and request a return to manual control.
The safety case is straightforward. Many collisions happen in the last second because a driver is looking away, fumbles a control, or faces an obstacle that braking cannot fully solve. A system that can both recognize that AEB is insufficient and execute a coordinated evasive path can reduce those remaining high-severity events.
Re-engaging after accidental disengagement also addresses a practical failure mode: a small steering nudge that drops FSD at the worst moment. The advantage is a background safety net that uses the same vision stack already running in v14, instead of leaving the car solely to emergency braking once the driver is no longer in command.
The feature still depends on FSD being enabled and, according to reports, an active FSD purchase or subscription. It does not make the vehicle unsupervised. Drivers remain responsible, and Tesla has not published how often the system is expected to intervene or how it will handle false positives.
If the rollout is conservative and the false-alarm rate stays low, the update is a meaningful step: FSD is no longer only a feature the driver turns on. In the rare moments when disaster is already forming, it can step in.
Tesla crosses major Unsupervised Self-Driving milestone
Tesla Robotaxi will be a 24/7 service: here’s when
