News
SpaceX Starship to land NASA astronauts on the Moon
SpaceX has won part of a new $1 billion NASA contract to create a custom version of Starship designed explicitly to send space agency astronauts and huge amounts of cargo to the Moon.
Incredibly, SpaceX won its Lunar Starship development contract alongside two others awarded by NASA – one to a Blue Origin-led coalition and the other to Dynetics and “more than 25 subcontractors”. Of the three, only SpaceX’s offering is a single-stage lunar lander, while Dynetics wants to build a two-stage lander and Blue Origin wants to build a three-stage lander. It also appears that SpaceX’s custom Starship is the only lander designed to be at least partially reusable, capable of flying “many times between the surface of the Moon and lunar orbit” according to the launch company.
While potentially very exciting, the fate of NASA’s triple-threat Moon lander contract award now rests almost entirely in the hands of Congress. As of today, NASA has committed almost $970 million to the three lunar landers it’s decided to develop, only part of which the space agency appears to have on hand and ready for dispersal. For the program to even begin to approach actual missions to the Moon, let alone astronaut landings, Congress will have to consistently raise NASA’s budget every year for at least the next five to six.
Even insofar as that required budget raise (roughly ~$3B per year) is only a 10-15% increase and is effectively a rounding error relative to the rest of the federal budget, military in particular, the odds that Congress will consistently and fully support it are not great. For example, the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) – set to attempt its inaugural astronaut launch next month – began in 2010 with the expectation it would cost around $7-8 billion and achieve its first crewed launch in 2015 or 2016.
From 2010 to 2015, Congress systematically underfunded the Commercial Crew Program for largely parochial reasons, preferring to put money into projects (typically the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and their launch facilities) that directly benefited their districts or states. Over half a decade, Congress supplied only 60% of the funds CCP had budgeted, a lack of resources that likely directly resulted in years of program delays. Notably, while both Boeing and SpaceX have run into significant technical hurdles and suffered their own technical delays, the companies would have almost certainly been able to discover those hurdles earlier on if they’d had the full CCP budget supporting them.
It’s entirely unclear whether NASA’s new Artemis Moon lander program will have a better or worse time than the Commercial Crew Program. The same parochial SLS/Orion/ground systems interests remain in full force in the US House and Senate and will likely not be pleased by the fact that only one of NASA’s three HLS awards could result in SLS launch contracts. Surprise winner Dynetics has proposed a lander that can launch on either SLS 1B or the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rockets.
SpaceX’s Starship lander will unsurprisingly launch of its own Super Heavy rocket booster, while Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Draper’s lander will almost certainly launch on the former company’s New Glenn rocket.
Ultimately, this is the most significant acknowledgement and support SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket has ever received from NASA or the US federal government. Still, of the ~$970 million NASA has initially committed, Starship only received $135 million – nearly half as much as Dynetic received and more than four times less than Blue Origin’s award. NASA is thus clearly hinging its investment on SpaceX’s continued internal support for its next-generation, fully-reusable launch vehicle, as $135 million certainly isn’t enough for even SpaceX to build a building-sized rocket to land astronauts on the Moon.
Regardless, this is certainly one of the most intriguing possible outcomes of NASA’s Human Lander Systems contracts and should keep things very interesting – pending Congressional support – over the next several years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to receive improvements to address its two biggest issues, according to a company engineer.
Director of Engineering at Tesla AI, Phil Duan, revealed in a post on X that improvements to both pothole avoidance and navigation “are coming,’ something we have heard many times in the past. However, there are a few things that seem to hint that things might be different this time around.
Improvements on both are coming.
— Phil Duan (@pduan) October 1, 2026
Pothole avoidance, navigation, speed control, and left lane camping are some of the most prevalent and frequently mentioned shortcomings of the Full Self-Driving suite. These are a few of the biggest issues that have kept Tesla Full Self-Driving as a Supervised suite, meaning drivers must remain attentive during operation.
Pothole Avoidance
Pothole avoidance was first mentioned as an “Upcoming Improvement” with the Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 update back in early April of this year. It was listed alongside “Expand reasoning to all behaviors beyond destination handling.”
It’s been six months since we first saw pothole avoidance explicitly mentioned, and it has not moved beyond that and joined the main release notes yet.
Tesla has not shed any light on why pothole avoidance has been such an issue for it to solve, but it also has issues identifying large bumps much of the time, so its modeling of sudden changes in road conditions is likely pretty weak at this particular point. I’ve had more issues with large bumps than potholes, personally, but both are issues that need to be resolved.
This is that big bounce that I mentioned in the quoted post.
It’s just a tad too drastic to take at the speed FSD wants to go over it. You can see me quickly swipe down into Sloth, but I intervened. https://t.co/K20PK9ysBg pic.twitter.com/81Oc82ZJcZ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 2, 2026
It makes sense that things might be pretty close to being released to the public, as we are going on such an extensive period of time between it being mentioned and it actually being deployed.
Navigation
Navigation is likely the most painful part of using Full Self-Driving, as it routinely takes strange routes, has trouble with local rules (like Except Right Turn Stop Signs in Pennsylvania), and sometimes does not realize that maneuvers it is suggesting are against the law. Turning out of my neighborhood, you cannot turn left, yet my Model Y still suggests it roughly 70 percent of the time when I’m leaving.
However, Tesla might be close to a breakthrough on this. With the Summer Update, Tesla added “Preferred Routes” alongside “Automatic Navigation.”
Preferred Routes prioritized roads that the driver had actually taken before, instead of always defaulting to what the vehicle believes is the most efficient path. This has already solved many of my issues. Formerly, I would turn off the Online Routing setting, and that would eliminate most of my complaints with routing, but then you lose out later on the Live Traffic Visualization.
Tesla’s Navigation has improved tremendously thanks to the Preferred Routes release with the Summer Update, but it still could use some polishing, as it still suggests strange routes from time to time, and it also has a lot of issues getting out of a parking lot. I find that those truly confuse FSD sometimes.
News
SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
Falcon Heavy launched its first NRO mission while SpaceX landed four boosters in one day.
SpaceX closed out one of its busiest days ever with a midnight Falcon Heavy launch from Florida, and the rocket’s two side boosters came home to finish off a landing record the company had never set before.
Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. ET Thursday carrying NROL-97, a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. It was the first time the NRO has flown on Falcon Heavy after 22 missions on Falcon 9, and the first NRO mission bought through the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 contract awarded in 2025, according to Spaceflight Now.
Falcon Heavy lifts off from pad 39A in Florida for the 14th time! pic.twitter.com/uuZLKNTdD7
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
Roughly eight minutes after liftoff, side boosters B1104 and B1072 touched down at Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, setting off double sonic booms across Brevard County. B1104 was flying for the second time and B1072 for the fourth. Both last flew on August 30 on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, making NROL-97 the quickest turnaround between Falcon Heavy missions to date. The brand new center core, B1106, was expended in the Atlantic so the payload could reach its high energy orbit, and SpaceX’s mission page noted the fairing had previously flown on the NROL-95 mission in July.
The two landings capped a record for SpaceX. Earlier Thursday, Falcon 9 booster B1101 returned to Landing Zone 40 after sending the Crew-13 astronauts to the International Space Station, and another Falcon 9 launched the Transporter-18 rideshare with 130 payloads from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Spaceflight Now reported it was the first time SpaceX has landed four boosters in a single day, wrapping up the triple header Teslarati previewed on Wednesday.
Falcon Heavy’s side boosters land on LZ-1 and LZ-2 pic.twitter.com/dBPcNeggFx
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
The mission also brought Landing Zone 1 back for what may be its final landing. SpaceX first landed an orbital class booster there in December 2015, but its lease on the former Launch Complex 13 site ended in 2025 as the company moved Florida landings to new pads at its own launch complexes. With LZ-40 already holding the Crew-13 booster, SpaceX brought LZ-1 back into service for one more night. Launch tracker Next Spaceflight listed NROL-97 as the final expected landing at the site.
NROL-97 adds to a fast growing stack of national security work for SpaceX. The company has flown four Space Force missions from Vandenberg since mid August, several believed to carry Starshield satellites, pushing its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion. Elon Musk was also named this week to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
The Florida doubleheader stood out for another reason. The Space Coast saw only one launch in all of September as SpaceX shifts more of its East Coast infrastructure toward Starship, which reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 just three days earlier.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported strong delivery figures that beat Wall Street guesses, and they were revealed alongside the company’s second-best quarter in terms of energy deployments ever.
Tesla announced this morning that it delivered 486,532 cars in Q3, while producing 464,391, exceeding analyst consensus, which sat around 462,000 units.
Meanwhile, Tesla reported 13.7 GWh of energy storage deployed for the quarter. That’s the second-best quarter Tesla has ever reported on that side of things.
🚨 Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating expectations at 464,391.
Big Q from the Tesla team, also 13.7 GWh of energy was deployed. pic.twitter.com/olioLWgG7a
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 2, 2026
Vehicle Deliveries
Deliveries were strong, and it was another quarter when Tesla had the opportunity to outshine the Wall Street pundits who are quick to criticize and slow to give credit. Tesla saw a slight decrease in deliveries compared to Q3 2025, but Tesla still had the $7,500 EV Tax Credit to use to help incentivize consumers to pick an EV.
A small decrease of 2.1 percent is pretty telling because it shows Tesla does not need massive federal credits to convince consumers to purchase its vehicles.
It was also the company’s third-best performance all-time in terms of deliveries, trailing that of Q3 2025 with 497,099 deliveries and Q4 2024, when the company handed over 495,570 cars.
We reported several days ago that Tesla Showrooms across the United States were completely bare of inventory or unclaimed units. Many locations also removed Demo Drive units, which had been bought by customers looking to take delivery sooner.
Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong
Energy Generation
Tesla’s Energy Generation performance in Q3 was also very strong, as the company deployed 13.7 GWh of energy storage over the past three months. The only quarter when Tesla reported stronger energy deployment figures was Q4 2025, when 14.2 GWh of energy storage was deployed.
Tesla’s Q3 performance in energy generation has continued to grow each quarter, with the company increasing its deployments by ten-fold since Q3 2021, when just 1.3 GWh was deployed.
It is also nearly double what it was in Q3 2024, when the company reported 6.9 GWh. This is one of Tesla’s quickest-growing divisions, and it flies under the radar with fans and analysts, as many are focused on self-driving or the vehicles themselves.
Tesla Stock
Shares rose 5.07 percent to $372.06 at just after 10 a.m. on the East Coast. This is a rarity for Tesla after a strong delivery report, as positive news usually brings the stock down. Many quarters with extremely robust delivery reports have not been as kind to the Teslanaires of the world.
Tesla says fixes on Full Self-Driving’s two biggest issues are on the way
SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
