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SpaceX aims for two launches in two days, droneship robot spotted again
NASASpaceflight.com has reported that two SpaceX launches have slipped five days, with SES-11 and Iridium NEXT-3 respectively scheduled for launch on October 7th and 9th. Initially planned for October 2nd and 4th, the concurrent delays mean SpaceX will still attempt to conduct two launches within approximately 48 hours of each other.
We expect the Falcon 9 launch with the third set of Iridium NEXT satellites from Vandenberg to be NET Oct. 9. Philip Sloss (NSF) IR-2 photo. pic.twitter.com/rv7FoM5ZbC
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) September 25, 2017
Earlier this summer, SpaceX managed to successfully launch three Falcon 9 missions in just 12 days, with two of those launches and booster recoveries occurring in less than 48 hours. As such, the company has readily demonstrated its ability for rapid-fire launch cadence and a willingness to schedule missions as few as 24 hours apart, if necessary.
While SpaceX is only able to intermittently achieve such a cadence, their ability to launch rapidly will likely mature as LC-40 is reactivated and the company finds itself with three active launch pads. This is the only way SpaceX can achieve a planned cadence of weekly launches by 2019, and it would also help the company conduct several dozen potential launches next year, 28 of which presently have tentative launch dates in 2018.
If all goes according to plan, the second week of October will see two Falcon 9 vehicles launch satellites into Earth orbits and then return to their respective oceans for recovery aboard both of SpaceX’s autonomous droneships; Just Read The Instructions in the Pacific, and Of Course I Still Love You in the Atlantic.
Of Course I Still Love You‘s mythical robotic companion was spotted out and about aboard the droneship earlier this week by Julia Bergeron, an active SpaceX fan and resident of Florida’s Space Coast. More exciting still, the launch of SES-11 will be the second time the telecommunications company has chosen to fly on a refurbished Falcon 9, and SpaceX’s third commercial reuse of an orbital-class rocket.
I went to @PortCanaveral to visit @SpaceX #OCISLY since it's been a while. I was greeted with autonomous open arms. Yes, we miss you too! pic.twitter.com/9dPDSjpwkd
— Julia Bergeron (@julia_bergeron) September 22, 2017
SpaceX’s next Eastern mission, Koreasat 5A, may be pushed back at least several days from its tentative October 14th launch date due to the aforementioned delays. SES-11 may be the last launch from the LC-39A launch facility for some time, requiring Koreasat 5A to launch from SpaceX’s second Eastern pad, LC-40. LC-39A needs a hiatus from launch activities for at least several weeks to give SpaceX’s pad engineers time needed to modify the facility for Falcon Heavy. Extensive on-pad testing for Falcon Heavy will precede its inaugural launch attempts, and that process will demand a level of flexibility that an operational launch facility simply could not support over a period of several weeks or months.
Still, SpaceX is unlikely to allow Falcon Heavy to seriously intervene with or delay its customers’ launches, and evidence of LC-40 nearing launch readiness is currently hard to find. SpaceX employees are reportedly busy assembling and outfitting the Transporter/Erector/Launcher (TEL) that will allow for launches to begin again at the newly repaired pad, but a significant amount of work remains. If LC-40 ends up requiring more time to reach operational status, LC-39A will undoubtedly continue to support commercial launches until it can be seamlessly replaced. A slower reactivation of LC-40 will also inevitably result in delays of some sort to Falcon Heavy’s inaugural launch date, pushing the massive rocket’s first liftoff well into December 2017 or the first few months of 2018.
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
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Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Tesla will resolve its massive recall of nearly three million vehicles in China with stickers and a software update.
On Friday, Chinese regulators filed recall plans against Tesla, Xiaomi, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Chery, Geely, Dongfeng, Arcfox, and FAW to resolve what is essentially a carbon-copy issue throughout each of the companies’ vehicle models: emergency door release latches are simply not visible enough.
Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming
The companies will be required to add things that will make these latches, which will open the door in the event of an emergency, more visible. Of the 7 million vehicles impacted, Tesla accounts for 2,975,910 units. More than 1.9 million of those are Model Y vehicles, with the rest, just over 970,000, being Model 3s.
To resolve the issue, Tesla is going to add warning labels to the emergency latches free of charge, and then utilize an Over-the-Air update to add a post-crash window-lowering strategy, according to CNEVpost.
This massive effort to fix the all-electric Model Y and Model 3’s emergency latch system comes just months after several probes across various markets identified the trouble some had identifying this latch. Those who had gotten involved in car accidents that stripped the vehicle of its power were not aware that every Tesla has emergency door latches.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said that severe crashes that disable a vehicle’s low-voltage system could not only hinder occupants from getting out, but also make it more difficult for emergency response workers to gain entry.
SAMR is starting to tighten the regulations it has on door handles on vehicles. A new mandatory national standard will take effect for all models starting January 1, 2027, and will require all doors to be equipped with mechanical release mechanisms. This will effectively end purely electronic door handles. Models already on sale with type approval have been granted a two-year transition period, which will enable things to change until January 2029.
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