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SpaceX sticks dramatic drone ship landing, third reuse flight a resounding success

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SpaceX has once more accomplished what the launch industry long dismissed as infeasible, conducting their third commercial reuse of a recovered Falcon 9 booster. This particular mission was tasked with launching the 5,200 kg SES-11/Echostar 105 communications satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit. Once it makes its way into the final geostationary orbit, the satellite can be expected to provide communications services to North America in the form of digital television.

After the Falcon 9 booster separated from the second stage, it conducted a rapid 180 degree flip in order to orient itself towards the landing target, an autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) stationed several hundred miles East of the Kennedy Space Center. The hypersonic booster then slowed itself down from roughly 5,000 mph with a series of two burns, culminating in the stage’s second recovery after an orbital-class launch. The booster, 1031, was previously tasked with launching the 10th cargo Dragon mission to the ISS, later landing at SpaceX’s land-based LZ-1 pad in February 2017.

 

This time around, 1031 got a taste of the ocean while landing aboard Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), despite sea conditions that were deemed relatively rough and stormy. It is unlikely that 1031 will ever launch again, as it is a Block 3 Falcon 9 and thus intended to only be reused once or twice. Nevertheless, this core will add to SpaceX’s ever-growing fleet of both operational and decommissioned Falcon 9 cores, most of which are stored in and around SpaceX’s Florida facilities.

This landing and recovery was  quite possibly the most dramatic yet for SpaceX. While rapidly reentering into Earth’s thickening atmosphere, the stage experienced extraordinary heating that resulted in the aluminum grid fins nearly glowing white, and the same camera caught gorgeous interplay between ionizing gases coming off the stage and its final landing burn. For a solid minute thereafter, ground control lost the video feed from the first stage, seemingly foreshadowing the core’s untimely demise. However, cameras aboard OCISLY maintained their live coverage and revealed the stage’s successful landing aboard the drone ship soon after.

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The second stage continued to orbit, coincidentally catching an incredible view of the sun setting behind Earth’s limb just before its first orbital insertion burn ended. After a coast period of some 20 minutes, the second stage reignited to boost the SES-11/EchoStar 105 satellite into its final transfer orbit, after which the satellite separated from the stage and continued on its way. The Falcon 9 second stage will eventually reenter Earth’s atmosphere and break apart before impacting the ocean, a process that may be expedited if the vehicle has enough residual fuel to hasten the orbital decay.

Put simply, SES-11/EchoStar 105 demonstrates SpaceX’s growing consistency and the resounding success they are having with the routinization of rapid launch cadence and commercially reusable rockets. The mission is the company’s 15th in 2017 alone, as well as the 12th successful recovery of a first stage this year and the 18th successful recovery total. More importantly, its launch was the third commercial reuse of a Falcon 9 first stage, paving the way for future reuses as the endeavor’s record of success continues without flaw.

 

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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 FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’

“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026.”

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest model is coming very soon, and from what it sounds like, it could be “the last big piece of the puzzle,” as CEO Elon Musk said in late November.

During the xAI Hackathon on Tuesday, Musk was available for a Q&A session, where he revealed some details about Robotaxi and Tesla’s plans for removing Robotaxi Safety Monitors, and some information on a future FSD model.

While he said Full Self-Driving’s unsupervised capability is “pretty much solved,” and confirmed it will remove Safety Monitors in the next three weeks, questions about the company’s ability to give this FSD version to current owners came to mind.

Musk said a new FSD model is coming in about a month or two that will be an order-of-magnitude larger and will include more reasoning and reinforcement learning.

He said:

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“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026. We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”

It rings back to late November when Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.”

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With the advancements made through Full Self-Driving v14 and v14.2, there seems to be a greater confidence in solving self-driving completely. Musk has also personally said that driver monitoring has been more relaxed, and looking at your phone won’t prompt as many alerts in the latest v14.2.1.

This is another indication that Tesla is getting closer to allowing people to take their eyes off the road completely.

Along with the Robotaxi program’s success, there is evidence that Tesla could be close to solving FSD. However, it is not perfect. We’ve had our own complaints with FSD, and although we feel it is the best ADAS on the market, it is not, in its current form, able to perform everything needed on roads.

But it is close.

That’s why there is some legitimate belief that Tesla could be releasing a version capable of no supervision in the coming months.

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All we can say is, we’ll see.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms

However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon. Musk replied, basically confirming it.

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elon musk side profile
Joel Kowsky, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk confirmed through a post on X that a SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is on the way after hinting at it several times earlier this year.

It also comes one day after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was aiming for a valuation of $1.5 trillion, adding that it wanted to raise $30 billion.

Musk has been transparent for most of the year that he wanted to try to figure out a way to get Tesla shareholders to invest in SpaceX, giving them access to the stock.

He has also recognized the issues of having a public stock, like litigation exposure, quarterly reporting pressures, and other inconveniences.

However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon.

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Musk replied, basically confirming it:

Berger believes the IPO would help support the need for $30 billion or more in capital needed to fund AI integration projects, such as space-based data centers and lunar satellite factories. Musk confirmed recently that SpaceX “will be doing” data centers in orbit.

AI appears to be a “key part” of SpaceX getting to Musk, Berger also wrote. When writing about whether or not Optimus is a viable project and product for the company, he says that none of that matters. Musk thinks it is, and that’s all that matters.

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It seems like Musk has certainly mulled something this big for a very long time, and the idea of taking SpaceX public is not just likely; it is necessary for the company to get to Mars.

The details of when SpaceX will finally hit that public status are not known. Many of the reports that came out over the past few days indicate it would happen in 2026, so sooner rather than later.

But there are a lot of things on Musk’s plate early next year, especially with Cybercab production, the potential launch of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, and the Roadster unveiling, all planned for Q1.

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Tesla adds 15th automaker to Supercharger access in 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has added the 15th automaker to the growing list of companies whose EVs can utilize the Supercharger Network this year, as BMW is the latest company to gain access to the largest charging infrastructure in the world.

BMW became the 15th company in 2025 to gain Tesla Supercharger access, after the company confirmed to its EV owners that they could use any of the more than 25,000 Supercharging stalls in North America.

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Newer BMW all-electric cars, like the i4, i5, i7, and iX, are able to utilize Tesla’s V3 and V4 Superchargers. These are the exact model years, via the BMW Blog:

  • i4: 2022-2026 model years
  • i5: 2024-2025 model years
    • 2026 i5 (eDrive40 and xDrive40) after software update in Spring 2026
  • i7: 2023-2026 model years
  • iX: 2022-2025 model years
    • 2026 iX (all versions) after software update in Spring 2026

With the expansion of the companies that gained access in 2025 to the Tesla Supercharger Network, a vast majority of non-Tesla EVs are able to use the charging stalls to gain range in their cars.

So far in 2025, Tesla has enabled Supercharger access to:

  • Audi
  • BMW
  • Genesis
  • Honda
  • Hyundai
  • Jaguar Land Rover
  • Kia
  • Lucid
  • Mercedes-Benz
  • Nissan
  • Polestar
  • Subaru
  • Toyota
  • Volkswagen
  • Volvo

Drivers with BMW EVs who wish to charge at Tesla Superchargers must use an NACS-to-CCS1 adapter. In Q2 2026, BMW plans to release its official adapter, but there are third-party options available in the meantime.

They will also have to use the Tesla App to enable Supercharging access to determine rates and availability. It is a relatively seamless process.

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