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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.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
Elon Musk says Grok Bot can manage your finances through linked bank and investment accounts.
Grok Bot now wants access to your wallet, with SpaceXAI rolling out a new Finance integration for its agent platform that lets users link bank, credit card and investment accounts thereby letting their Bots help manage spending, investments and more. Elon Musk amplified the announcement on X with a short endorsement, “Grok Bot can manage your finances.”
The feature builds on two earlier steps. In early September, Grok gained the ability to answer questions about spending, savings, investments and cash flow using accounts connected through Plaid, starting with users in the U.S. Before that, on August 28, SpaceXAI let Grok Bot buy things online through Link, with users approving every spend request and the Bot receiving a single use card for each payment.
Musk has already shown how far he wants users to push it. In late August, when Tesla investor account Teslaconomics said he was weighing whether to give Grok Bot access to his bank accounts, Musk replied, “Try it out. If Grok Bot messes up, we will make you whole.” That promise goes beyond SpaceXAI’s consumer terms, which make users responsible for what their agents do and generally cap the company’s liability at the greater of fees paid or $100. SpaceXAI’s own documentation recommends requiring approval for purchases and financial transfers.
For Tesla owners, the update lands five days after Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles, letting drivers hand off errands by voice while FSD (Supervised) handles the road. Bot access inside the car is currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, though Connectors are open to anyone signed into Grok. With Finance linked, a driver could ask for a spending summary or a check on upcoming bills during the commute.
Grok’s role in the car has grown quickly since Tesla’s Summer Update let it control cabin features by voice. We have been using Grok Bot in our own Tesla for several weeks, and here’s how our latest test went.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
The FAA has cleared Starship Flight 14, setting up SpaceX’s first orbital attempt on Monday.
SpaceX has cleared the last regulatory hurdle standing between Starship and its first trip to orbit. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the launch license for Starship Flight 14 late Saturday, keeping the mission on track for liftoff Monday, September 28, from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas.
The 75 minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central, and Boca Chica Beach closures are also scheduled for September 29 and 30 as backup dates. This will be Starship’s first revenue generating mission.
The license was the missing piece after SpaceX completed a full wet dress rehearsal with Booster 21 and Ship 41 on September 24. At the time, the company said the flight remained on track pending regulatory approval. Because Flight 14 flies an orbital profile, the FAA had to sign off on a modified license that met its safety, payload and financial responsibility requirements.
Observers combing through the new FAA paperwork also noticed that lightning no longer appears among Starship’s listed launch hazards. If that holds, it matters more for where Starship is headed than for Monday’s attempt. Florida and Louisiana, home to LC-39A and the planned Starbase Louisiana site, see some of the most frequent lightning in the United States.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Flight 14 is the mission SpaceX has been building toward for months. Ship 41 will carry 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational V3 units to be deployed, and attempt roughly six orbits at about 275 kilometers over a flight lasting just under 10 hours. SpaceX says the ship will only perform its orbital insertion burn after flight controllers confirm enough hardware redundancy remains for the deorbit burn at the end of the mission. Ship 41 is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile, while Super Heavy will return to the Gulf of Mexico.
The date carries some symbolism as well. A Monday launch would come 10 years and one day after Elon Musk first presented the Interplanetary Transport System, the design that became Starship, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
SpaceX has not announced what comes next, but air traffic planning slides reported this week, list Flight 15 no earlier than October 19 and a first Starship launch from LC-39A in Florida no earlier than October 30. Both dates depend on how Monday goes.
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
