News
SpaceX eyes multiple Starship lunar landings before first NASA Moon mission
SpaceX Director Nick Cummings says that the company could potentially attempt multiple uncrewed Starship lunar landings before the first attempt at landing NASA astronauts on the Moon.
In April 2020, NASA announced the first commercial contract recipients under its new Human Landing System (HLS) program, awarding almost $1 billion in an uneven split between Dynetics, Blue Origin’s “National Team”, and SpaceX. While an undeniable boon for Dynetics, SpaceX’s inclusion arguably came as the biggest surprise, marking NASA’s first serious investment in Starship – the company’s next-generation, fully-reusable launch vehicle.
NASA’s goal: develop one or more competing human-rated Moon landers capable of landing astronauts on the lunar surface and safely returning them to an Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit. Towards that end, the space agency awarded Blue Origin’s “National Team” (including Draper, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman) $567 million to develop a massive and complex three-stage system, using Blue Origin’s conceptual Blue Moon lander for the final descent stage. Dynetics received $253 million to build a slightly simple single-stage lander, while SpaceX received $135 million to work on a single-stage Starship-derived vehicle.
It’s never been entirely clear what returns NASA expects from its initial ~$970 million investment – no trivial sum. It’s also unclear why there is such a discrepancy between the three rewards. Regardless, as of October 2020, all three competitors have successfully passed what NASA describes as a certification baseline review (CBR), laying out explicit deliverables (“acceptance criteria and products”).*
*As a side-note, if the three contracts NASA awarded involve the same deliverables, the space agency’s first HLS awards serve as yet another reminder that SpaceX’s competitors are almost inconceivably inefficient – almost 2x cheaper than Dynetics and more than 4x cheaper than Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, et al.
Regardless, one thing is abundantly clear: whether or not NASA’s first phase of HLS rewards anticipated it, SpaceX is the only provider performing actual integrated tests with full-scale Starship prototypes. Since NASA’s April 30th award, SpaceX has successfully completed two hop tests with two separate full-scale Starships, powered by a single off-center Raptor engine that may already serve as a real-world demonstration for a strategy SpaceX could use to gently land Starships on the Moon.
In an intriguing change of pace, NASA says that it will ultimately downselect to two of its three prospective providers, whereas past messaging has heavily implied that more than one winner was extremely unlikely. The space agency now wants to make that decision no earlier than Spring (i.e. April) 2021 with the intention of awarding contracts for demonstration flights from both providers: one to fly in 2024 and the other in 2025.
Meanwhile, over the last several months, Dynetics and Blue Origin have made significant noise over their respective reveals of what essentially amount to toy-like mockups of their proposed Moon lander systems. Blue Origin is technically making good progress testing Blue Moon’s BE-7 engine, but that’s the full extent of known hardware in work between both the National Team and Dynetics. SpaceX, on the other hand, appears to be assembling some kind of Lunar Starship mockup out of real hardware, including an off-spec steel nose and – potentially – one of two functional, flight-proven Starship prototypes. The company has also built and tested no less than 39 full-scale Raptor engine prototypes in the last ~18 months.
Ultimately, all three providers have now confirmed that in the event of winning flight test contracts, they are explicitly planning at least one uncrewed Moon landing before attempting to deliver NASA astronauts to and from the lunar surface. If NASA manages to secure future HLS funding from Congress, the next several years are bound to be jam-packed with lunar spaceflight development and exploration.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla is starting to prepare for the launch of the Optimus robot in its smartphone app, new coding strings show. Elon Musk has referred to Optimus as what will be the greatest-selling product of any kind of all time, and now, Tesla is getting ready for its launch.
Tesla’s smartphone app had several first-time mentions of the Optimus program, according to Tesla App Updates, who intially reported on the appearance. Here’s what they found:
A Dedicated “Robot” Phone Key Authentication
Tesla is working on a Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE, authentication that is specifically for robots. This does not only apply to Optimus, though, as Robotaxi, which is Tesla’s autonomous ride-hailing platform, might also identify vehicles within the fleet as robots as well.
Tesla shows rapid teardown of Model S and X lines, paving the way for Optimus at Fremont
Essentially, pairing your phone as a key to anything Tesla identifies as a robot to a “whitelist” of authorized devices. Optimus, Robotaxi, or other products that fall into this category will only respond if the device trying to communicate with it is authorized.
This is a great security feature that will eliminate at least face-value and low-level threats.
Home Data Collection and System Alerts
This appears to be somewhat of a neural network for Optimus within your house. There will be a dedicated screen that asks for consent to collect both video and spatial data while Optimus performs in-home tasks. Everything from vacuuming, washing dishes, dusting, and other activities will be tracked.
There will also be a comprehensive alert system that will track everything from low battery to mechanical issues.
Other Changes
Most of the changes tracked in this particular app update are related to Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, and include things such as image assets for new features, a preview of the new custom wraps feature, and other unique features.
You can check out our coverage on what is included with the 2026 Summer Update here:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever
