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SpaceX’s second astronaut launch a step closer after NASA announcement
SpaceX’s second astronaut launch is a a step closer to flight after NASA and JAXA announced the third and fourth astronauts assigned to ride Crew Dragon to the International Space Station (ISS) on its first operational mission.
On the cusp of March 30th and 31st, the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) made the first Crew Dragon-related announcement of the day, revealing the assignment of astronaut Soichi Noguchi to SpaceX’s Crew-1 launch. Hinging entirely on the success of SpaceX’s imminent Demo-2 astronaut launch debut, a critical demonstration mission scheduled to launch no earlier than mid-to-late May 2020, Crew Dragon’s Crew-1 mission will be the spacecraft’s first operational mission ferrying humans to and from the space station. NASA followed up JAXA’s announced hours later, revealing that astronaut Shannon Walker would be the fourth and final crew member aboard Crew Dragon’s Crew-1 launch.
Including Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon crewed demonstration missions, known as the Crewed Flight Test and Demonstration Mission 2 (Demo-2 or DM-2), respectively, NASA has purchased six astronaut launches from both providers. In theory, one Starliner and Crew Dragon launch per year – spaced out six or so months apart – should be enough to meet NASA’s space station transportation needs, meaning that the space agency’s 12 contracts should last until 2025 or 2026. Boeing’s Starliner appears to be delayed indefinitely after multiple near-catastrophic failures on its first Orbital Flight Test (OFT) but if SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission goes as planned, Crew Dragon could be set to enter operational duty as early as Q4 2020.
SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission manifest now includes NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, as well as JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi and will likely carry an additional 100-200 kg (200-400 lb) of cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). While all eyes are reasonably on Crew Dragon’s Demo-2 mission, right now, the spacecraft’s Crew-1 through -5 missions are where SpaceX has the opportunity to gain extensive experience launching humans on an operational, semi-routine basis.
Making up at least half of the backbone of NASA’s new domestic astronaut launch capabilities, Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 will hopefully prove themselves to be as reliable and dependable as they and their predecessors have been over the years. Cargo Dragon, SpaceX’s first orbital-class spacecraft and the first private vehicle to visit the ISS, has successfully resupplied the space station and safely returned to Earth each of the 20 times the spacecraft reached orbit. Unsurprisingly, SpaceX ran into intermittent technical issues over those numerous flights, but all of those anomalies were solved on the fly and never prevented mission success or spacecraft recovery.
Falcon 9’s first in-flight failure destroyed the CRS-7 Cargo Dragon spacecraft in June 2015 and cut the mission short before it could reach orbit, but the failure was entirely unrelated to Dragon. Falcon 9’s second catastrophic failure occurred less than 15 months later, also a fault of a small but explosive rocket design flaw. From January 2017 to March 2020, however, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets have completed 58 consecutively successful launches. With that streak of success, by certain measures, Falcon has become the most reliable operational rocket family in the world, tied with ULA’s famously reliable Atlas V and slightly better than Arianespace’s Ariane 5.
In short, while Cargo Dragon can’t hold a candle to the sheer scale of Russia’s Soyuz and Progress spacecraft flight histories, Falcon 9 is one of the two most reliable launch vehicles in operation and Crew Dragon will stand on the back of one of the most reliable spacecraft ever built in recent history. With (perhaps more than a little) luck, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft – launched atop Atlas V, the other most reliable operational rocket – will hopefully be able to develop its own record of reliability in the next several years, but it will never be able to compete with the Cargo Dragon heritage Crew Dragon directly benefits from.
Boeing’s next Starliner mission is up in the air after the spacecraft’s almost disastrous orbital launch debut. Most likely, NASA will require a second uncrewed flight test, this time including the space station rendezvous, docking, and departure attempt Boeing had to cancel after Starliner’s major software failure. A second OFT would likely be ready for flight no earlier than Q3 or Q4 2020, depending on NASA’s investigation findings and requirements. If NASA remains confident and things go perfectly during the likely OFT2 mission, Starliner’s Crew Flight Test (CFT) could maybe launch by the end of 2020.
Crew Dragon’s Demo-2 astronaut launch debut is aiming for what NASA says is a mid-to-late May launch, although the mission is more likely to fly in the late-May to mid-June time frame. If Demo-2 launches on schedule (H1 2020) and is as flawless as Crew Dragon’s uncrewed Demo-1 launch debut, SpaceX could be ready to launch its second astronaut mission (Crew-1) as early as Q4 2020, possibly around the start of the quarter. With so much contingent on near-term reviews and tests, schedules beyond Demo-2 are unsurprisingly fluid.
News
Why Elon Musk’s target date for buying an Optimus robot is harder than it sounds
Musk says China’s magnet export ban cost Optimus months, and robot hands remain shockingly hard.
Elon Musk says China’s export curbs on magnets used in electric motors set back Tesla’s Optimus program by two to three months, and that the robot’s hands remain the hardest part of the project. He made the comments Saturday during a live interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas, in front of roughly 2,000 attendees. The Optimus discussion begins around the 49 minute mark of the stream.
On the hands, Musk was blunt and noted that a general purpose humanoid needs fine motor skills that are “incredibly difficult to get right. Shockingly difficult,” he said in the interview. He pointed to a problem he says no one has demonstrated yet: “One of the hardest things also generally is to do precision and force at the same time,” such as driving a small self tapping screw into wood. Touch sensors add another layer, since it is “actually kind of hard to get touch sensors that elastically deform and can handle high cycle life and it won’t just break after a few thousand cycles.”
He also took aim at rival robot videos. “Any complicated looking robot demo, it’s a canned demo. It’s not real,” Musk said, adding that real AI means showing a robot something it has never seen and watching it still cope, the way FSD handles a city it has never driven.
Musk expects the Optimus ramp to be slower than a new vehicle production ramp. “The initial part of that S curve of production ramp is going to be very slow at the beginning,” Musk said, partly because “unlike cars, there’s no pre existing supply chain for robot stuff.” That echoes his July reply on X that Optimus production “will be extremely slow at first, as everything is new.”
The magnet disclosure puts a number on a problem Musk first raised in 2025. He said China “prevented the export of magnets for use in electric motors” and that it “set back the Optimus program by like two or three months.” Then he added: “We had robots with no arms.” Tesla’s fix is to bring the supply chain home. “You’ve got to be able to make all the parts domestically,” he said. Teslarati reported in April 2025 that Musk tied the issue to permanent magnets in the arm actuators, where motors have to be as small as possible.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Production is moving regardless, with a reported internal goal of more than 1,000 a week by the end of 2026. Teslarati recently covered how Tesla is certifying supply partners in China for Optimus parts, while the company’s hand design has been the subject of new patent filings.
Musk has said he wants Optimus available to the public by late 2027, though Tesla has not confirmed that date or published updated production figures.
Investor's Corner
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Elon Musk says Starship Flight 15 will try to catch the ship itself, a first.
Elon Musk says SpaceX’s next Starship flight will try something nobody has done before, by catching the ship itself. Speaking to roughly 2,000 people at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas on Saturday, Musk said Flight 15 is about four to six weeks away and “probably launches a little bit before Thanksgiving, is my guess.”
That is a slip from earlier reporting, which had pointed to a launch as early as October 19. Musk explained why the date keeps moving. “We’re making a bunch of improvements to the rocket between every flight,” he said, adding that there are often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small changes. This time the list is short, “but some of them take a fair bit of work and we’ve got to go inside the tank to make some of these changes.”
“We’re going to try to catch the ship, which is a super big deal,” Musk said. “If we do so, that’ll be the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket.” SpaceX has already caught the Super Heavy booster with the tower’s mechanical arms, and has talked about catching the ship since late 2025, but the upper stage has never been caught.
Musk also laid out what comes after. “The next big milestone would be to refly both the booster and the ship,” he said, describing a Flight 16 where “all parts of an orbital rocket are reflown.”
The reason SpaceX wants this comes down to cost and cadence. Every Starship ship so far has ended its flight in the ocean, and SpaceX expects most of those water landings to end in fireballs. A ship that returns to Starbase intact can be inspected and flown again. SpaceX’s IPO filing, says Starship V3 is designed to deliver 100 metric tons to orbit in a fully reusable configuration, that SpaceX aims to cut the cost to reach orbit by 99% or more versus the historical average, and that tower catches should allow “multiple launches per day.”
The payoff goes beyond cheaper launches. The next generation Starlink V3 satellites are too large for Falcon 9 and can only fly on Starship, which can carry up to 60 per flight. Flight 14 on September 28 deployed the first 26 of them after Starship reached orbit despite an early engine shutdown, as Teslarati reported. Musk blamed engine computer software, and said the heat shield “was extremely robust,” which he claimed in August had solved Starship’s biggest challenge.
NASA’s Moon plans depend on the same capability. NASA’s inspector general has described a lander mission that needs a propellant depot in low Earth orbit and more than 10 tanker flights, with SpaceX targeting one tanker launch every six days. That schedule only works if ships and boosters come back fast and fly again. Also, ship to ship propellant transfer has not been attempted yet.
One interesting hurdle yet to be explored is bringing the ship back to the launch site, with reentry over land, which will undoubtedly come with a lot of aviation safety reviews.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
Why Elon Musk’s target date for buying an Optimus robot is harder than it sounds
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded
