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SpaceX retracts Falcon 9 booster’s landing legs a second time after speedy reuse
Following the Falcon 9 booster’s second successful NASA launch in less than three months, SpaceX recovery technicians have once again rapidly retracted B1056’s four landing legs, also reused from the booster’s May 2019 launch debut.
On the heels of Falcon 9 B1056’s first speedy, leg-retracting recovery, a repeat of the booster’s impressive landing leg retraction debut – using the same legs, no less – serves as an excellent sign that whatever hardware changes were implemented are on the right track. As part of SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk’s interim goal of launching the same Falcon 9 booster twice in 1-2 days, a speedy recovery is an absolute necessity, and landing leg retraction is just one of the dozens of ways the company will need to optimize recovery and reuse to lower average turnaround times from weeks to days.
Falcon 9 B1056 completed its successful launch debut on May 4th, 2019, landing on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) to preserve an ongoing Crew Dragon failure investigation at Landing Zones 1 and 2 (LZ-1/2). Situated just a few dozen miles off the coast of Florida, OCISLY returned to port with the booster barely a day after the landing, easily the fastest drone ship return yet.
Less than two days after arriving at Port Canaveral, SpaceX technicians had already begun the landing leg retractions in what was the first actual attempt in months. Falcon 9 Block 5 debuted back in May 2018 with comments from Musk indicating that retractable legs were one of several major reusability-focused changes, but SpaceX recovery technicians never got beyond a handful of partial tests in the second half of 2018.
This ended with a truly flawless full retraction of all four landing legs on May 7th, confirmed when booster B1056 was flipped horizontally, loaded onto a powered transporter, and driven back to a SpaceX refurbishment facility with all four scorched legs installed.
Even more impressively, although it’s impossible to know if the retracted legs were removed, inspected, and reattached during refurbishment, all four of those legs were unambiguously flown again on B1056’s second launch less than three months later. Some cursory analysis of photos of CRS-18 taken by SpaceX, NASA, and others definitively identifies all four landing legs as the same ones that flew on CRS-17 – installed in the same positions, no less.
At least in the context of the Falcon family of rockets, SpaceX’s ultimate goal is to dramatically lower the cost of Falcon 9 and Heavy launches by quickly, easily, and safely reusing every part of the rocket except its orbital upper stage, which makes maybe 10-15% of hardware costs. A magnitude reduction in costs is thus out of the question for the Falcon family – a challenge that will be tackled instead by Starship and Super Heavy, a new clean-sheet launch vehicle.
Nevertheless, it’s entirely possible that Falcon 9 missions will be able to launch for 3-5 times less than their current list price ($62M) within a year or two and definitely before the family is replaced by its successor(s). In fact, according to CEO Elon Musk, SpaceX has already lowered the average base price nearly 20%, cutting it to $50M to communicate some of the financial rewards of efficient reuse to its customers.
Of course, it’s important to remember that even if SpaceX gets to a point where it could technically cut its launch prices in half (or more), breaking even on a marginal cost basis does not account for SpaceX’s desire to recoup some of the $1B+ it has spent perfecting Falcon reusability. The fact that prices have (at least according to Musk) been lowered a decent amount is a good sign that SpaceX will choose market expansion over greed, but one can never be certain and Falcon 9 and Heavy pricing may very well never reflect their true reusability.
For now, SpaceX’s rapid progress from zero landing leg retraction to retracting the same booster’s same four landing legs twice in less than three months is an excellent sign that Block 5’s capabilities continue to be refined. In terms of milestones, the first launch of a thrice-flown booster is up next for Falcon 9, as is the first reuse of a recovered Falcon fairing half (or two).
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Tesla has launched its newest iteration of the Model 3 in China with a slew of new features, including the highly requested V2L (vehicle-to-load) feature and a new interior option.
The Model 3 now has a 16″ front touchscreen with improved resolution, a black headliner, V2L capabilities, Zen Grey interior in the Premium and Performance trims, as the White option has officially been discontinued, and 19″ Dark Nova Wheels, which are standard on the Model 3 Premium only.
🚨 Tesla has launched the Model 3 in China with a variety of new features and specs:
✅ 16” front touchscreen
âś… Black Headliner
âś… V2L Capability
âś… Zen Grey interior (Premium & Performance only)
✅ 19” Dark Nova wheels (Model 3 Premium only)
✅ Zen Grey Interior option… pic.twitter.com/ltTAEIYi2Z— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 1, 2026
The touchscreen in the U.S. version of the Model 3 is just 15.4″, so the newly upgraded screen is .6″ larger. Additionally, the Black Headliner, now standard on Model Y vehicles in the U.S., is coming to China.
Additionally, Tesla’s decision to end the white interior option has also made its way to the Asian market, as Zen Grey is the lighter color consumers can now go with. It is slightly different from the previously offered White option:
These options are available in China, Australia, and New Zealand as well, as Giga Shanghai serves those markets, bringing its mass-market vehicles to those countries in the South Pacific.
The Model 3 trims are now priced at:
- Rear-Wheel-Drive – 235,500 yuan (~$35,000)
- Long Range Rear-Wheel-Drive – 259,500 yuan ($38,700)
- Long Range All-Wheel-Drive – 285,500 yuan (~$42,600)
- Performance – 339,500 yuan (~$50,600)
These features have yet to make their way to the U.S., which might upset some buyers, but it is probably a good sign that Tesla will bring these changes to U.S. trims sometime next year. Potentially, these could come even sooner, as they could be used to stimulate demand for the year-end sales push.
Nevertheless, when things start at Giga Shanghai, they usually end up in the U.S. market. Tesla has also already started to install things like the Black Headliner and larger touchscreen in certain U.S.-built vehicles, so these things will be easy to implement across other vehicles in the lineup.
Elon Musk
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Hegseth named Elon Musk to help lead Project Meridian, a Pentagon study of future warfare.
Elon Musk has a new role in the Trump administration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on war.gov Wednesday that Musk will help lead Project Meridian, a new Pentagon study meant to identify the weapons and technologies the U.S. military will need to fight wars decades from now.
Hegseth unveiled the project during his State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. Musk will direct the effort alongside Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, working under Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael. All three men were in attendance, and Hegseth said their first meeting would take place directly after the speech inside a secure compartmented facility, according to The Hill.
Hegseth said the group “will be focused on discovering, developing, and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes, without any creative limitations or restrictions, on any future battlefield, from under the Earth to beyond the Moon.” He added that Meridian is not meant to produce new strategy or policy documents.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
A memo released after the announcement gives Michael until January 28, 2027, to deliver findings, a window of 120 days. It names artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology as the fields expected to change how wars are fought. The results will come as a public report with a classified annex. The memo says the study will run through a partner organization it does not name, and it does not mention Musk directly. His role comes from Hegseth’s speech and a Pentagon press release.’
Musk had not commented publicly on the appointment as of Wednesday evening. This will be Musk’s first official advisory role in the administration since he left DOGE last year.
The mandate overlaps heavily with Musk’s companies. SpaceX is one of the Pentagon’s largest contractors, with 2026 defense awards topping $8 billion, much of it tied to launches and a suspected Starshield buildout out of Vandenberg. The Pentagon’s release says Meridian will examine domains “from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier,” which maps onto The Boring Company’s tunneling and Starship’s lunar plans. Tesla’s work on autonomy and Optimus falls within the fields the memo lists.
Meridian was one of six initiatives Hegseth announced Wednesday. Another is a new Autonomous Warfare Command, which the department wants operating as a four-star combatant command by October 1, 2027.
The news lands a day before SpaceX is scheduled to fly a classified National Reconnaissance Office payload on Falcon Heavy, one of three launches the company has planned for Thursday.
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SpaceX set to launch astronauts and a classified Falcon Heavy mission on the same day
SpaceX plans three launches Thursday, including Crew-13 astronauts and Falcon Heavy’s first classified NRO mission.
SpaceX is lining up one of the busiest single days in its history, and the company offered a preview on Wednesday morning with a simple post on X: “Sunrise at pad 40.” The video and photos show Falcon 9 standing at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, roughly a day before it is scheduled to carry four astronauts to the International Space Station.
That launch is only the first of three SpaceX missions planned for Thursday, October 1, across both coasts.
Sunrise at pad 40 pic.twitter.com/J7Qme4VvIX
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 30, 2026
Crew-13 is targeting liftoff at 11:10 a.m. ET, with a backup opportunity Friday at 10:47 a.m. ET. NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins will command the mission, with NASA’s Luke Delaney as pilot and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov serving as mission specialists. According to NASA, Dragon is set to dock with the forward port of the station’s Harmony module around 8 p.m. ET, less than nine hours after launch. Watkins is the only member of the crew who has flown before, and Kutryk will become the first Canadian to reach orbit through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
The Falcon 9 booster is flying for the third time after supporting Crew-12 and a Starlink mission, and it will attempt a landing at Landing Zone 40 beside the pad. That site made its debut in February when the Crew-12 booster touched down there, as Teslarati reported at the time. Crew-13 will relieve the Crew-12 astronauts, who have been aboard the station since the middle of February.
On the West Coast, another Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in a window running from 2:18 to 3:16 p.m. ET, a flight NASASpaceflight lists as a Transporter rideshare mission.
The day is set to close at 11:53 p.m. ET, when Falcon Heavy launches from Launch Complex 39A with NROL-97, the first National Reconnaissance Office payload ever to fly on the rocket. SpaceX rolled the vehicle out to the pad Tuesday night. Its two side boosters, which previously flew GOES-U, ViaSat-3 F3 and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, will return to Landing Zones 1 and 2, while a new center core will be expended in the Atlantic. The Roman launch took place on August 30, so NROL-97 will come barely a month later as Falcon Heavy’s third flight of 2026 and 14th overall.
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
If all three Florida boosters land as planned, it would be the first time the Space Coast has seen landings at LZ-40, LZ-1 and LZ-2 on the same day, according to the Orlando Sentinel, which has warned residents in Brevard, Orange and Volusia counties that more than one sonic boom is possible.
The schedule arrives just three days after Starship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 from Starbase, Texas, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites. If Thursday’s missions stay on time, SpaceX will have flown Starship, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from four different pads in about four days.
Crew-13 is also the start of a longer run for Dragon. NASA recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification, keeping Dragon as the agency’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner remains grounded.
Tesla launches improved Model 3 in China with V2L, new interior option
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
