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SpaceX’s newest drone heads to sea for first Falcon 9 booster landing
Update: Fresh from the drydock where it was built, SpaceX drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas has departed Port Canaveral and is headed around 300 km (~190 mi) into the Atlantic Ocean for its first attempted Falcon 9 booster landing and recovery.
Designed to eventually be SpaceX’s first truly autonomous drone ship, it appears that ASOG’s first booster recovery mission(s) will nevertheless be performed like any other – with a tugboat to tow it to and from the landing zone and constant supervision from a team aboard a second support ship. Stay tuned to watch A Shortfall of Gravitas support its first Falcon booster landing as early as 3:37am EDT (07:37 UTC) on Saturday, August 28th.
SpaceX’s newest drone ship will reportedly support its first Falcon 9 booster recovery attempt ever as part of the company’s first launch in almost two months.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, SpaceX last launched on June 30th and is currently scheduled to return to flight (in a sense, at least) no earlier than August 28th, setting up an almost 60-day gap between launches – SpaceX’s longest in almost two years. Now, on top of a few significant milestones for the upgraded Cargo Dragon spacecraft meant to launch later this week, the mission will also mark an important step for the newest addition to SpaceX’s fleet of rocket recovery ships.
Known as A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG), that vessel is SpaceX’s third and newest “autonomous spaceport drone ship” and could potentially usher in a new era of rocket recovery for SpaceX according to CEO Elon Musk. Namely, Musk says that ASOG is designed to be the first truly autonomous drone ship. While existing ships Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) and Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) are technically autonomous in the sense that they are uncrewed during booster landings at sea, they must be towed to and from their recovery zones and are never far from a crewed support ship with a team of technicians.
Unlike OCISLY and JRTI, Musk says that drone ship ASOG will be truly autonomous in the sense that it’s been designed to propel itself to and from the recovery area without the need for a tugboat. According to Space Offshore, drone ship ASOG unsurprisingly won’t be operated (semi) autonomously on its very first recovery mission. It’s entirely possible that the regulatory side of things (in no way optimized for the operation of autonomous civilian ships) will have to catch up to SpaceX before ASOG is allowed to attempt a Falcon booster recovery with no human intervention.
Combined with the ship’s new ‘Octagrabber’ robot, the third of its kind, it’s not inconceivable that A Shortfall of Gravitas will one day be capable of sailing several hundred kilometers downrange, holding its position during landing, robotically safing and securing a landed booster, and sailing back to port with zero human intervention. Of course, given that things can always go wrong with systems as complex as Falcon boosters and drone ships, SpaceX will almost certainly have technicians tailing ASOG in a support ship for one or several dozen successful missions before ever attempting a fully autonomous recovery without a single human safeguard nearby.
Ultimately, though, that means that SpaceX’s upcoming CRS-23 Cargo Dragon mission could be the first in a long line of careful steps towards a truly autonomous rocket recovery system that might one day save the company millions of dollars per launch.
Cybertruck
Tesla is ending Cybertruck production
Tesla is ending Cybertruck production sometime in mid-2027, according to CEO Elon Musk.
Musk made the announcement on X last night, which came as a shock to many. He said that the Cybertruck will end production “to make room for increased Cybercab production” at Gigafactory Texas.
It is a huge blow to the fans of Tesla who have come to love the Cybertruck and identify with it as a symbol of their fandom. It has been the best-selling electric pickup, but it has had an underwhelming sales performance in terms of what was expected. This is mostly due to Tesla not meeting the prices it planned to offer the Cybertruck, as its unveiling and actual release were four years apart.
Tesla will be winding down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of next year to make room for increased Cybercab production
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2026
Overall, the responses were mixed. Some fans understood the move toward Cybercab production, especially as Tesla is truly pushing the autonomous future through its Robotaxi platform. However, others did not understand it.
“Damn, how many Cybercabs do you guys need?” one response read. Another said it was “Sad but understandable.”Even analyst Gary Black had responded to the news, stating he hoped Tesla planned to replace it with a traditional pickup design.
It doesn’t seem like that will be the case.
Tesla is so hell-bent on delivering autonomy and eventually providing a driverless service that owning a car seems like an arbitrary idea, according to their thesis. Instead, Cybercabs will be available to pick you up and drop you off on demand, safely, without any human help.
As a result, Tesla has thinned its lineup considerably, and one can only ask where the vehicle lineup goes from here. Eventually, it seems like Cybercab could be the only vehicle that Tesla will sell.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next Starship flight set to make history on Friday the 13th
SpaceX is targeting Friday, November 13 for Starship Flight 15 and its first ship catch.
SpaceX is targeting Friday, November 13 for Starship Flight 15, the mission the company plans to use for its first attempt at catching the ship itself with the launch tower.
SpaceX Vice President of Launch Kiko Dontchev shared the date on stage at the UP.Summit on Thursday, according to Ars Technica’s Eric Berger, who was in attendance. It is the first launch target to come directly from a SpaceX executive. Until now, the public schedule had relied on FAA air traffic planning slides, which listed Flight 15 for no earlier than November 8 and later November 12. SpaceX has not posted an official mission page yet, and no launch time has been shared.
The date lands inside the window Elon Musk sketched out last month. Speaking at Giga Texas on October 10, Musk said the flight would “probably launch a little bit before Thanksgiving,” as Teslarati reported. On SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call ten days later, he confirmed that Flight 15 would try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the ship, and put the odds of a successful ship catch at “more likely than not.” SpaceX also aired an animation of the maneuver during that webcast, showing the ship swinging vertical over Starbase before dropping into the tower’s chopsticks.
The hardware is ready. Booster 22 fired all 33 of its Raptor engines for a full duration static fire at Pad 2 on October 25. Ship 42 followed with a single engine burn simulating a deorbit maneuver on October 26 and a 60 second firing of all six engines the next day, according to NASASpaceflight. Ship 42 had already rehearsed the catch in September, when the Pad 2 arms lifted it into position and crews connected the quick disconnect arm while the vehicle hung from the tower.
The remaining hurdle is regulatory. The FAA’s Starship page does not yet list a Flight 15 license. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in October that, after “significant constructive engagement with the FAA,” she expects the license to cover a return to the launch site and a tower catch for both stages. Bringing the ship home means a reentry path that heads toward land, rather than ending over open ocean as every Starship flight so far has.
SpaceX has caught Super Heavy three times, on Flights 5, 7 and 8, but the ship comes back from orbital velocity and has never been caught. Flight 14 on September 28 was the first Starship to reach orbit, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites before splashing down despite an early engine shutdown that Musk blamed on engine computer software.
Musk has called a successful ship catch “the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket,” and he has already named the step after it: a Flight 16 where both the booster and the ship fly again. NASASpaceflight reports that Ship 43, the next vehicle in line, is set for static fire testing in December.
News
EVgo taps Tesla Superchargers for mass charging expansion
EVgo has tapped Tesla Superchargers for its most recent efforts to expand its charging presence in the United States, a move that seems logical based on the effectiveness of the automaker’s own infrastructure.
EVgo opened its first Supercharger site in Illinois, a 12-stall station near downtown Chicago at 3145 South Ashland Avenue in the Riverside Square & River’s Edge center, right beside a grocery store. This marks the start of the company’s plan to deploy hundreds of Supercharger stalls across the United States, primarily at grocery-anchored Regency Centers properties where drivers can shop, eat, or run errands while they charge.
We’ve opened our first EVgo Supercharger location in Illinois, marking the start of our plan to add hundreds of Supercharger stalls across the U.S.
Designed for both NACS and CCS vehicles with Magic Dock technology, these new sites help make fast charging more accessible and convenient for all EV drivers. Learn more: https://t.co/V92t5FDryQ
— EVgo Fast Charging Network (@evgonetwork) November 5, 2026
The new location uses Tesla’s Magic Dock technology so both NACS and CCS vehicles can plug in natively without drivers needing to carry their own adapters. Peak power reaches 325 kW at this site, with pricing set between $0.25 and $0.35 per kWh depending on the hour—the same rate for Tesla and non-Tesla drivers.
The stalls also appear in Tesla’s in-car navigation and Trip Planner, making them easy for Tesla owners to find and route to. Illinois has seen EV registrations rise nearly 60 percent over the past two years, and EVgo’s broader network has experienced more than 700 percent growth in charging demand over three years, so the timing fits the market’s trajectory.
Choosing Tesla hardware through the Supercharger for Business program turns out to have been a smart, practical move.
Tesla’s V4 stalls and cabinets deliver high, reliable power with a proven track record of strong uptime, while Magic Dock delivers true dual-standard compatibility in one package. Because the sites show up in Tesla’s navigation tools, EVgo instantly gains visibility among millions of existing Tesla drivers, which should raise utilization and help the company double its addressable market as more vehicles adopt NACS. EVgo still owns the stations and sets pricing, yet benefits from Tesla’s established hardware, longer cables, and operational support.
The result is faster, lower-risk infrastructure expansion that serves every EV driver—Tesla or otherwise—with convenient, high-power charging at everyday retail locations. For drivers, that means fewer adapters, more predictable stops, and a denser network just as electric vehicles become everyday transportation.