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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Block 5 ready for first Return-To-Launch-Site booster landing

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Falcon 9 B1048.2 is vertical at SpaceX’s Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 4 (SLC-4) facilities ahead of the rocket’s second launch, targeted at 07:21 PM PDT, Oct. 7 (02:21 UTC, Oct. 8). A bit less than ten minutes after liftoff, B1048 will attempt a Return-To-Launch-Site (RTLS) landing just ~1400 feet from the launch pad.

Meanwhile, Mr. Steven is ready to depart Port of San Pedro in support of Falcon fairing recovery operations soon after liftoff, the vessel’s fifth attempted catch in ~12 months of active service with SpaceX.

A few hours after the vessel’s four arms and net were fully installed (the first time in more than six weeks), SpaceX technicians performed a series of last-minute tests with a Falcon fairing half placed on his net to verify that its mechanised rigging was working as intended, while also double-checking data connectivity between the fairing and its target (the net). Pre-launch checkouts largely completed, Mr. Steven now has to travel a short 200 miles to reach the region where SpaceX expects Falcon 9’s fairings to be recovered.

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Of Falcons and fairings

It may feel quite different watching in real time, but SpaceX has made a huge amount of progress towards successful and routine fairing recoveries over the course of the last year and a half. Before the company became truly famous (and popular), more than two years (2013-2015) and a dozen distinct attempts were spent patiently learning how to recover Falcon 9 boosters, ranging from the first launch of Falcon 9 V1.1 (CASSIOPE, late 2013) to multiple instances where boosters exploded in spectacular fashions on drone ships Just Read The Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You after SpaceX began true landing attempts.

In fact, the first intact recovery didn’t even take place on a drone ship after years of extensive testing at sea – in December 2015, after separating from its Orbcomm-2 satellite constellation payload, Falcon 9 B1019 became the first booster recovered by SpaceX in one piece, landing almost flawlessly at the company’s just-finished Cape Canaveral landing zone, known as LZ-1. Several months later, SpaceX successfully recovered its first Falcon 9 at sea, landing a booster on OCISLY shortly after launching the CRS-8 Cargo Dragon mission, although several more failures or near-failures followed as recovery technicians and engineers worked through a diverse and unpredictable series of challenges as they arose.

Rocket recovery: it’s not easy

Even in 2018, SpaceX unintentionally expended Falcon Heavy’s center core, demonstrating that even three dozen successful Falcon 9 and Heavy booster recoveries are not necessarily enough to shine light on or predict all possible modes of failure. Around 7:21 PM (PDT) today, barring a scrubbed launch attempt, the already-flown Falcon 9 booster B1048 – refurbished from landing to launch in just ~74 days – will likely launch and land once more, and most of the world wont even blink and eye. In the eyes of those that don’t or haven’t followed SpaceX obsessively, rocket booster recovery and reuse is to some extent already perceived as routine, logical, and inevitable less than three years after the technology’s first true Kitty Hawk moment.

 

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The point of this brief SpaceX history lesson is to emphasize that fairing recovery is an extremely young technology, even for SpaceX. Before Mr. Steven swooped into existence, SpaceX had begun attempting to softly land payload fairings in the ocean around the start of 2017, and Mr. Steven famously returned to Port of San Pedro with an intact (but unreusable) fairing half in March 2018 after successfully launching Earth-imaging satellite PAZ. Comparing historical apples to present-day oranges, it may be safe to assume that fairing recovery’s Orbcomm-2 moment – Mr. Steven’s first successful catch – is already on the horizon.

In the meantime, it never hurts to remind oneself that – vicarious frustrations aside – observers are likely watching history unfold in real-time once again. SpaceX’s SAOCOM-1A launch webcast will begin around 7PM PDT – 15 or 20 minutes prior to launch – and can be found at the link below.


For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!

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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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SpaceX opens up free Starlink service for those impacted by Hurricane Melissa

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(Credit: Starlink | X)

SpaceX is opening up its internet service, Starlink, to those impacted by Hurricane Melissa, as it made landfall in Jamaica and the Bahamas as a Category 5 storm.

Hurricane Melissa is expected to reach wind speeds of over 165 MPH over the next few days as it extends out into the Atlantic Ocean by Thursday and Friday.

Citizens in Jamaica and the Bahamas have been preparing for the storm for the past week, getting necessary goods together and preparing for the massive storm to arrive. It finally did yesterday, and the first images and video of the storm are showing that it could destroy many parts of both countries.

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Starlink is now being opened up for free until the end of November for those impacted by the storm in Jamaica and the Bahamas, SpaceX announced today:

It is a move similar to the one the company made last year as Hurricane Helene made its way through the United States, destroying homes and property across the East Coast. SpaceX offered free service for those impacted by the destruction caused by the storm.

The free Starlink service was available until the end of 2024.

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Elon Musk’s companies have also made similar moves to help out those who are impacted by natural disasters. Tesla has offered Free Supercharging in the past, most notably during the California wildfires.

Tesla and SpaceX’s LA fire relief efforts: Cybertrucks, free Starlink and more

One major advantage of Starlink is that it is available for use in situations like this one, where power might be required to operate things like a modem and router.

Internet access is a crucial part of survival in these situations, especially as it can be the last leg some stand on to get in touch with emergency services or loved ones.

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SpaceX reaches incredible Starlink milestone

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX has reached an incredible milestone with its Starlink program, officially surpassing 10,000 satellites launched into low Earth orbit since starting the program back in 2019.

Last Sunday, October 19, SpaceX launched its 131st and 132nd Falcon 9 missions of 2025, one from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the other from Vandenberg, California.

The 10,000th Starlink satellite was aboard the launch from California, which was Starlink 11-19, and held 28 v2 mini optimized satellites.

The achievement was marked by a satellite tracker developed by Jonathan McDowell.

The first Starlink launch was all the way back on May 23, 2019, as SpaceX launched its first 60 satellites from Cape Canaveral using a Falcon 9 rocket.

Of the over 10,000 satellites in orbit, the tracker says 8,608 are operational, as some are intentionally de-orbited after becoming faulty and destroyed in the atmosphere.

SpaceX has truly done some really incredible things during its development of the Starlink program, including launch coverage in a global setting, bringing along millions of active subscribers that use the service for personal and business use, locking up commercial partnerships, and more.

Starlink currently operates in around 150 countries, territories, and markets and is available at least somewhere on all seven continents.

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Additionally, Starlink has over 5 million subscribers worldwide, and 2.7 million have joined the program over the past year. It has revolutionized internet access on commercial aircraft as well, as several high-profile airlines like Qatar and United, among many others, have already installed Starlink on some of their planes to deliver more stable connectivity for passengers and crew.

SpaceX has the approval to launch 12,000 Starlink satellites from the FAA, but it plans to bring over 30,000 to its constellation, giving anyone the ability to have access to high-speed internet.

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SpaceX posts Starship booster feat that’s so nutty, it doesn’t even look real

The Super Heavy booster’s feat was so impressive that the whole maneuver almost looked like it was AI-generated.

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Credit: SpaceX/X

SpaceX has shared a video of a remarkable feat achieved by Starship’s Super Heavy booster during its 11th flight test.

The Super Heavy booster’s feat was so impressive that the whole maneuver, which was captured on video, almost looked like it was AI-generated.

Super Heavy’s picture perfect hover

As could be seen in the video shared by SpaceX, Starship’s Super Heavy booster, which is nearly 400 feet tall, smoothly returned to Earth and hovered above the Gulf of America for a few seconds before it went for its soft water landing. The booster’s picture-perfect maneuver before splashing down all but capped a near-flawless mission for Starship, which is about to enter its V3 era with Flight 12.

The booster’s balance and stability were so perfect that some users on X joked that the whole thing looked AI-generated. Considering the size of Super Heavy, as well as the fact that the booster was returning from space, the hovering display all but showed that SpaceX is dead serious about keeping its dominant lead in the spaceflight sector.

Starship V2’s curtain call

As noted in a Space.com report, Flight Test 11 achieved every major goal SpaceX had set for the mission, including deploying Starlink mass simulators, relighting Raptor engines in space, and executing a stable reentry for both the Starship Upper Stage and the Super Heavy booster. The feat also marked the second time a Super Heavy booster has been reflown, a milestone in SpaceX’s quest to make the entire Starship system fully reusable.

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Starship’s V2 vehicle will now give way to the upgraded Starship V3, which is designed for faster turnaround and higher payload capacity. The Starship program is expected to pursue even more aggressive targets in the coming months as well, with Elon Musk stating on social media platform X that SpaceX will attempt a tower catch for Starship Upper Stage as early as spring 2026.

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