News
Weekly Space Recap: August 21 – August 27
Here are some of the stories you may have missed in the past week. The fourth week of August 2023 featured SpaceX hitting a Starlink milestone, India landing on the Moon, Rocket Lab moving forward with reusability, and more Starship testing.
SpaceX launches 100th dedicated Starlink mission – Starlink Group 7-1 launched from California and deployed 21 V2 mini-satellites into orbit following a short delay caused by Hurricane Hilary. This mission also featured the 15th flight of Booster 1061.
India lands Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon – India became the 4th country to successfully land on the Moon and landed the closest to the Southern pole of any country. After landing, The Pragyan rover was deployed and has begun roaming the surface of the Moon conducting experiments, and the Vikram lander has also begun its own set of experiments during the ~12-day mission.
Beyond Borders, Across Moonscapes:
India’s Majesty knows no bounds!.Once more, co-traveller Pragyan captures Vikram in a Snap!
This iconic snap was taken today around 11 am IST from about 15 m.
The data from the NavCams is processed by SAC/ISRO, Ahmedabad. pic.twitter.com/n0yvXenfdm
— ISRO (@isro) August 30, 2023
-
-
Rocket Lab launches 40th mission – After issues on the original Electron assigned to this mission, Rocket Lab switched it out for a booster intended for recovery, and it featured the reuse of a Rutherford engine. CEO Peter Beck said the first stage and re-used engine performed perfectly, and the booster was recovered from the ocean for analysis as the company moves closer to reusing the entire first-stage rocket.
Starship performs 2nd static fire test – After a trip to the production site to add a hot stage ring, Booster 9 rolled back to the launch site for a series of tests culminating in a static fire. SpaceX confirmed all 33 engines ignited, but 2 shut down early during the ~5-second test fire. This is an improvement over the last static fire, which shut down early. Elon Musk has said they expect the next Starship test flight to happen “soon.”
Crew 7 launches and docks to the ISS – Crew 7 successfully launched from LC-39A on August 26th, and after a day of catching up to the Space Station, Crew Dragon Endurance autonomously docked. Crew 7 will now spend the next 6 months aboard the ISS, and sometime next week, Crew 6 will make its return to Earth.
Crew 7 continuing to orbit while the Falcon 9 first stage performs a boostback burn (Credit: Richard Angle)
5,000th Starlink launched into space – 22 V2 mini Starlinks launched from LC-40 in Florida the evening of the 26th, hours after the Crew 7 launch. This mission brought the total number of Starlink satellites launched to 5,005. This flight featured the 3rd flight, Booster 1081, which successfully landed on the droneship. However, that booster has still not arrived back in Port Canaveral, the port is closed due to high winds from Hurricane Idalia passing to the North.
ULA readies for the first Atlas V launch of the year – The Atlas V was rolled to the LC-41 in Florida and prepped for launch, but due to Hurricane Idalia, ULA rolled the Atlas V back to the Vertical Integration Facility to keep the rocket and secretive NRO payload safe until the storm passes. ULA will confirm a new launch date soon.
What do you think of last week’s news? Rocket Lab made big strides for reusability, India became the 4th country to soft-land on the Moon, and as always, SpaceX was non-stop with Starship testing and Falcon 9 launches!
Thanks for reading the Weekly Space Recap!
-
Questions or comments? Shoot me an email at rangle@teslarati.com, or Tweet me @RDAnglePhoto.
Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.
In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.
10 million vehicles produced globally.
Congrats to all Tesla teams! pic.twitter.com/JkcraR63bs— Tesla Manufacturing (@gigafactories) July 30, 2026
Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.
The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.
Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.
-
This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.
Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.
Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
-
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.
SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.
The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.
Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean
Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.
We’re sending a ship out to recover Starship https://t.co/fUqUZTITO9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2026
-
This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.
Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims
Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.
The ship landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms https://t.co/6nbNrRfX9P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.
It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.
-
Tesla just built it 10 millionth car
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
