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A steel Starship soars around the Moon in this official render. (SpaceX) A steel Starship soars around the Moon in this official render. (SpaceX)

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SpaceX to mature Starship Moon landing and orbital refueling tech with NASA’s help

In order for SpaceX to land Starship on the Moon, the company will need to master the high-volume orbital transfer of propellant between two spacecraft. (SpaceX)

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6 years ago

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NASA has announced 19 technology partnerships between the agency’s many spaceflight centers and 13 companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, and more. This round of Space Act Agreements (SAAs) shows a heavy focus on technologies and concepts that could benefit exploration of the Moon and deep space more generally, including lunar landers, food production, reusable rockets, and more.

Put simply, all 19 awards are great and will hopefully result in tangible products and benefits, but SpaceX has a track record of achievement on the cutting edge of aerospace that simply has not been touched over the last decade. As such, the company’s two SAAs are some of the most interesting and telling, both ultimately focused on enabling Starship launches to and landings on the Moon and any number of other destinations in the solar system. Perhaps most importantly, it signals a small but growing sect within NASA that is willing and eager to acknowledge Starship’s existence and actively work with SpaceX to both bring it to life and further spaceflight technology in general.

One agreement focuses specifically on “vertically land[ing] large rockets on the Moon”, while the other more generally seeks to “advance technology needed to transfer propellant in orbit”, a feature that Starship’s utility would be crippled without. In this particular round of SAAs, they will be “non-reimbursable” – bureaucratic-speak for a collaboration where both sides pay their own way and no money is exchanged. SpaceX’s wins ultimately show that, although NASA proper all but refuses to acknowledge Starship, the many internal centers it is nothing without are increasingly happy to extend olive branches towards the company and its ambitious next-generation rocket.

“SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, will work with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to advance their technology to vertically land large rockets on the Moon. This includes advancing models to assess engine plume interaction with lunar regolith.”

“SpaceX will work with Glenn and Marshall to advance technology needed to transfer propellant in orbit, an important step in the development of the company’s Starship space vehicle.”

NASA, July 30th, 2019

A steel Starship on the Moon. (SpaceX)

Giant rockets on the Moon

SpaceX’s first SAA centers around studying the task of landing Starship – a “large rocket” – on the Moon and attempting to understand just how the Moon’s powdery regolith (i.e. inorganic topsoil) will respond when subjected to the plume of a Raptor engine. Put simply, the task of landing a spacecraft as massive as Starship has never been attempted on the Moon, and the process itself – irrespective of any potential surprises from plume-regolith interaction – poses some obvious challenges.

In the most basic sense, Starship is massive. According to the vehicle’s circa. 2018 dimensions, it will stretch 55m (180 ft) from nose to tail, be 9m (30 ft) in diameter, and weigh (per 2017 specs) ~85 tons (190,000 lb) empty and upwards of ~1350 tons (2.95 million lbs) fully fueled. For reference, that is almost 80% as tall and more than 2.5 times as heavy as an entire Falcon 9 rocket. In the history of lunar exploration, Apollo’s Lunar Module (LM) – including landing and ascent stages – is the heaviest vehicle to have ever landed on the Moon, weighing a maximum of 5500 kg (12,100 lb) at landing (Apollo 17).

Apollo 14’s Lunar Module is pictured here after landing on the Moon in 1971. (NASA)

As such, an expendable Starship landing on the Moon with zero propellant for a possible return to Earth would easily break the record for landed mass by a factor of 10-20, while a Starship landing with enough delta V to simply return to lunar orbit – let alone land back on Earth – could easily up that to 30-50x.

Aside from the mass of Starship, there is also the question of how to gently land the spacecraft in the first place. Lunar gravity is roughly 1/6th of Earth’s, meaning that, say, 200 tons (i.e. Raptor’s thrust) would equate to more than 1200 tons of effective thrust on the Moon, a more than 10:1 thrust-to-weight ratio. For reference, the Apollo Lunar Module descent stage was powered by an engine with ~10,000 lbf (4.5 tons) of thrust that could throttle as low as ~1000 lbf (0.45 tons), meaning that even in lunar gravity conditions, the LM could have a thrust-to-weight ratio less than 1. For the purpose of safely landing on the Moon and ensuring a gentle landing, that is an extremely desirable thing to have.

Known as ullage thrusters, an official render shows Starship using the small thrusters to settle its propellant ahead of Raptor ignition. (SpaceX)

Much like Falcon 9’s upper stage features cold-gas nitrogen thrusters to settle its propellant before MVac ignition, Starship will likely need a similar system, and it’s possible that that system could be used to gently land Starship and tweak its velocity in the final stages of a Moon landing. This study will likely be used in part to figure out what exactly the optimal method of landing Starship is.

How to Refuel Your Starship

Finally, SpaceX’s second NASA SAA focuses on developing the immature technology of in-orbit propellant transfer, an absolute necessity for Starship to simultaneously be fully reusable and capable of landing significant payloads on other planets (or moons). Ever since SpaceX CEO Elon Musk first revealed the company’s Mars-bound launch vehicle in 2016, it has incorporated in-orbit refueling as a foundational feature.

These official c. 2017 renders show the broad-strokes process of on-orbit refueling. (SpaceX)

Due to the additions required for full reusability, Starship will essentially need to be launched into Earth orbit and then quickly refueled anywhere from 1 to 10+ times depending on the ultimate destination and the mass of the cargo being delivered. This is not to say that Starship will be useless without refueling – according to SpaceX VP of Sales Jonathan Hofeller, Starship will be capable of launching more than 100 tons (220,000 lb) to low Earth orbit and 20 tons (44,000 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), more than enough to satisfy every commercial demand currently in existence.

However, with one or several refueling missions, Starship should be able to turn 100 tons to LEO into 100 tons to the surface of Mars or dozens of tons to the surface of the Moon. Put simply, with reliable and fast refueling, Starship goes from being a major step forward in reusable spaceflight to the key to the solar system and to radically affordable deep spaceflight.

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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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Elon Musk reveals date of Tesla Robotaxi’s first rides open to public

Tesla CEO Elon Musk continues to roll out new details regarding the Robotaxi launch that is expected to happen soon.

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5 hours ago

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June 10, 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Robotaxi is set to launch in the coming days, but the first rides will be confined to those who receive invitations that the company sends out. However, CEO Elon Musk revealed the date that Tesla is aiming for when anyone in the general public will be able to call for a Robotaxi.

There has been quite a bit of information today about what appears to be an imminent launch of the Robotaxi platform. The first video of a Robotaxi was captured on a public road in Austin today, just one day after Tesla was added to the City of Austin’s list of licensed autonomous vehicle operators.

First Tesla driverless robotaxi spotted in the wild in Austin, TX

In the coming days, it is expected that Tesla will launch the Robotaxi platform in Austin to a select few. For now, Tesla is taking this ultra-conservative approach as it pertains to the rollout, citing safety precautions. It will be the first time Tesla has done this in public and offered it to people outside of the company.

It did launch a small, limited version of it to employees last month in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area, but there was someone in the driver’s seat. Today’s video only had an occupant in the passenger seat.

People are eager to know: when will they be able to fetch a driverless Tesla Model Y Robotaxi in Austin for themselves? Musk finally answered the long-awaited question with a tentative date of June 22:

Musk cited that Tesla’s utmost priority is still safety and not necessarily the speed of rollout. The current plan seems to be to deploy it in a controlled and slow fashion until confidence is at an extremely high level. Musk seems to believe the rollout will go smoothly, as the date comes less than two weeks after the initial launch.

Anyone who has experienced Full Self-Driving for themselves knows what the cars are capable of. However, Tesla, at this point in time, still requires drivers to pay attention and remain ready to take over the wheel in case of an emergency. This will be a major step in the right direction for Tesla as it prepares to launch Robotaxi in Austin and slowly expand to surrounding areas.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk says Tesla Robotaxi launch will force companies to license Full Self-Driving

“The automakers keep being told that this isn’t real or that just buying some hardware from Nvidia will solve it. As Tesla robotaxis become widespread and their other solutions don’t work, they will naturally turn to us.”

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8 hours ago

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June 10, 2025

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the automaker’s Robotaxi platform launch later this month will essentially force other companies to license Full Self-Driving to achieve their own goals of achieving autonomy.

Musk’s statement comes as a video captured today showed the first Tesla Robotaxi test mules on public streets in Austin, Texas, just one day after the City officially listed the company as an autonomous vehicle operator.

A prediction by investing YouTube and Tesla community member Dave Lee stated that “at least one automaker by end of year” will license Full Self-Driving from the Musk-led company, as it will give rivals the confidence to use the software to run their own self-driving operations.

Lee detailed his theory by stating that the company that chooses to commit to FSD licensing will not be able to integrate the hardware and sell those units immediately. Instead, it will take two years or so to solve the engineering and design applications.

First Tesla driverless robotaxi spotted in the wild in Austin, TX

Musk revealed his true thoughts on other automakers’ attempts at vehicle autonomy, and said many are being told that Robotaxi is not real or that they can solve their problems with hardware orders to Nvidia.

He went on to say that companies will be forced to turn to Tesla at some point or another, because Robotaxi will be widespread and their solutions to figuring out an effective deployment will prove to be failures:

“The automakers keep being told that this isn’t real or that just buying some hardware from Nvidia will solve it. As Tesla robotaxis become widespread and their other solutions don’t work, they will naturally turn to us.”

Musk has not been shy to respond to speculation regarding the video of the Robotaxi, which was shared on X earlier today. This is perhaps one of the more fiery things he revealed. He seems ultra-confident in what Tesla will prove and achieve in the near future with the launch of the Robotaxi platform.

Many believe it will be rolled out this month. Bloomberg reported recently that Tesla was internally aiming for June 12. The company has not directly responded to these rumors.

Tesla has discussed on several occasions that it is in talks with an automaker about licensing Full Self-Driving, but it has never revealed who. The company first revealed discussions with another automaker in early 2024 when Elon Musk said:

“We’re in conversations with one major automaker regarding licensing FSD. It really just becomes a case of having them use the same cameras and inference computer and licensing our software. Once it becomes obvious that if you don’t have this (FSD) in a car, nobody wants your car. It’s a smart car… The people don’t understand all cars will need to be smart cars, or you will not sell, or nobody would buy it. Once that becomes obvious, I think licensing becomes not optional.”

Tesla confirms it is in talks with major automaker for potential FSD licensing

Many, including us, suspected that Ford was the company that Tesla was speaking of due to Musk’s relationship with Jim Farley, which resulted in the legacy automaker being the first major car company to adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS), which gave them access to the Supercharging Network.

This catalyzed an onslaught of companies choosing to make the same move as Tesla had truly set itself apart in terms of charging infrastructure.

Companies may be forced to make a similar decision if it can make the same type of statement with the rollout of Robotaxi.

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Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk reveals new details about Robotaxi rollout

The first Tesla Robotaxi unit was spotted in Austin earlier today, and CEO Elon Musk is revealing some cool new details.

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11 hours ago

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June 10, 2025

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed new details about the company’s relatively imminent rollout of the Robotaxi platform as the suspected launch date of June 12 continues to near.

Earlier today, the first video showing the first driverless Tesla Robotaxi in Austin was shared on X, just a day after the City officially listed the company as an autonomous vehicle operator on its website. Tesla is listed as a company in the “Testing” phase.

The initial details of the Robotaxi are being revealed by Musk, who is carefully releasing small tidbits that seem to show the capabilities of the entire Tesla fleet, and not necessarily just the vehicles that will be involved in the initial rollout in Austin.

First Tesla driverless robotaxi spotted in the wild in Austin, TX

His first tidbit is one that many Tesla owners and fans will already know: many Teslas are capable of this driveless performance, but Full Self-Driving is not yet refined to the point where the software is quite ready to handle it. Current versions are robust, but not prepared for driverless navigation. The hardware, however, will enable Teslas to be Robotaxis, even if they’re already purchased by owners:

This is one of the biggest advantages Tesla has over other vehicle makers. Simply put, the Over-the-Air software updates that will roll out to FSD users will eventually make their cars into Robotaxis as well.

However, Musk shed some details on the version of FSD that is being run in these new Robotaxis that were spotted. Musk said that the version these Robotaxis are running is a new version, but will soon “merge to main branch.”

There is also an even newer version that has four times the parameters as this newer version that the test-stage Robotaxis are using, but Musk admits that this needs significant refinement before it is released to the public.

As of now, Tesla is simply teasing the actual launch date of the Robotaxi program, but Bloomberg reported earlier this month that it will occur on June 12.

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