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SpaceX’s Starship to return humanity to the Moon in stunning NASA decision

SpaceX - and only SpaceX - has won a competitive NASA contract to land a Starship - and eventually astronauts - on the Moon. (NASA)

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5 years ago

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In one of the biggest NASA contracting surprises in years, the space agency has chosen SpaceX – and only SpaceX – to return humans to the surface of the Moon with its next-generation Starship rocket.

The Washington Post’s Christian Davenport broke the news a few hours before NASA’s scheduled announcement and teleconference, revealing that SpaceX beat out Dynetics and a Blue Origin-led “National Team” for a sole-source contract to build, launch, and land a custom version of Starship on the Moon for $2.89 billion. If that uncrewed testing is successful, SpaceX and Starship will be tasked with landing the first astronauts on the Moon in half a century as early as the in the mid-2020s.

While a Human Landing System (HLS) announcement was fully planned and expected to happen this month, virtually everyone following the process believed that NASA would continue to lean on the rationale behind selecting multiple providers for its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) and Commercial Crew (CCP) programs. Having multiple distinct providers, spacecraft, and rockets available to accomplish the same tasks fundamentally insulates NASA (and the International Space Station that depends on those programs) from losing the ability to transport crew or cargo in the event that any one provider is delayed or suffers a major failure.

With a goal as complex as landing humans back on the Moon for the first time since the 1970s, redundancy and multiple distinct solutions would obviously be even more desirable. Entirely contrary to expectations, NASA instead announced that it had exclusively contracted with SpaceX alone for next phase of HLS development. Though SpaceX may have been the only competitor already testing something approximating real integrated flight hardware, NASA’s decision to sole-source HLS to Starship represents a significant gamble.

Simultaneously, though, the move is also extraordinarily pragmatic and indicates that one or several major decisionmakers at NASA have taken less positive lessons from its commercial cargo and crew programs to heart. Crucially, over the first several years of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), Congress systematically underfunded the development of two commercial crew spacecraft – one from Boeing and the other from SpaceX. As a direct result, the launch debuts of both spacecraft were delayed by several years, forcing NASA to to continue relying on Russian Soyuz launches well into the 2020s to get its astronauts to the ISS.

Additionally, SpaceX – an unequivocal underdog and newbie next to Boeing in the mid-2010s – has drastically outperformed its traditional aerospace counterpart, beating Boeing to the punch and launching astronauts first. Boeing’s Starliner is now at least 18 months behind Crew Dragon despite costing almost 60% more.

In its first year on the books, almost mirroring NASA’s Commercial Crew experience, Congress aggressively underfunded the HLS program, allotting $850M – just 25% – of the $3.4B NASA requested. In other words, NASA seems to be proceeding with HLS under the assumption that Congress – as it did with CCP – will continue to chronically underfund the lunar lander program for years to come. If that’s the case, NASA appears to have made an uncharacteristically astute decision to structure HLS not on its preferred budget – but on what the agency believes Congress will pony up.

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Put in a slightly different way, NASA is basically telling Congress that its lack of commitment has forced the agency to sole-source its lunar lander contract to SpaceX, putting the impetus on Congress to properly fund the HLS program if it wants redundant providers. All told, while NASA is undoubtedly taking a risk selecting SpaceX and Starship to return both it and humanity to the Moon, the space agency has now made it abundantly clear that it’s fully committed to the program and goal, whether or not Congress is willing to do its job.

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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 Model Y L’s new features flexed at unveiling event at Diner

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2 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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Tesla Model Y L in a field
Credit: Tesla

Tesla flexed the new features of the Model Y L with a dedicated media event at the company’s Diner on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.

The Model Y L is the extended-wheelbase version of the all-electric crossover, which has been voted the best-selling car in the world on three occasions. The vehicle is already rolling off production lines at Gigafactory Texas, and first deliveries are slated to take place later this year.

Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990

Teslarati was invited to the event, but due to some scheduling conflicts, we could not make it to Los Angeles. Instead, we will have our hands on a media unit sometime in August, so we’ll be able to spend some more extended time with the Model Y L.

However, plenty of those who made it to LA shared some cool features that set the Model Y L apart from the Model Y.

Multi-Row Climate Control

Tesla fitted the Model Y L with full climate control on all three rows on the front screen. It can be adjusted by selecting which row you’d like to modify on the right-hand side of the touch screen:

Better Rear Window Visibility

One of the strangest things about the Model Y, especially the Juniper iteration, is the rear window has extremely limited visibility when looking into the rearview mirror.

Tesla has improved upon this with the Model Y L:

PowerShare will be included

Model Y L will come with PowerShare in North America, with an 11.5kW output to your home. Tesla said it would require Powerwall 3 for operation.

Wireless Charging Pad

There has been some speculation that Tesla would upgrade the wireless charging pads in the United States, but this is not the case.

Tesla owner fixes common feature complaint with crafty DIY retrofit

Tesla confirmed that it does not come with the cooled pads as the Y L in China does. This is because North America has not adopted Qi charging yet.

Thermal Management Improvements

These improvements in the Model Y L were seen with thermal management:

  • Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
  • +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather, 7 miles of real-world range gained
  • 8x more solar energy reflection off of glass roof
  • 30% reduction in solar energy entering the cabin

Demand

Tesla said the Model Y L is almost sold out in the U.S. It comes with

  • 1 year of FSD Supervised
  • 1 year of Supercharging
  • 1 year of Premium Connectivity
  • Free exterior paint color, interior, and wheel option at no additional cost
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Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor

Published

4 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Thursday night to deny a ridiculous rumor regarding the sale of the company’s Chinese vehicle production plant, Gigafactory Shanghai.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, claimed in a scathing new report that Tesla was exploring a potential sale of the entire China business in an effort to help bolster a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk immediately denied the rumor not once but twice, initially calling it “fake news,” and then calling it “absurdly fake news” in a separate post just a few moments later:

The original poster of the Wall Street Journal article that Musk saw deleted the initial post sharing the headline and the rumored sale of Tesla’s China business.

The report seemed absolutely and unequivocally false to begin with; Tesla’s business in China is among the most important pieces of the company’s business. Not only does the factory supply vehicles for the domestic market, but also for various other markets in Asia and Europe.

China is also one of the largest automotive markets in the world, and Tesla has performed well there despite the robust competition.

The speculation regarding a Tesla and SpaceX merger has started to gain steam this year as the space exploration company went public just a month ago. There has been speculation that Musk will bridge all of his companies under one “umbrella company,” and analysts believe this could happen before the end of the decade.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

This is the latest iteration of Musk’s very evident war on mainstream media. Reports regarding any of Musk’s companies are quick to get the dreaded “false” or “fake news” response from the CEO when they are unfounded.

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Elon Musk

Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get

Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.

Published

12 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]

Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”

The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.

The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.

Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress

Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.

Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.

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