News
SpaceX wins NASA funds to study a Falcon Heavy-launched Moon lander
NASA has announced a series of awards as part of its 2024 Moon return ambitions, providing up to $45.5M for 11 companies to study lunar landers, spacecraft, and in-space refueling technologies.
Among those selected for studies are SpaceX, Blue Origin, Masten Space, and the Sierra Nevada Corporation, alongside usual suspects like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The chances of NASA actually achieving a crewed return to the surface of the Moon by 2024 are admittedly minuscule. However, with the space agency’s relatively quick three-month turnaround from accepting proposals to awarding studies, those chances of success will at least be able to continue skirting the realm of impossibility for now. In fact, SpaceX believes its Moon lander could be ready for a lunar debut as early as 2023.
Do the OldSpace Limbo!
Almost exactly 90 days (three months) since NASA released its lunar lander request for proposal (RFP), the 11 US companies selected for awards can now begin mature their designs, concepts of operations, and even build prototypes in a select few cases. At least based on the volume of awards and prototypes funded, the bulk of the $45.5M available for these studies unsurprisingly appears to have gone to Boeing and Lockheed. The duo of military-industrial complex heavyweights have maintained a decades-old stranglehold over NASA’s human spaceflight procurement.
In the last 13 years, the companies – combined – have carefully extracted no less than $35B from NASA, all of which has thus far produced a single launch of a half-finished prototype spacecraft (Orion) on a contextually irrelevant rocket (Delta IV Heavy) in 2014. The SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft remain almost perpetually delayed and are unlikely to complete their uncrewed launch debut until 2021, if not later.
SpaceX enters the lunar lander fray
“SpaceX was founded with the goal of helping humanity become a spacefaring civilization. We are excited to extend our long-standing partnership with NASA to help return humans to the Moon, and ultimately to venture beyond.”
– SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell
SpaceX was one of the 11 companies to receive NASA funding for a lunar lander-related design study. By all appearances, the company has been analyzing this potential use-case for some time. What they offer is significantly more complex than what NASA’s press release described as “one descent element study”. First and foremost, however, it must be stressed that these NASA funded studies – particularly those relegated to design, with no prototype builds – are really just concepts on paper. The NASA funding will help motivate companies to at least analyze and flesh out their actual capabilities relative to the task and time frame at hand, but there is no guarantee that more than one or two of the 11 studies will translate into serious hardware contracts.
Regardless of the many qualifications, SpaceX’s proposed descent module (i.e. Moon lander) is undeniably impressive. If SpaceX were to win a development contract, the lander would be based on flight-proven Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon subsystems wherever possible, translating into a vehicle that would have significant flight heritage even before its first launch. That first Moon landing attempt could come as early as 2023 and would utilize the performance of SpaceX’s own Falcon Heavy, currently the most powerful rocket in operation.
No renders have been released at this stage but it’s safe to assume that a SpaceX Moon lander would be somewhat comparable to Blue Origin’s just-announced Blue Moon lander, capable of delivering ~6.5t (14,300 lb) to the lunar surface. Rather than hydrogen and oxygen, SpaceX would instead use either Crew Dragon’s NTO/MMH propulsion or base the lander on Falcon 9’s extremely mature liquid kerosene/oxygen upper stage and Merlin Vacuum (MVac) engine.
Impressively, the SpaceX lander would aim for nearly double Blue Moon’s 6.5t payload capability, delivering as much as 12t (26,500 lb) to the surface of the Moon. That payload could either enable an unprecedentedly large crew capsule/ascent vehicle or permit the delivery of truly massive robotic or cargo payloads. Additionally, SpaceX believes that a descent stage with the aforementioned capabilities could potentially double as an excellent orbital transfer stage, refueling tug, and more. The lander would also serve as a full-up testbed for all the advanced technologies SpaceX needs to enable its goals of sustainable, reliable, and affordable solar system colonization.
Time will tell if NASA is actually serious about upsetting the status quo and getting to the Moon quickly and affordably, or if they will instead fall back on well-worn habits shown to minimize results and maximize cost. The White House recently proposed an additional $1.6B be added to NASA’s FY2020 budget, inexplicably choosing to take those funds from the federal Pell Grant system, which helps more than five million underprivileged Americans afford higher education. Regardless of the sheer political ineptitude involved in the proposed funding increase, even $1.6B annually (the WH proposal is for one year only) would be a pittance in the face of the spectacular inefficiencies of usual contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
The telltale sign of which direction NASA’s lunar ambitions are headed will come when the agency begins to award actual development and hardware production contracts to one or several of the proposals to be studied. Stay tuned!
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Investor's Corner
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Elon Musk says Starship Flight 15 will try to catch the ship itself, a first.
Elon Musk says SpaceX’s next Starship flight will try something nobody has done before, by catching the ship itself. Speaking to roughly 2,000 people at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas on Saturday, Musk said Flight 15 is about four to six weeks away and “probably launches a little bit before Thanksgiving, is my guess.”
That is a slip from earlier reporting, which had pointed to a launch as early as October 19. Musk explained why the date keeps moving. “We’re making a bunch of improvements to the rocket between every flight,” he said, adding that there are often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small changes. This time the list is short, “but some of them take a fair bit of work and we’ve got to go inside the tank to make some of these changes.”
“We’re going to try to catch the ship, which is a super big deal,” Musk said. “If we do so, that’ll be the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket.” SpaceX has already caught the Super Heavy booster with the tower’s mechanical arms, and has talked about catching the ship since late 2025, but the upper stage has never been caught.
Musk also laid out what comes after. “The next big milestone would be to refly both the booster and the ship,” he said, describing a Flight 16 where “all parts of an orbital rocket are reflown.”
The reason SpaceX wants this comes down to cost and cadence. Every Starship ship so far has ended its flight in the ocean, and SpaceX expects most of those water landings to end in fireballs. A ship that returns to Starbase intact can be inspected and flown again. SpaceX’s IPO filing, says Starship V3 is designed to deliver 100 metric tons to orbit in a fully reusable configuration, that SpaceX aims to cut the cost to reach orbit by 99% or more versus the historical average, and that tower catches should allow “multiple launches per day.”
The payoff goes beyond cheaper launches. The next generation Starlink V3 satellites are too large for Falcon 9 and can only fly on Starship, which can carry up to 60 per flight. Flight 14 on September 28 deployed the first 26 of them after Starship reached orbit despite an early engine shutdown, as Teslarati reported. Musk blamed engine computer software, and said the heat shield “was extremely robust,” which he claimed in August had solved Starship’s biggest challenge.
NASA’s Moon plans depend on the same capability. NASA’s inspector general has described a lander mission that needs a propellant depot in low Earth orbit and more than 10 tanker flights, with SpaceX targeting one tanker launch every six days. That schedule only works if ships and boosters come back fast and fly again. Also, ship to ship propellant transfer has not been attempted yet.
One interesting hurdle yet to be explored is bringing the ship back to the launch site, with reentry over land, which will undoubtedly come with a lot of aviation safety reviews.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
News
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.
Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.
One month after launch, we’ve scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days https://t.co/EagJy2JAsm
— Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 10, 2026
Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.
RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.
Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
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