News
SpaceX rocket booster heads west for first California launch in more than a year
For the first time in more than 16 months, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster has been spotted heading west towards the company’s California pad, a sure sign that the next West Coast launch is just over the horizon.
First spotted in West Texas on August 20th, the Falcon 9 booster – wrapped in a class black plastic cocoon – was captured a second time three days later between Arizona and California. The rocket wrapped up the ~2600 kilometer (~1600 mi) journey from SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas development and test facilities early on August 24th, arriving at the company’s Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) Space Launch Complex 4 (SLC-4) facilities.
At least according to publicly-available launch manifests, the unknown Falcon 9 booster will be spending a fair bit of time in SpaceX’s SLC-4E hangar before its first Californian launch. Still, considering that many misinterpreted a year-old regulatory document as confirmation of SpaceX’s permanent withdrawal from VAFB just earlier this month, a surprise booster arrival is an encouraging sign.
As of now, SpaceX has two or three possible West Coast missions scheduled in the last few months of 2020, but there’s a strong chance that they’ll suffer delays as they near their tentative launch dates. Up first is the joint NASA-ESA Sentinel 6A (Sentinel 6 Michael Freilich, Jason-CS A) ocean topography satellite, one of two new spacecraft meant to continue work done by the Jason-3 spacecraft (launched by SpaceX in 2016). According to a joint review completed on June 25th and referenced in an official document (PDF), SpaceX and NASA are working towards the first Sentinel 6A launch attempt no earlier than (NET) November 10th, 2020.
NASA awarded SpaceX the $97 million launch contract in 2017, all but guaranteeing that Sentinel 6A will fly on a brand new Falcon 9 booster. The fact that the booster spotted in transport over the last week was never seen East of Texas strongly implies that it’s a new Falcon 9 SpaceX tested in McGregor before shipping back to California, in which case Sentinel 6A is almost certainly SpaceX’s next VAFB launch.
In the likely event that the booster that arrived at VAFB on August 24th is unflown, it’s probably Falcon 9 B1063. Germany’s SARah-1 radar imaging satellite is possibly the only other West Coast launch on SpaceX’s manifest that could warrant sending a new booster to California, but recent signs point towards that ~2200 kg (4850 lb) spacecraft launching in Q1 2021 (a delay from Q4 2020) as part of a dedicated SpaceX rideshare mission.
Less likely, SARah-1 could have been manifested on SpaceX’s first dedicated rideshare mission, scheduled to launch in December 2020. Either way, as fairly complex and expensive one-off science spacecraft, both SARah-1 and Sentinel 6A are liable to slip right from their current launch targets, meaning that Falcon 9 B1063 will likely spend at least 2-3 months in storage between now and the start of its first launch flow.
Regardless of the payload or the first stage launching it, SpaceX shipped its former West Coast drone ship landing platform to Florida more than a year ago. Any Falcon 9 booster launching from California will thus have to be expended or land back on land at LZ-4.
While SpaceX and its mystery Falcon 9 booster wait for their next West Coast launch, the company will likely take advantage of the opportunity to familiarize an almost entirely new team of pad and launch engineers and technicians. After its June 2019 Radarsat Constellation Mission launch, SpaceX effectively mothballed its Vandenberg pad and either laid off or transferred the vast majority of employees specific to SLC-4. SpaceX began hiring to rebuild that team in early 2020.
Thanks to a major multi-launch US military contract SpaceX won just a few weeks ago, the company’s Vandenberg facilities are all but guaranteed to remain active – even if only intermittently so – for most of the 2020s.
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News
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang regrets not investing more in Elon Musk’s xAI
The CEO stated that Nvidia is already an investor in xAI, but he wished he had given the artificial intelligence startup more money.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed that one of his investment regrets is not putting more money into Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI.
Speaking in a CNBC interview, Huang said Nvidia is already an investor in xAI but wished he had given the artificial intelligence startup more money. This was due to Musk’s record of building transformative companies such as Tesla and SpaceX.
A new wave of transformative AI firms
Huang said he’s very excited about xAI’s latest financing round. He described Musk’s company as part of a powerful new generation of AI developers, alongside OpenAI and Anthropic. that are reshaping the computing landscape.
“I’m super excited about the financing opportunity they’re doing. The only regret I have about xAI, we’re an investor already, is that I didn’t give him more money. You know almost everything that Elon’s pat of, you really want to be part of as well,” the Nvidia CEO stated.
The CEO also clarified Nvidia’s investment in xAI, revealing that Elon Musk had offered the investment opportunity to the chipmaker. “He (Musk) gave us the opportunity to invest in xAI. I’m just delighted by that,” Huang stated.
AI investment boom
Huang contrasted today’s AI-driven economy with the early days of the internet. “Back then, all the internet companies combined were maybe $30 or $40 billion in size,” he said. “If you look at the hyperscalers now, that’s about $2.5 trillion of business already operating today.”
He also stated that the ongoing shift from CPU-based computing to GPU-powered generative AI represents a “multi-trillion-dollar buildout” that Nvidia is looking to support. Huang added that every Nvidia engineer now works with AI coding assistants such as Cursor, which he called his “favorite enterprise AI service,” and it has led to a major productivity boost across the company.
Watch Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s CNBC interview in the video below.
Investor's Corner
Stifel raises Tesla price target by 9.8% over FSD, Robotaxi advancements
Stifel also maintained a “Buy” rating for the electric vehicle maker.
Investment firm Stifel has raised its price target for Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares to $483 from $440 over increased confidence in the company’s self-driving and Robotaxi programs. The new price target suggests an 11.5% upside from Tesla’s closing price on Tuesday.
Stifel also maintained a “Buy” rating despite acknowledging that Tesla’s timeline for fully unsupervised driving may be ambitious.
Building confidence
In a note to clients, Stifel stated that it believes “Tesla is making progress with modest advancements in its Robotaxi network and FSD,” as noted in a report from Investing.com. The firm expects unsupervised FSD to become available for personal use in the U.S. by the end of 2025, with a wider ride-hailing rollout potentially covering half of the U.S. population by year-end.
Stifel also noted that Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet could expand from “tiny to gigantic” within a short time frame, possibly making a material financial impact to the company by late 2026. The firm views Tesla’s vision-based approach to autonomy as central to this long-term growth, suggesting that continued advancements could unlock new revenue streams across both consumer and mobility sectors.
Tesla’s FSD goals still ambitious
While Stifel’s tone remains optimistic, the firm’s analysts acknowledged that Tesla’s aggressive autonomy timeline may face execution challenges. The note described the 2025 unsupervised FSD target as “a stretch,” though still achievable in the medium term.
“We believe Tesla is making progress with modest advancements in its Robotaxi network and FSD. The company has high expectations for its camera-based approach including; 1) Unsupervised FSD to be available for personal use in the United States by year-end 2025, which appears to be a stretch but seems more likely in the medium term; 2) that it will ‘probably have ride hailing in probably half of the populations of the U.S. by the end of the year’,” the firm noted.
Tesla Cybertruck owners are wondering when they will get access to the company’s Full Self-Driving version 14.1 that rolled out to other owners today for the first time.
Cybertruck owners typically receive Full Self-Driving updates slightly later than other drivers, as the process for the all-electric pickup is different. It is a larger vehicle that requires some additional attention from Tesla before FSD versions are rolled out, so they will be slightly delayed. CEO Elon Musk said the all-wheel steering technically requires a bit more attention before rollout as well.
The all-wheel steering of Cybertruck requires a bit more Autopilot training
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 7, 2025
After some owners got access to the v14.1 Full Self-Driving suite this morning, Cybertruck owners sought out a potential timeframe for when they would be able to experience things for themselves.
Tesla owners show off improvements with new Full Self-Driving v14 rollout
They were able to get an answer from Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Head of AI, who said:
“We got you. Coming soon.”
We got you. Coming soon.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) October 7, 2025
The release of FSD v14.1 for Cybertruck will not be tempered, either. Elluswamy then confirmed that Tesla would be rolling out the full-featured FSD v14 for the pickup, meaning it would be able to reverse and park itself, among other features.
Elluswamy said it would be capable of these features, which were void in other FSD releases for Cybertruck in the past.
Tesla’s rollout of FSD v14.1 brings several extremely notable changes and improvements to the suite, including more refined operation in parking garages, a new ability to choose parking preferences upon arriving at your destination, a new driving mode called “Sloth,” which is even more reserved than “Chill,” and general operational improvements.
Those who were lucky enough to receive the suite have already started showing off the improvements, and they definitely seem to be a step up from what v13’s more recent versions were capable of.
CEO Elon Musk called v14 “sentient” a few weeks back, and it seems that it is moving toward that. However, he did state that additional releases with more capabilities would be available in the coming weeks, but many owners are still waiting for this first version.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang regrets not investing more in Elon Musk’s xAI
Stifel raises Tesla price target by 9.8% over FSD, Robotaxi advancements
Tesla Cybertruck’s Full Self-Driving update is ‘coming soon’
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