News
SpaceX sends Falcon 9’s West Coast drone ship to the Panama Canal in surprise move
In a surprise turn of events, SpaceX has decided to send Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) – one of the company’s two autonomous spaceport drone ships (ASDS) – from Port of Los Angeles to either the Gulf or East Coast.
The likely destination: either Port Canaveral, Florida or Port of Brownsville, Texas. This move comes as the company enters a major lull in launch activities from its West Coast SLC-4 pad, situated in California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB). Lacking manifested launches, SpaceX has gone as far as redistributing almost all of its VAFB-based launch team and laying off those that could not move to Texas or Florida. As early as the first half of 2020, this major move east could easily culminate in the end of all West Coast SpaceX fleet activity, aside from a rare fairing retrieval or two.
On June 12th, SpaceX successfully launched what is expected to be its last West Coast mission for at least 6-9 months, while drone ship JRTI was most recently used to recover a VAFB-launched Falcon 9 booster during the January 11th launch of Iridium NEXT-8. Unexpectedly, it appears that Falcon 9 B1049.2’s landing aboard JRTI will be the drone ship’s last West Coast recovery for quite some time.
On August 1st, the approximately 300 foot by 170 foot converted barge departed its well-worn Port of Los Angeles berth behind tugboat “Alice C”. In fact, the drone ship’s departure went unknown for a solid 12-24 hours before a member of the unofficial SpaceX subreddit (/r/SpaceX) discovered paperwork filed with the Panama Canal Authority for an August 15th passage.
Back in January 2019, SpaceX fairing recovery vessel Mr. Steven (now GO Ms. Tree) – in a bit of what now is obvious foreshadowing – began a very similar ~5000 mi (8000 km) journey, traveling from Port of LA to Port Canaveral via the Panama Canal. Mr. Steven, however, is a far faster ship and sustained a solid 15-20 knots (17-22 mph) over the entire voyage, while drone ship JRTI – towed the entire way – will have to suffice with an average speed less than half that.
Where to?
Assuming a day-long canal passage, JRTI’s journey to Port Canaveral or Brownsville would take no less than three weeks (~22 days) from start to finish, indicating a likely arrival at the unknown final destination in the third week of August. The two probable destinations, Texas and Florida, would both arguably make sense.
In Florida, SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) is now tasked with handling the vast majority of SpaceX’s non-LZ booster recoveries, including Falcon Heavy center cores. In February 2018, CEO Elon Musk noted that a third drone ship (aside from JRTI & OCISLY) was “under construction” with the intention of allowing SpaceX to conduct Falcon Heavy launches where the center core is expended and both side boosters land at sea.
Perhaps SpaceX analyzed its fairly short West Coast manifest and decided that it would be even faster (and cheaper) to simply send JRTI East. Falcon Heavy’s next (public) launch is scheduled no earlier than late 2020, ruling out that as a primary motivation, but SpaceX is also about to begin operational Starlink launches that will demand an unprecedented cadence. Starlink’s cadence requirements could be so high that a second dedicated drone ship is necessary to prevent SpaceX’s internal manifest from delaying and generally disrupting its customers’ launches, thus explaining JRTI’s move.
At the same time, the spectacular pace of SpaceX’s orbital Starship prototype construction could very well demand the use of a large ocean-based landing platform in the near-term, at least according to Elon Musk’s recent comments on the subject of the first Starship test flights. Per Musk, either or both of SpaceX’s two Starship Mk1 (technically Mk1 & Mk2) prototypes could be ready for their first significant flights as early as September 2019, initially targeting altitudes of at least 20 km (12 mi).
Somewhat coincidentally, Starship’s tripod fin-legs – circa. a September 2018 design update – would actually almost fit inside the span of a Falcon 9 booster’s deployed landing legs (~18m diameter). This is to say that SpaceX’s two drone ships may already be large enough (give or take) to support Starship and Super Heavy booster landings. Given that the SpaceX plans to eventually put one or both of the in-work orbital Starship prototypes through an increasingly intensive series of high-speed, high-altitude (but still suborbital) tests before the first orbital flights, a drone ship may be necessary for the same reasons that not all Falcon 9 boosters can conveniently return to land during recovery.
Regardless of the ultimate purpose of drone ship JRTI’s move, it is undoubtedly a sign that things are about to get even more interesting and exciting in the world of SpaceX.
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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.
News
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.
Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.
One month after launch, we’ve scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days https://t.co/EagJy2JAsm
— Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 10, 2026
Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.
RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.
Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
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