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SpaceX, NASA already planning its next astronaut mission following historic launch
SpaceX’s first launch of Crew Dragon with astronauts on board may have to wait a few more days to get off the ground, but that doesn’t mean that the company isn’t already looking forward to the future. Following Demo-2, and if all goes as planned, NASA is expected to certify the Crew Dragon spacecraft for regular flights to and from the space station.
At that time, SpaceX and NASA will start nailing down the details for its next crewed mission. Each Dragon spacecraft is certified to stay on orbit for no more than 120 days, so they have to time everything carefully. That’s why the length of Demo-2 is uncertain — it all depends on when the next spacecraft will be ready.
That could happen sooner rather than later. NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, explained during a pre-launch briefing that the next flight of the Crew Dragon could fly as soon as August 30. That flight, called Crew-1, would see the Dragon carry four astronauts to the space station for a six-month stay. On board will be three NASA astronauts — Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker — who will be joined by Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
However, before they can fly, the Demo-2 crew of Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are putting the Dragon through its paces. It’s their job to test out the craft’s various systems on this final test flight. Crew Dragon has already made one successful flight to the space station, but that was without a crew on board. When it flies this next time, Bob and Doug will not only test out manual controls of the Dragon’s flight systems, but also the craft’s ECLISS (or environmental control and life support system).
Bridenstine stresses that Demo-2 is a test flight. The mission is designed to test the vehicle, land it safely, and prepare to regularly launch crew. To that end, there will be several weeks in between the Demo-2 flight and the launch of Crew-1. This will allow SpaceX and NASA to inspect and certify the Dragon.
“They can be there probably until early August,” Bridenstine said, referring to the Demo-2 mission. “If we have a good window to come home and they are not necessary on the International Space Station, we will be taking it.”
“The goal is to get them to the International Space Station, test the systems and get them home,” he added. “If they can do more work than that while on the ISS, certainly that’s OK. But this is a test flight.”
Behnken and Hurley will be joining fellow NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy on station. Cassidy, along with two Russian cosmonauts, launched to the station in April. They’ve been serving as a skeleton crew, so the addition of two more astronauts will be welcomed.
SpaceX snagged a $2.6 billion contract in 2014, to fly six operational crewed missions for NASA. For nearly a decade now, NASA has been forced to rely on Russia as the sole means of transporting astronauts to and from the orbital outpost. This arrangement is expensive, with seats now costing NASA approximately $90 million each.
Once Crew Dragon is fully operational, NASA hopes to end its payments to Russia. It would lie to establish a barter system for seats instead. NASA is hopeful that the Russians will want to fly on the Dragon and are wanting to trade seats with the Russians in the near future.
That arrangement would see U.S. astronauts continue to fly on Soyuz spacecrafts as well as Russian cosmonauts fly on U.S. spacecraft with no money being exchanged. Russian officials have said they would be open to putting cosmonauts on U.S. vehicles after they’ve been fully certified.
Russia as well as many international partners participated in the Dragon’s readiness review process along with NASA. The Dragon passed both its flight readiness review and launch readiness reviews with flying colors. Right now, the only thing standing in its way is launch weather.
Currently, NASA and SpaceX are targeting Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 p.m. for liftoff.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
X’s updates to its updates
As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks.
“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.
The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.
xAI and X
X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award.
As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards.
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close.
MotorTrend reverses course
MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.
According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.
Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.
High cost and high capability
MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.
Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.
Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.
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Elon Musk’s Grokipedia surges to 5.6M articles, almost 79% of English Wikipedia
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago.
Elon Musk’s Grokipedia has grown to an impressive 5,615,201 articles as of today, closing in on 79% of the English Wikipedia’s current total of 7,119,376 articles.
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago. Needless to say, it would only be a matter of time before Grokipedia exceeds English Wikipedia in sheer volume.
Grokipedia’s rapid growth
xAI’s vision for Grokipedia emphasizes neutrality, while Grok’s reasoning capabilities allow for fast drafting and fact-checking. When Elon Musk announced the initiative in late September 2025, he noted that Grokipedia would be an improvement to Wikipedia because it would be designed to avoid bias.
At the time, Musk noted that Grokipedia “is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
Grokipedia was launched in late October, and while xAI was careful to list it only as Version 0.1 at the time, the online encyclopedia immediately earned praise. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger highlighted the project’s innovative approach, noting how it leverages AI to fill knowledge gaps and enable rapid updates. Netizens also observed how Grokipedia tends to present articles in a more objective manner compared to Wikipedia, which is edited by humans.
Elon Musk’s ambitious plans
With 5,615,201 total articles, Grokipedia has now grown to almost 79% of English Wikipedia’s article base. This is incredibly quick, though Grokipedia remains text-only for now. xAI, for its part, has now updated the online encyclopedia’s iteration to v0.2.
Elon Musk has shared bold ideas for Grokipedia, including sending a record of the entire knowledge base to space as part of xAI’s mission to preserve and expand human understanding. At some point, Musk stated that Grokipedia will be renamed to Encyclopedia Galactica, and it will be sent to the cosmos.
“When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote, adding in a later post that “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
