News
SpaceX upgrading Starship noses and domes for easier assembly
While a separate team closes in on the completion of a new and improved Starship nosecone, SpaceX also appears to have begun assembling upgraded ‘tank domes’ that feature a similar underlying design change.
On the nose front, SpaceX has been working on a new and improved version of Starship’s nosecone for at least a year and assembling pathfinders and prototypes of varying fidelity since mid-2020 – around the same time when Starship SN15 became the first (and only) prototype to successfully launch and land. Further down the rocket, hints of Starship dome upgrades are a much more recent development.
Excluding Starship Mk1, which never had its far flimsier nose fully installed, the Starship nose design has been extremely consistent ever since SpaceX began building the first prototypes in mid-2020. Early prototypes were inevitably scrapped as SpaceX quickly iterated on the nose design and assembly process, culminating in Starship SN8, which became the first prototype to have its basic structure (tank section, nose, and flaps) fully assembled.
Though improvements and changes have almost certainly been made in the last ~18 months, the early unflown prototypes and the noses of Starships SN8, SN9, SN10, SN11, SN15, SN16, S20, and S22 have all been constructed in roughly the same way. SpaceX would first produce a series of thin, stamped sheets (gores) of steel. Once aligned on custom-built jigs, each of those gores would be welded together to form a slightly conical ring. Five total ‘rings’ would be assembled, each narrower and more conical than the last. The five sections would then be stacked one by one and welded together along their circumferences.
Altogether, something like 120 complex vertical welds would be needed just to assemble the most basic structure of a nose, followed by four or five no less complex circumferential welds to turn those sections into one cone. SpaceX’s upgraded design seeks to simplify that process mainly by increasing the size of the gores. Aside from modestly reducing the number of longitudinal sections needed to form the cone, SpaceX has also reduced the number of stacked sections from five to two, slashing the total number of gores needed by at least a factor of two or three. While not quite as substantial, the same simplification also reduces the length of vertical and circumferential welds needed to assemble a nosecone.
The spirit behind SpaceX’s new dome design appears to be very similar. Presumably doubling down on the stretch-forming production method developed for nosecone gores, SpaceX appears to have also decided to increase the size of dome gores and reduce the number of stacked sections required for dome assembly – albeit from three to two instead of five to two.
Collectively, this behavior is mostly predictable. With increasing confidence in the current design of Starship and Super Heavy, SpaceX now appears to be looking for ways to streamline and simplify manufacturing while simultaneously optimizing Starship’s design. Regardless of whether one is dealing with a highly advanced rocket factory or a smartphone assembly line, part count reduction is a very common and desirable way to reduce both cost and complexity. Additionally, drastically reducing the number of individual welds – and, to a slightly lesser degree, the total length of welds – required should also reduce the number of possible points of failure and the time needed for weld inspection and repair.
Having already scrapped a number of new nose pathfinders, it appears that Starship S24 will be the first to feature the new design. The process of stacking the ship has already begun. For domes, SpaceX appears to have only just begun assembling the first prototypes. If past dome changes are indicative of future behavior, one or several new ‘test tanks’ will likely be built to ensure that the new dome design performs as well as present-day hardware. It’s also unclear if SpaceX aims to replace all domes with a more spherical design or if, say, current Starship and Super Heavy thrust domes will remain the same for the time being.
Lifestyle
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.
Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.
Halloween is coming pic.twitter.com/lM3ASUeOqX
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 1, 2026
The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.
On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a Halloween Mode.
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 teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla says fixes on Full Self-Driving’s two biggest issues are on the way
