Update: Despite terrible weather, SpaceX and NASA are on track to attempt to launch Cargo Dragon’s CRS-24 space station resupply mission – also Falcon 9’s 31st and last launch of 2021. Tune in below around 4:45 am EDT (09:45 UTC), December 21st to watch the mission live.
SpaceX has rolled out a rare new Falcon 9 booster for the company’s last launch of 2021, highlighting just how pervasive the company’s rocket reusability has become.
The mission – CRS-24, Cargo Dragon 2’s fourth International Space Station (ISS) resupply run – will be SpaceX’s 31st Falcon 9 launch of the year, handily beating the 26-launch record the company set in 2020. However, CRS-24 will be only the second time this year that SpaceX debuts an unflown (new) Falcon booster, meaning that all 29 other missions (~94%) successfully relied on flight-proven rockets.
In other words, in less than five years, SpaceX has gone from completing its very first Falcon 9 reuse (SES-10 – March 2017) to launching almost 30 times in one year without a single new booster. The only other time SpaceX flew a new booster this year was CRS-22, which successfully debuted Falcon 9 B1067 and the new Cargo Dragon 2 capsule C209 in June.
Six months later, Falcon 9 B1069 is scheduled to debut by launching Cargo Dragon 2 capsule C209 on its second mission to the ISS. Carrying approximately 3 tons (~6500 lb) of consumables, station parts, and science experiments, Dragon is set to lift off from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Pad 39A no earlier than (NET) 5:06 am EDT (10:06 UTC) on Tuesday, December 21st. Weather is looking decidedly unfavorable, however, and CRS-24 currently runs a 70% chance of being scrubbed by poor conditions at Cape Canaveral and downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. Weather forecasts for a backup window on December 22nd currently predict a much better 60% chance of favorable conditions.
Regardless, when CRS-24 launches, it will mark a number of milestones and set several new records for SpaceX. Beyond firming up SpaceX’s record-breaking 31 launches this year, CRS-24 will also be the third Falcon launch in just 69 hours – less than three days. Before it, SpaceX’s three-launch record was most recently set in November 2020 when three Falcon 9 rockets launch Crew-1, Sentinel 6A, and Starlink V1 L15 a little over nine days (~217 hours) apart. If SpaceX can find a gap in the half-figurative clouds and launches on December 21st, it will beat that record by more than a factor of three.
Additionally, including Starlink 4-3 and NASA’s IXPE mission, CRS-24 will be SpaceX’s fifth orbital launch in December 2021 – the first time the company has launched more than four times in one month. Even more impressively, if CRS-24 lifts off before Thursday, December 23rd, it will actually be SpaceX’s fifth launch in less than three weeks. If it wasn’t December, SpaceX could have quite possibly squeezed a sixth launch into the last few days of the year. Instead, most SpaceXers will get some well-deserved time off before 2022 begins.
Incredibly, even excluding Starlink missions, which made up more than half of SpaceX’s 2021 launches, the company has at least 39 commercial Falcon launches tentatively scheduled in 2022. If it wants to continue regular Starlink launches on top of its unprecedently packed manifest, it won’t be long at all before SpaceX’s next five-launch month.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI Director Ashok Elluswamy celebrated Christmas Eve by sharing personal experiences with Robotaxi vehicles that had no safety monitor or occupant in the driver’s seat. Musk described the system’s “perfect driving” around Austin, while Elluswamy posted video from the back seat, calling it “an amazing experience.”
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Elon and Ashok’s firsthand Robotaxi insights
Prior to Musk and the Tesla AI Director’s posts, sightings of unmanned Teslas navigating public roads were widely shared on social media. One such vehicle was spotted in Austin, Texas, which Elon Musk acknowleged by stating that “Testing is underway with no occupants in the car.”
Based on his Christmas Eve post, Musk seemed to have tested an unmanned Tesla himself. “A Tesla with no safety monitor in the car and me sitting in the passenger seat took me all around Austin on Sunday with perfect driving,” Musk wrote in his post.
Elluswamy responded with a 2-minute video showing himself in the rear of an unmanned Tesla. The video featured the vehicle’s empty front seats, as well as its smooth handling through real-world traffic. He captioned his video with the words, “It’s an amazing experience!”
Towards Unsupervised operations
During an xAI Hackathon earlier this month, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla owed be removing Safety Monitors from its Robotaxis in Austin in just three weeks. “Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. So there will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks,” he said. Musk echoed similar estimates at the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting and the Q3 2025 earnings call.
Considering the insights that were posted Musk and Elluswamy, it does appear that Tesla is working hard towards operating its Robotaxis with no safety monitors. This is quite impressive considering that the service was launched just earlier this year.
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
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NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
