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SpaceX to launch Europe’s next deep space telescope, first asteroid orbiter

Arianespace's Ariane 6 delays have finally caught up with it, forcing ESA to move two spacecraft onto SpaceX rockets. (ESA)

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3 years ago

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On October 17th, a NASA official speaking at an Astrophysics Advisory Committee meeting revealed that the European Space Agency (ESA) had begun “exploring options” and studying the feasibility of launching the Euclid near-infrared space telescope on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

In a major upset, director Josef Aschbacher confirmed less than three days later that ESA will contract with SpaceX to launch the Euclid telescope and Hera, a multi-spacecraft mission to a near-Earth asteroid, after all domestic alternatives fell through.

The European Union and, by proxy, ESA, are infamously insular and parochial about rocket launch services. That attitude was largely cultivated by ESA and the French company Arianespace’s success in the international commercial launch market in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s – a hard-fought position that all parties eventually seemed to take for granted. When that golden era slammed headfirst into the brick wall erected by SpaceX in the mid-2010s, Arianespace found itself facing a truly threatening competitor for the first time in 15+ years.

More importantly, ESA and the EU had minimal sway over SpaceX and could do very little to halt the private company from quickly becoming a leader of the international launch industry. Much like the traditional US launch industry that SpaceX also aggressively disrupted, ESA, EU, and Ariane officials remained in denial well into the late 2010s, even as SpaceX devoured their market share.

When ESA and Arianespace began work on a rocket to follow their highly successful and once-competitive Ariane 5 in the early and mid-2010s, they also ignored SpaceX’s loud pursuit of affordable launches through reusable rockets. European stakeholders ultimately opted to develop a fully-expendable successor – Ariane 6 – that merely tweaked the ingredients of the proven Ariane 5 formula. But after choosing the path of least resistance in 2014, Ariane 6’s launch debut has still slipped from 2020 to “late 2023” at the earliest, causing chaos for many of the commercial and institutional European payloads assigned to the rocket over the years.

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Then, in February 2022, Russia illegally invaded Ukraine a second time, throwing all other aspects of Europe into chaos. As part of the hostilities and in response to widespread European criticism, Russia took a batch of US-built, British-owned OneWeb satellites hostage, stole the Soyuz rocket they had already purchased, and reneged on a launch deal in a move that cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Doubling down, they also officially withdrew from all partnerships with ESA and Arianespace, ending the practice of Europeanized Soyuz launches and leaving multiple joint missions stranded or in limbo.

Euclid was one such mission. Development of the small near-infrared space telescope began in the early 2010s and was predicted to cost “more than 1 billion Euros” as of 2013. At the time, a European Soyuz 2.1 rocket was scheduled to launch Euclid to the Sun-Earth system’s L2 Lagrange point as early as 2020. After Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine killed Soyuz as an option, ESA briefly claimed that it would instead launch Euclid on Ariane 6.

In October 2022, ESA announced that Ariane 6’s launch debut would be delayed from its current target of late 2022 to late 2023 or even early 2024. As a result, 13 satellites – most of which are European – found themselves at risk of 6, 12, or even 18+ months of guaranteed launch delays. Less than 24 hours after announcing the latest in a long line of major Ariane 6 delays, ESA’s director revealed that two of those 13 satellites were already being transferred to SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.

Given that Euclid was orphaned by a Russian rocket, it wasn’t a huge surprise for the telescope’s launch to be handed from Arianespace to SpaceX. However, the simultaneous announcement that Hera would follow suit was far more shocking. From the start, Hera was scheduled to be one of the first payloads launched by an Ariane 64 rocket with a new Astris kick stage under development at Arianespace.

Had Hera stuck with the first three-stage Ariane 6 after the two-stage version’s latest delay, the odds of missing its 17-day October 2024 window would have increased significantly. If Hera missed that brief window, orbital mechanics would cause backup opportunities in 2025 and 2026 to extend the mission’s cruise phase (travel time) from two years to more than five years.

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SpaceX launched NASA’s DART mission in November 2021. (SpaceX)

The €290 million Hera mission’s primary purpose is to enter orbit around the near-Earth asteroid Didiymos and study a fresh impact crater on its moon, Dimorphos. That crater is fresh because it was intentionally created when NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid moon last month. Fittingly, SpaceX launched DART to Dimoprhos on a Falcon 9 rocket, and will now launch Hera in its footsteps as early as October 2024. Another Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Euclid telescope into deep space as early as mid-2023.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla Cybercab sightings on public roads are becoming more frequent

After it was unveiled a year ago by Tesla, the company has made some pretty drastic jumps in progress in terms of the Cybercab, but a recent development has truly pushed fans of the company to think it is probably going to be available soon.

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1 hour ago

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November 6, 2025

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Credit: Petersen Museum

Tesla Cybercab sightings on public roads are becoming much more frequent, and they all are pointing to one thing: imminent production.

The Tesla Cybercab is the company’s vehicle developed for fully autonomous travel, as it will be manufactured without a steering wheel or pedals, according to CEO Elon Musk.

Tesla Robotaxi Cybercab: Seats, price, special features, release date, and more

After it was unveiled a year ago by Tesla, the company has made some pretty drastic jumps in progress in terms of the Cybercab, but a recent development has truly pushed fans of the company to think it is probably going to be available soon.

Last week, we reported on the first Cybercab sighting when the vehicle was finally being tested on public roads. The spotting was not a one-time deal, as we are now seeing many more sightings on public roads:

The first spotting was in Palo Alto, just a few blocks from Tesla’s Engineering Headquarters in Los Altos. This second sighting appears to be relatively close to that first spotting, and it seems unlikely Tesla would be putting it on roads much further than that.

The public on-road testing of the Cybercab marks a major milestone in the entire project for Tesla. These early sightings and testing phases are usually followed by a lot of speculation about when the vehicle could end up in the hands of customers.

However, Tesla has already put a definitive date on when Cybercab production will begin, as Elon Musk said during the Q3 Earnings Call that it would roll off production lines in Q2 of next year.

But the speculation regarding the Cybercab is slightly different than other vehicles because Tesla has been developing it for fully autonomous travel; it’s not meant to be driven by humans but instead by software and the company’s Full Self-Driving suite.

Despite the vehicle being spotted with a steering wheel and pedals in the recent sightings, Musk has maintained that the Cybercab will not be developed with typical controls for a human. He recently confirmed this, and it does not seem the company is willing to veer too much from its plans for an autonomous car.

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Tesla Model Y Performance is rapidly moving toward customer deliveries

New drone images from noted drone operator and Gigafactory Texas observer Joe Tegtmeyer show Tesla is moving forward quickly in terms of its progress in producing the new Model Y Performance.

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2 hours ago

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November 6, 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has rapidly progressed in the production of its most anticipated Model Y trim level: the Model Y Performance.

New drone images from noted drone operator and Gigafactory Texas observer Joe Tegtmeyer show Tesla is moving forward quickly in terms of its progress in producing the new Model Y Performance.

The vehicle is being spotted more frequently at the factory located just outside of Austin, with what appears to be the first units rolling out to outbound lots:

In the United States, Tesla unveiled the Model Y Performance on September 30, the newest iteration of the fastest trim level of the best-selling car in the world for the past two years. It was launched on the very last day of the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit in the United States.

It featured a handful of performance improvements, including a 0-60 MPH acceleration rate of 3.3 seconds, a trim from the 3.5 seconds the 2025 version offered.

Additionally, the range has gone from 277 miles to 308 miles, a notable improvement in terms of how far it can travel on a charge.

There are also a handful of hardware changes that Tesla made to improve its aerodynamic performance, which all likely can be attributed to the boost in speed and acceleration, as well as range.

The vehicle was initially launched in Europe, which was not surprising, especially as Tesla was testing the new Performance trim at the famed Nurburgring in Germany.

Deliveries are currently slated for late November, but some orders are getting projections of mid-December for their Model Y Performance, which would help Tesla bolster its end-of-year delivery figures and follow up on an extremely bullish finish to Q3, which was the company’s strongest performance in history.

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Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey endorses Elon Musk Tesla pay package

Dorsey framed the pay package as an engineering and governance crossroads for Tesla.

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4 hours ago

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November 6, 2025

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Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly backed Elon Musk’s leadership ahead of Tesla’s pivotal shareholder vote, which is expected to be decided later today at the company’s 2025 annual meeting. 

Dorsey framed the pay package as an engineering and governance crossroads for Tesla.

Dorsey’s public nod framed as an engineering defense of Musk

In a post on X, Dorsey weighed in on Tesla’s post about being in a “critical inflection point.” As per the Twitter-co-founder, the vote on Musk’s 2025 performance award is not about compensation. Instead, it’s about ensuring the path for the company’s engineering in the coming years. 

“This is not about compensation. it’s about ensuring a principled (and exciting!) engineering approach to the company’s future,” Dorsey wrote on his post, later stating that users of Cash app with TSLA shares would be able to vote for the CEO’s proposed 2025 performance award. 

Elon Musk appreciated Dorsey’s endorsement, responding to the Twitter co-founder’s post with a heart emoji. Musk has been pretty thankful for the support for is fellow tech executives, also thanking Michael Dell recently, who also advocated for its proposed 2025 performance award.

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Musk’s support

While Elon Musk’s 2025 performance award has received opposition from proxy advisors such as Glass Lewis and ISS, it has received quite a lot of support from longtime bulls such as ARK Invest, and, more recently, Schwab Asset Management following calls from TSLA retail shareholders. 

“Schwab Asset Management’s approach to voting on proxy matters is thorough and deliberate. We utilize a structured process that focuses on protecting and promoting shareholder value. We apply our own internal guidelines and do not rely on recommendations from Glass Lewis or ISS. In accordance with this process, Schwab Asset Management intends to vote in favor of the 2025 CEO performance award proposal. We firmly believe that supporting this proposal aligns both management and shareholder interests, ensuring the best outcome for all parties involved,” Charles Schwab told Teslarati.

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