News
SpaceX’s Mr. Steven preparing for first Falcon 9 fairing catch attempt in months
SpaceX recovery vessel Mr. Steven has spent the last several weeks undergoing major refits – including a new net and arms – and testing the upgraded hardware in anticipation of the vessel’s first fairing catch attempt in more than four months.
Required after a mysterious anomaly saw Mr. Steven return to Port in February sans two arms and a net, the appearance of a new net and arms guarantees that SpaceX is still pursuing its current method of fairing recovery. Above all else, successfully closing the loop and catching fairings could help SpaceX dramatically ramp its launch cadence and lower costs, especially critical for the affordable launch of the company’s own Starlink satellite constellation.
The Saga of Steven
For a few months of 2019, it was entirely conceivable that SpaceX had all but given up on catching Falcon fairings, having spent the better part of 2018 without a single success during both post-launch and experimentally controlled catch attempts. Admittedly, a year may feel like a huge amount of time, but SpaceX has demonstrated just how hard the reliably successful recovery of orbital-class rocket hardware really is.
Depending on how one examines the history of Falcon 9, it took SpaceX anywhere from ~30 and ~70 months and either 7 or 9 failed recovery attempts before the first Falcon 9 booster successfully landed in December 2015. Excluding helicopter-based fairing drop tests, Mr. Steven and SpaceX’s fairing recovery team have made five attempts to catch fairings in the vessel’s net after Falcon 9 launches. All have been unsuccessful, with the closest miss reportedly landing in the Pacific Ocean just 50 meters away from Mr. Steven’s massive net.
In January 2019, Mr. Steven sailed ~8000 km (5000 mi) from Port of Los Angeles to Port Canaveral, passing through the Panama Canal. For unknown reasons, during a trip out to sea to catch a Falcon 9 fairing in February, Mr. Steven abruptly turned around early and arrived in port missing two of four arms, four of eight booms, and the entirety of its custom net. The remaining arms/booms were removed and the vessel spent roughly three months docked with just a handful of excursions.
In late May, technicians rapidly installed new arms and booms, as well as a new (and blue) net, bringing about the end of months of inactivity. Mr. Steven has yet to venture beyond the safety of Port Canaveral since its new ‘catcher’s mitt’ was installed, but SpaceX has been testing the new setup by repeatedly lowering a Falcon fairing half into the net. It’s too early to raise expectations but it seems plausible that the iconic recovery vessel will be ready to attempt its first fairing catch in ~4 months as part of Falcon Heavy’s next scheduled launch, currently NET June 22.
A challenger approaches…
Although Mr. Steven’s prospects look better than they have in months, SpaceX’s fairing recovery engineers and technicians have not been sitting on their hands. Begun as a check against the growing possibility that reliably catching fairings in a (relatively) small net is just too difficult to be worth it, SpaceX has been analyzing methods of reusing fairings without Mr. Steven. Most notably, despite the failure to catch fairings out of the air, the fairing halves themselves – relying on GPS-guided parafoils – have proven to be capable of reliably performing gentle landings on the ocean surface.
This consistently leaves the fairings intact and floating on the ocean but at the cost of partial saltwater immersion and exposure to surface-level sea spray and waves. At least in today’s era of highly complex large satellites, customers typically demand that payload fairings (like Falcon 9’s) offer a clean room-quality environment once the satellite is encapsulated inside. Sea water is full of salt, organic molecules, and water, all three of which do not get along well with extremely sensitive electronics. The whole purpose of recovering and reusing fairings is to make their reuse more efficient and less expensive than simply building a new fairing. The task of cleaning composite structures to clean room-standards after salt water exposure and immersion tends to be less than friendly to both aspirations.
According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, however, that challenge may be distinctly solvable and could even be easier than the Mr. Steven approach. After Falcon Heavy’s commercial Arabsat 6A launch debut in April 2019, Musk again confirmed that SpaceX would be ready to test that alternate method of fairing reuse very soon and plans to do so on an “internal” (i.e. Starlink) launch later this year. As noted below, this is helped by the fact that SpaceX’s internally-developed Starlink satellites apparently have no need for the acoustic insulation panels that normally protect sensitive spacecraft from the brutal acoustic environment produced by rockets while still in Earth’s atmosphere.
For fairing reusability, the lack of those panels is just one less thing to have to worry about cleaning or replacing. Intriguingly, it’s easy to imagine that – much like SpaceX has apparently designed Starlink satellites to be resistant to intense acoustic environments – the company could have also required that they be tough enough to tolerate a less-than-pristine fairing environment. With that approach, SpaceX could continue to build new fairings for every customer launch, entirely amortizing their production cost before transferring the ‘dirty’, flight-proven fairings to internal Starlink launches.
In essence, SpaceX’s customers would quite literally be paying the company to build the very Falcon 9 boosters and fairings it will ultimately use to launch its massive Starlink constellation, requiring hundreds of launches over the next decade. The faster and more efficiently SpaceX can build and launch Starlink, the faster it can develop Starship/Super Heavy and entirely transcend any concerns of salty fairings (let alone expendable upper stages). But in the meantime, Mr. Steven will return to his catching duties and SpaceX will continue to attempt to reuse payload fairings.
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Cybertruck
Chattanooga Charge: Tesla and EV fans ready for the Southeast’s wildest Tesla party
From Cybertruck Convoys to Kid-Friendly Fun Zones: The Chattanooga Charge Has Something for Everyone
Hundreds of like-minded Tesla and EV enthusiasts are descending on Chattanooga Charge this weekend for the largest Tesla meet in the Southeast. Taking place on March 20–22, 2026 at the stunning Tennessee Riverpark.
If you were there last year, you’ll know that it’s the ultimate experience to see the wildest Teslas in action, see the best in EV tech, and arguably the most fun – finally put a name to the face and connect with those social media buddies IRL! Oh, and that epic night time Tesla light show is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will transform the Riverpark into something out of a sci-fi film that’s remarkably unforgettable and must be seen in person.
This year’s event takes everything up a notch, with over 100 Cybertrucks expected to be on display, many sporting jaw-dropping modifications and custom wraps that push the boundaries of what these stainless steel beasts can look like.
Whether you’re a diehard Tesla fan, EV supporter, or just EV-mod-curious, the sheer spectacle is worth the drive.
The Chattanooga Charge doesn’t wait until Saturday morning to get started. The weekend technically kicks off Friday, March 20th, and the venue sets the tone immediately. Come share roadtrip stories over drinks at the W-XYZ Rooftop Bar on the top floor of the Aloft Chattanooga Hamilton Place Hotel, with sunset views over the city.
Come morning, nurse your hangover with a some good coffee, and convoy with hundreds of other Tesla and EV drivers through Chattanooga to the event for some morning meet and greets before the speaker panel starts and the food trucks fire up.
Tesla owner clubs travel from across the country to be here, not just to show off their vehicles,, but to connect, share, and celebrate a shared passion for the future of driving.
Sounds like a plan to me. See you there, guys. Don’t miss it. Get your tickets at ChattanoogaCharge.com and join the charge. 🔋⚡
Chattanooga Charge is a premier Tesla and EV gathering inspired by the X Takeover, known as one of the largest Tesla event gatherings. What began as a bold idea from the team at DIY Wraps/TESBROS, hosted in their hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, the event quickly became a movement across social media. The first annual Chattanooga Charge united over 16 Tesla clubs from 16 states, proof that the EV community was hungry for something big in the South. Year after year, the event has grown in scale, ambition, and heart.
News
Tesla Full Self-Driving gets latest bit of scrutiny from NHTSA
The analysis impacts roughly 3.2 million vehicles across the company’s entire lineup, and aims to identify how the suite’s degradation detection systems work and how effective they are when the cars encounter difficult visibility conditions.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has elevated its probe into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite to an Engineering Analysis.
The analysis impacts roughly 3.2 million vehicles across the company’s entire lineup, and aims to identify how the suite’s degradation detection systems work and how effective they are when the cars encounter difficult visibility conditions.
The step up into an Engineering Analysis is often required before the NHTSA will tell an automaker to issue a recall. However, this is not a guarantee that a recall will be issued.
🚨 The NHTSA said it was upgrading a probe into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform to an “engineering analysis”
It will examine 3.2 million vehicles and aims to determine its effectiveness in evaluating degraded road conditions pic.twitter.com/2dkrv1mR8o
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 19, 2026
The NTHSA wants to examine Tesla FSD’s ability to assess road conditions that have reduced visibility, as well as detect degradation to alert the driver with sufficient time to respond.
The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) will evaluate the performance of FSD in degraded roadway conditions and the updates or modifications Tesla makes to the degradation detection system, including the timing, purpose, and capabilities of the updates.
Tesla routinely ships software updates to improve the capabilities of the FSD suite, so it will be interesting to see if various versions of FSD are tested. Interestingly, you can find many examples from real-world users of FSD handling snow-covered roads, heavy rain, and single-lane backroads.
However, there are incidents that the NHTSA has used to determine the need for this probe, at least for now. The agency said:
“Available incident data raise concerns that Tesla’s degradation detection system, both as originally deployed and later updated, fails to detect and/or warn the driver appropriately under degraded visibility conditions such as glare and airborne obscurants. In the crashes that ODI has reviewed, the system did not detect common roadway conditions that impaired camera visibility and/or provide alerts when camera performance had deteriorated until immediately before the crash occurred.”
It continues to say in its report that a review of Tesla’s responses revealed additional crashes that occurred in similar environments showed FSD “did not detect a degraded state, and/or it did not present the driver with an alert with adequate time for the driver to react. In each of these crashes, FSD also lost track of or never detected a lead vehicle in its path.”
The next steps of the NHTSA Engineering Analysis require the agency to gather further information on Tesla’s attempts to upgrade the degradation detection system. It will also analyze six recent potentially related incidents.
The investigation is listed as EA26002.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s Starship V3 is almost ready and it will change space travel forever
SpaceX is targeting April for the debut test launch of Starship V3 “Version 3”
SpaceX is closing in on one of the most anticipated rocket launches in history, as the company readies for a planned April test launch and debut of its next-gen Starship V3 “Version 3”.
The latest iteration of Starship V3 has a slightly taller Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage than their predecessors, and produce stronger, more efficient thrust using SpaceX’s upgraded Raptor 3 engines. V3 also features increased propellant capacity, targeting a total payload capacity of over 100 tons to low Earth orbit, compared to around 35 tons for its predecessor. With Musk’s lifelong aspiration to colonize Mars one day, the increased payload capacity matters enormously, because Mars missions require moving massive amounts of cargo, fuel, and eventually, people. But the most critical upgrade may be orbital refueling. SpaceX’s entire deep space architecture depends on moving large amounts of propellant in space, and having orbital refueling capabilities turn Starship from just a rocket into a true transport system. Without it, neither the Moon nor Mars is reachable at scale.
Initial Super Heavy V3 and Starbase Pad 2 activation campaign complete, wrapping up several days of testing that loaded cryogenic fuel and oxidizer on a V3 vehicle for the first time. While the 10-engine static fire ended early due to a ground-side issue, we saw successful… pic.twitter.com/uHGji17srv
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 18, 2026
A fully reusable Starship and Super Heavy, SpaceX aims to drive marginal launch costs down and at a tenfold reduction compared to current market leaders. To put that in perspective, getting a kilogram of cargo to orbit today costs thousands of dollars. Bring that number down far enough and space stops being an exclusive domain. That price point unlocks mass deployment of satellite constellations, large-scale science payloads, and affordable human transport beyond Earth orbit. It also means the Moon stops being a destination we visit and starts being one we inhabit.
NASA expects Starship to take off for the Moon’s South Pole in 2028, with the ultimate goal of establishing a permanently crewed science station there. A successful V3 flight this spring keeps that timeline alive. As for Mars, Musk has shifted focus toward building a self-sustaining city on the Moon first, arguing that the Moon can be reached every 10 days versus Mars’s 26-month alignment window. Mars remains the horizon, but the Moon is the proving ground.
Elon Musk hasn’t been shy with hyping the upcoming Starship V3 launch. In a social media post on Wednesday, he confirmed the first V3 flight is getting closer to launch. SpaceX also announced its initial activation campaign for V3 and Starbase Pad 2 was complete, wrapping up several days of cryogenic fuel testing on a V3 vehicle for the first time. The countdown is on. April can’t come soon enough.
Chattanooga Charge: Tesla and EV fans ready for the Southeast’s wildest Tesla party
Tesla Full Self-Driving gets latest bit of scrutiny from NHTSA
