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SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket wins fourth Moon lander launch contract

SpaceX has now won four firm Moon lander launch contracts in just a few years. (Masten Space)

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SpaceX continues to dominate the global commercial launch market in Earth orbit and beyond and has secured its fourth Moon lander launch contract.

Awarded by Masten Space Systems, SpaceX’s newest launch contract will see it send the first XL-1 Moon lander on its way to the lunar South Pole no earlier than (NET) 2022. The mission was funded by NASA under the agency’s new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative in April 2020, awarding Masten ~$76 million to design, build, launch, and land its XL-1 spacecraft on the Moon.

Masten has been developing XL-1 on and off with NASA for at least five years, resulting in a relatively mature design but very little hardware built. Already, based on the lone render released alongside NASA’s contract award, Masten has substantially changed the structural layout of XL-1, though it’s safe to assume that most of its critical systems remain the same.

SpaceX has won four firm Moon lander launch contracts in just a few years. (Richard Angle)

As of now, SpaceX has already successfully launched Israel’s Beresheet commercial lunar lander in February 2019, although the spacecraft sadly failed just a few minutes before touchdown. In May 2019, NASA announced its first three CLPS Moon lander contracts, one of which (Orbit Beyond) had to back out soon after. Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines – the two remaining providers – ultimately awarded their respective launch contracts to ULA and SpaceX.

Independent of NASA, SpaceX has multiple Falcon 9 launch contracts on hand for lunar landers to be built by Japanese startup iSpace and launched as soon as 2022 and 2023. Technically, SpaceX even won a fifth Moon lander launch contract from Planetary Transportation Systems (PTS) but the German company went bankrupt in 2019 and its Alina lander appears to be in limbo.

Beresheet was just a few hundred meters per second shy of a successful Moon landing after successfully entering lunar orbit and beginning the landing process. (SpaceIL)
From left to right: Astrobotic’s Peregrine, Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C, and OrbitBeyond’s Z-01. SpaceX won launch contracts for two of them before OrbitBeyond was forced to exit the program. (NASA)
SpaceX could launch iSpace’s proposed Hakuto-R lander and rover as early as 2022. (iSpace).
A 2019 iteration of the XL-1 Moon lander. (Masten Space)

Compared to most other lunar landers SpaceX is scheduled to launch, Masten’s XL-1 is quite large, weighing 675 kg (~1500 lb) dry and 2675 kg (~5900 lb) fully fueled. It will be able to deliver up to 100 kg (220 lb) of useful payload to the surface of the Moon and support that equipment with power and communications for a full lunar day (~12 days). Of the eight experiments NASA plans to include on Masten’s first Moon mission, a robotic arm derived from spare Mars rover parts and a small rover designed to test fast, autonomous Moon roving.

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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 Full Self-Driving expands to another European country

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is heading to Czechia after the Czech Ministry of Transport recognised the Dutch RDW’s provisional type approval, making the country the seventh EU member state to clear the system for public roads. Tesla Europe announced on 21 September 2026 that “FSD Supervised is now approved in Czechia” and that rollout “will begin soon.”

The decision marks a notable reversal. Earlier in 2026, Prague had declined to automatically recognise the Netherlands’ April approval, citing concerns over speed-limit compliance, traffic-sign recognition and driver-attention monitoring, and arguing that a coordinated EU approach was preferable. Officials said months of expert review, talks with Tesla and other member states, and real-world data from countries already using the system resolved those issues.

“Safety remains the top priority,” the ministry stated.

FSD Supervised remains a Level 2 driver-assistance system: the driver must stay engaged and is legally responsible. Eligible vehicles need AI4, the company’s most up-to-date hardware version. Tesla is expected to push the feature over the air in the coming days, following the pattern seen after earlier national approvals.

Europe’s rollout began when Dutch regulator RDW issued a provisional EU type approval on 10 April 2026 after extensive testing. Mutual recognition then produced a rapid cascade: Lithuania (20 May), Estonia (29 May), Denmark (9 June), Belgium (10 June) and Slovenia (7 September). Czechia now completes that list of seven.

The approvals cover only a modest share of the EU population, but they add political weight ahead of a 6 October vote by the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles. A qualified majority, at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the EU population, could open the remaining markets, including large ones such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain that have so far preferred to wait for a bloc-wide decision.

For Czech Tesla owners, the immediate prize is access to the same supervised highway and city driving already available in the other six countries. For Tesla, each new market generates additional European driving data and strengthens the case that FSD Supervised can operate safely under the continent’s varied road rules. The Czech approval is therefore both a local milestone and another incremental step toward a wider European launch.

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Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges

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Credit: @BLKMDL3/Twitter

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has established a Temporary Flight Restriction over SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket development and test facility, a move widely viewed as preparation for Tesla’s October 1 Roadster reveal. The restriction took effect September 18 and runs through October 2.

NOTAM FDC 6/3825 covers a 1.5-nautical-mile radius around the site near Waco and extends from the surface to 10,000 feet above ground level. The FAA cited hazards under 14 CFR 91.137(a)(3) and barred aircraft and drones from the zone. Tesla’s invitation to reservation holders already placed the event in Waco, about 20 minutes from McGregor, making the timing and location more than coincidental.

What stands out is the altitude. Typical recent TFRs at McGregor for engine static fires and component tests have used far lower ceilings, often around 2,000 feet. Raising the limit to 10,000 feet is unusually high even compared with some Starbase restrictions and signals operations that go beyond a standard ground-level engine test.

That extra airspace has fueled speculation about the long-promised SpaceX Package for the Roadster. Elon Musk has described cold-gas thrusters that could deliver sub-one-second 0-60 times and, more dramatically, brief lift-off. Reports earlier this year indicated Tesla planned a remote-controlled demonstration at McGregor in which the car would leave the ground with no one inside; spectators kept hundreds of yards away because of the noise.

The 10,000-foot envelope would give operators a large safety buffer even if the vehicle only hovers a short distance.

Tesla has not confirmed a flight demo. The company has only used the phrase “Go for launch” and posted a teaser image of the car on what looks like a launch pad. The TFR itself mentions only hazards. Still, closing airspace this high and this close to the reveal date strongly suggests the event will include more than a static display.

Whether the Roadster actually hovers on October 1 remains to be seen. What is certain is that the FAA has cleared a large vertical slice of Texas sky for whatever Tesla and SpaceX intend to show. Reservation holders heading to Waco will be among the first to find out if the car can do more than drive.

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Elon Musk drops a surprise update on Boring Company’s next big dig

Musk says Boring Company could shrink the Austin to San Antonio drive to just minutes.

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Elon Musk says The Boring Company is working on what he called “a simple, precursor Hyperloop” tunnel connecting Austin and San Antonio, targeting speeds above 200 mph and cutting a drive that can take up to two and a half hours down to a consistent under 30 minutes. Musk posted the idea on X Sunday, in a reply to a repost of an AI generated video imagining a science fiction future with human colonies on other worlds, which he shared with the line “This is the future we shall bring into being.”


The Boring Company’s own account picked up the idea in the same thread, adding a detail about how the trip would actually work: “Because Loop/Hyperloop is express (i.e. no intermediate stops), one could travel from an Austin parking lot to a favorite San Antonio restaurant in about 30 minutes. As long as they both have Loop stations.” That framing ties the proposed intercity link to the same station model the company already runs in Las Vegas, where riders enter the tunnel network through small, garage style stops rather than one central terminal.

This is not the company’s first run at the Austin to San Antonio corridor. Boring Company floated tunnels between the two cities as far back as 2021, and later competed for a separate San Antonio Loop project tied to the airport before that specific bid stalled. Pitches for tunnels in Chicago, Los Angeles, and a New York to Washington corridor have followed a similar pattern of big announcement without a shovel in the ground.

What is different this time is the balance sheet, especially since The Boring Company closed a 3 billion dollar funding round led by investors in the United Arab Emirates earlier this month at a valuation near 23 billion dollars, giving the tunneling company more capital to chase speculative projects than it had during its earlier Texas pitches. The company is also mid-build on two other intercity systems it has actually broken ground on, inc;luding a Nashville tunnel linking downtown to the airport, where a second boring machine finished commissioning in June, and its Las Vegas network, where the station count keeps climbing on paper faster than tunnels get dug.

That gap between announcement and execution is the reason to treat Sunday’s post as an opening bid rather than a project. A tunnel spanning roughly 80 miles between two metro areas, running at speeds Boring Company has not demonstrated over any real distance, would dwarf anything the company has built. For now, the Austin to San Antonio Hyperloop exists as a caption under an AI generated space video.

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