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SpaceX returns intact fairing half on clawboat in post-launch surprise
Despite a statement from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that the Iridium-5 mission’s fairing recovery attempt had failed due to a twisted parafoil, Teslarati captured photos of clawboat Mr Steven arriving in the Port of San Pedro early Saturday morning with an apparently intact fairing half.
Not to be confused with the first successfully recovered fairing that returned to land in late February, this half is undoubtedly fresh from Iridium-5’s Friday morning launch. The $2.5 million, carbon composite aluminum fairing half recovered during SpaceX’s PAZ mission on February 22 is currently being stored and scrapped at SpaceX’s brand new port real estate – Berth 240, or the same location that was selected as the probable location for SpaceX’s first BFR manufacturing facility.
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- The Iridium-5 half, however, is not believed to have suffered any significant structural damage during recovery ops. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Falcon 9 1041 rises above a sea of fog for one last mission to orbit. Half of its fairing made a surprise appearance in port on Saturday. (Pauline Acalin)
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- An unmistakable Falcon 9 fairing half seen aboard the vessel Mr Steven on Saturday morning. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin made her way to a foggy Port of San Pedro early Saturday morning to welcome Mr Steven home. (Pauline Acalin)
Compared to Musk’s previous comments during the first intact fairing recovery in late February, it would seem that Iridium-5’s fairing was all but doomed when it “impacted [the] water at high speed,” and the majority of fans appeared to have concluded as much. Following PAZ, Musk tweeted that the Mr Steven had “missed by a few hundred meters, but fairing landed intact in water” – as an incredibly optimized and lightweight structure, a fairing half would likely have to land very gently to avoid breaking into pieces. That Mr Steven’s crew was able to bring the Iridium-5 half aboard all but guarantees that it was floating intact on the ocean surface after touching down.
GPS guided parafoil twisted, so fairing impacted water at high speed. Air wake from fairing messing w parafoil steering. Doing helo drop tests in next few weeks to solve.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 30, 2018
This does not necessarily contradict Musk’s diagnosis of a twisted parafoil, assuming he was referring to the lines that connect the fairing to the foil – paragliders frequently suffer tangles and twists in their lines, an event that typically warps the parafoil’s structure, thus lowering the amount of lift it can produce as a wing. This is an inevitable risk of what is basically a self-inflating wing, and failures of this sort are known to kill or injure paragliders at low altitudes and can also lead to uncontrolled spinning (although that is very unlikely to occur with a 1000kg payload).
A NASA experiment in the late 90s examined the use of a parafoil to enable gentle, guided landings of an orbital escape pod – the experiment was quite successful. (NASA)
Ultimately, GPS-guided parafoils have been done fairly successfully and many times over during the past two or so decades. For the most part,the problems preventing SpaceX from recovering fairings in Mr Steven’s net have been almost entirely solved: the fact that two fairing halves have been recovered intact after their last two Western launches confirm as much. SpaceX engineers have somehow found a way to enable a highly flexible, lightweight, and aerodynamically awkward lifting body to survive a journey from heights of 110+ km and speeds of more than 2250 meters per second.
SpaceX’s fairings may look unassuming dressed in their subtle soot and simple curved lines, but – as SpaceX has intoned in the past – if landing massive Falcon 9 boosters after launch is akin to “launching a pencil over the Empire State building and having it land on a shoebox on the other side…during a wind storm,” recovering the relatively minuscule and light fairings can be fairly compared to launching a paper bowl over two stacked Empire State Buildings in a tornado and catching it with one hand behind your back on the opposite side – all without ripping, folding, or denting it.
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- It may look unassuming, but that fairing half could swallow an entire school bus and by all means should not be in one piece. (Fairing from PAZ, photo by Elon Musk)
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- Falcon 9 B1041.2 seen before launching Iridium-5. (Pauline Acalin)
SpaceX is 99% of the way to successful and routine fairing recovery and reuse and the final 1% is all about testing and subtle refinement. Future fairing recovery attempts may even be streamed in real time on SpaceX’s webcasts, according to Musk.
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Tesla Cybercab is using a unique strategy for picking up the correct rider, which is a crucial part of ride-hailing to ensure people end up in the right place and are charged the correct price.
Cybercab will utilize an RGB strip in its front light bar that will illuminate in a variety of different colors to mark itself.
This identifying mark will also appear in the Robotaxi app, giving riders in the same location a notable distinction in an effort to avoid any confusion regarding who should get in each vehicle.
🚨 Tesla is using different light bar colors to help riders understand which vehicle is theirs
Pretty cool strategy pic.twitter.com/eGMpEMeRpc
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 27, 2026
Other ride-hailing services use similar strategies: Lyft and Uber rides are recognizable through driver identity, vehicle type and color, as well as license plate. Waymo will display the rider’s initials on top of the vehicle, letting them know that the specific vehicle for them has arrived.
Tesla’s strategy is unique and interesting, but there are some flaws. Cybercab’s main purpose is aimed toward being an autonomous ride for all, including those who have disabilities like being blind or even color blind.
Tesla will likely have something in the pipeline for those who cannot see colors or have limited vision. There will definitely be multiple ways to identify which vehicle is the one that “you” specifically ordered.
Cybercab is set to start giving public rides next Thursday, September 3, in Austin, as it announced a dedicated event last week and invited many members of the Tesla community.
Additionally, members of the public will be invited as well. Tesla has been offering employee rides in Cybercab for nearly two months.
Tesla has said goodbye to one customization option for its vehicles: the wrap service it launched several years ago.
After launching an in-house wrap service in August 2020 for the first time in China. In the U.S., it launched in October 2023. Tesla continued to expand the program and adjust it with better pricing and fewer options for the Cybertruck.
By December 2023, it was giving owners of the Model 3, Model Y, and the Cybertruck the opportunity to give their vehicle a fresh look with a vinyl wrap.
Tesla revamps in-house vinyl wrap service with better pricing
It was only available in five locations: Costa Mesa, Oceanside, Santa Clara, West Covina, all in California, and Seattle, Washington.
However, Tesla made some big adjustments to its shop, and the wrap service is officially gone:
Tesla has made a LOT of changes to its online shop recently — price increases, price cuts, new options, and several products being removed entirely.
Some of the biggest increases are wheel covers. 👀
📈 PRICE INCREASES
• 2017-2023 | Model 3 Aero Wheel Cover — Style: Refresh…— Phoenix Self-Driving 🐦🔥 (@PhoenixFSD) August 25, 2026
Wraps are very popular across the Tesla lineup, especially since the company offers relatively few colors. Many choose to wrap their Teslas with interesting colors, patterns, or even finishes, turning their cars from glossy to satin or matte.
However, Tesla’s wrap service was so limited geographically that it never really had a chance to get off the ground or compete with local shops. Every area in the United States is now overflowing with detailing shops, mobile detailers, and other automotive specialists, many of whom perform wrap services.
Tesla’s service was confined to the Pacific time zone and only spanned across two states. It was never going to be something Tesla was a major competitor in, nor was it going to disrupt the wrapping industry. Now that the program has ended, it seems pretty ideal to believe it was always going to be a short-term thing.
Along with the wrap service, Tesla removed several other products, but nothing too crazy. The Model 3 Door Pocket and Cupholder Liners, the Model S 19″ Magnetite Wheel and Winter Tire Package, Model X/Y Ski/Snowboard Carrier for Hitch Rack, Tesla’s Electric Summer Party Tee, and the Electric Summer Tee were the other items the company totally eliminated from its online shop.
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Tesla Robotaxi fleet gets a brain upgrade ahead of Cybercab launch event
Tesla’s Robotaxi service now runs longer hours nationwide as its unsupervised fleet quietly grows larger.
Tesla’s Robotaxi service just got easier to catch, with the company’s official Robotaxi account noting that rides are now available from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, across its operating footprint. The account also said its unsupervised fleet is “a lot bigger” than before, though without specifics. The bigger change is what Tesla says upgraded intelligence in vehicle distribution and routing is what’s actually cutting wait times, not a new Full Self-Driving version.
While Tesla did not name the team behind the upgrade, the language points to its AI and fleet software group rather than the driving stack itself. Vehicle distribution and routing in Robotaxi has functioned mostly as a dispatch problem with the software deciding which idle car goes to which rider, and how far it has to travel to get there. “Upgraded intelligence” suggests a smarter version of that dispatch logic, likely using demand forecasting to position idle cars near where riders are about to request them rather than reacting once a request comes in. Tesla’s AI division has built similar prediction systems for other parts of the business, including the neural networks that power FSD itself, so applying that same approach to fleet logistics would be a natural extension rather than a new discipline for the team.
Robotaxi now runs 6am to 10pm, 7 days/week
Unsupervised fleet is a lot bigger
Also, upgraded intelligence in vehicle distribution & routing means you wait less pic.twitter.com/UFZ4bqg2dZ
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) August 26, 2026
Tesla is also about a week away from a separate robotaxi milestone. The company plans to launch Cybercab, its purpose built two seat robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, in Austin on September 3. Cybercab has been giving employees rides on public and private roads for weeks, and the September event is expected to fold those vehicles into the existing Robotaxi fleet within days of the launch.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
Austin previously ran Robotaxi from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. as of last September, a schedule set before the service expanded into Dallas, Houston, Miami, Tampa, Orlando and the Bay Area. Wednesday’s post did not specify whether that extended overnight window still applies in Austin specifically or whether 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. is now the standard across every market. Tesla’s post, visible on its official Robotaxi account, framed the change simply as fewer riders waiting around for a car.
Whether the wider hours hold once Cybercab enters the fleet next week is the next thing worth watching. Tesla has tended to expand Robotaxi in increments, first geofence, then hours, then fleet size, and each step so far has arrived without much advance notice.
Tesla Cybercab uses a unique strategy for picking up the right rider
Tesla ends in-house wrap service that always seemed like a short-term program
