SpaceX
SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 booster preps for next launch as fairing fragments surface
As part of a recent 10-year anniversary celebration of SpaceX’s first successful launch to reach orbit, Falcon 9 B1047 was spotted undergoing inspections and refurbishment after the Block 5 booster’s launch debut, placing the 7-ton Telstar 19V communications satellite in orbit on July 22nd.
Meanwhile, a bit north of B1047’s cozy Cape Canaveral refurbishment hangar, battered fragments of a Falcon 9 payload fairing half – part of the very same Telstar 19V mission – were discovered by a fisherman off the coast of South Carolina.
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A tale of two halves
Around nine minutes after lifting off from SpaceX’s LC-40 pad, Falcon 9 B1047 gracefully landed on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), followed soon after by confirmation of Falcon 9 Block 5’s second launch success. Perhaps a tad toasty after what one might call a ‘medium-well’ reentry, the upgraded booster was otherwise perfectly intact. A minute after B1047 separated from Falcon 9’s upper stage and Telstar 19V payload, the fairing – tasked with protecting the satellite from the stresses of high-speed atmospheric flight – was jettisoned from the second stage, splitting into two halves and falling away from the rocket in order to save precious mass on S2’s push towards orbit.
Falcon 9’s first stage separates from the upper stage for quite different reasons, cued quite literally by its propellant tanks essentially reaching “empty” – albeit an “empty” that typically includes some fumes for the booster’s safe recovery. The payload fairing, on the other hand, is detached from the second stage the moment that Falcon rises above a particular point in Earth’s atmosphere, only exposing its sensitive satellite(s) to the elements once in near-vacuum conditions. Ultimately, fairing halves separate from Falcon 9 at velocities significantly higher than that of the booster but are subjected to far more forgiving reentry conditions, requiring just a minimal of thermal protection to make it to (or just above…) the ground/ocean unscathed.
Detailed images of GO Pursuit returning to Port Canaveral this afternoon with a partial fairing half following Sunday’s launch of Falcon 9 and Telstar 19V. Damage is no surprise, as these east coast fairings — for now — land in the water. pic.twitter.com/AxkwUQH67b
— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) July 24, 2018
SpaceX recently began seriously attempting to recover Falcon 9 payload fairings, albeit almost exclusively during West Coast launches in order to let Mr. Steven attempt to catch the parasailing halves in the Pacific Ocean. Thus far, SpaceX engineers and technicians have not yet solved the challenging problems, although fairing halves have reportedly landed as few as 50 meters from Mr. Steven’s grasp and at least five have been recovered intact after landing gently on the ocean surface. On the East Coast, Falcon fairings are not nearly as lucky, typically alternating between smashing directly into the ocean and landing gently upon it, depending SpaceX’s need for experimental recovery data.
By all appearances, B1047’s fairing halves both plummeted – unarrested – into the Atlantic, shattering into pieces of fragile carbon fiber-aluminum honeycomb. Thanks to the extremely lightweight nature of their composition, even waterlogged fairing fragments tend to float almost indefinitely, winding up in far-flung places many hundreds or thousands of miles from the point of impact. A particularly large fairing fragment from Telstar 19V clearly survived its greater halve’s violent ends, floating its way 600-800 miles northwest to the coast of South Carolina. After taking photos, the fisherman rather poetically let it float away, permitting it several more weeks of freedom before washing up on some shoreline and making its way onto eBay.
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- A Falcon 9 fairing fragment was discovered floating off the coast of South Carolina two months after launching with Telstar 19V. (TheHullTruth /u/gofish)
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- Telstar 19V’s Falcon fairing artwork, a dead-ringer for the fairing flotsam. (SpaceX)
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- B1047 returned safe and sound to Pad 39A for refurbishment less than a week after launching and landing. (Instagram /u/d_lo_ags)
Ultimately, SpaceX engineers and technicians will continue to work towards successful, reliable, and routine fairing recoveries, inevitably experiencing many failures before a functional solution is found and optimized, just like the teams that brought Falcon 9 first stage recovery from blueprint to reality. In the meantime, serendipitous events like this will continue to serve as both stark reminders of the unforgiving hurdles along the path to orbital-class rocket hardware recovery and the undeniable fact that it already can and has been done before.
News
SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
Falcon Heavy launched its first NRO mission while SpaceX landed four boosters in one day.
SpaceX closed out one of its busiest days ever with a midnight Falcon Heavy launch from Florida, and the rocket’s two side boosters came home to finish off a landing record the company had never set before.
Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. ET Thursday carrying NROL-97, a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. It was the first time the NRO has flown on Falcon Heavy after 22 missions on Falcon 9, and the first NRO mission bought through the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 contract awarded in 2025, according to Spaceflight Now.
Falcon Heavy lifts off from pad 39A in Florida for the 14th time! pic.twitter.com/uuZLKNTdD7
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
Roughly eight minutes after liftoff, side boosters B1104 and B1072 touched down at Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, setting off double sonic booms across Brevard County. B1104 was flying for the second time and B1072 for the fourth. Both last flew on August 30 on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, making NROL-97 the quickest turnaround between Falcon Heavy missions to date. The brand new center core, B1106, was expended in the Atlantic so the payload could reach its high energy orbit, and SpaceX’s mission page noted the fairing had previously flown on the NROL-95 mission in July.
The two landings capped a record for SpaceX. Earlier Thursday, Falcon 9 booster B1101 returned to Landing Zone 40 after sending the Crew-13 astronauts to the International Space Station, and another Falcon 9 launched the Transporter-18 rideshare with 130 payloads from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Spaceflight Now reported it was the first time SpaceX has landed four boosters in a single day, wrapping up the triple header Teslarati previewed on Wednesday.
Falcon Heavy’s side boosters land on LZ-1 and LZ-2 pic.twitter.com/dBPcNeggFx
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
The mission also brought Landing Zone 1 back for what may be its final landing. SpaceX first landed an orbital class booster there in December 2015, but its lease on the former Launch Complex 13 site ended in 2025 as the company moved Florida landings to new pads at its own launch complexes. With LZ-40 already holding the Crew-13 booster, SpaceX brought LZ-1 back into service for one more night. Launch tracker Next Spaceflight listed NROL-97 as the final expected landing at the site.
NROL-97 adds to a fast growing stack of national security work for SpaceX. The company has flown four Space Force missions from Vandenberg since mid August, several believed to carry Starshield satellites, pushing its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion. Elon Musk was also named this week to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
The Florida doubleheader stood out for another reason. The Space Coast saw only one launch in all of September as SpaceX shifts more of its East Coast infrastructure toward Starship, which reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 just three days earlier.
Elon Musk
SpaceX nails “Lucky 13” astronaut launch, leaning into Tesla tradition and superstition
SpaceX launched Crew-13 astronauts to the ISS Thursday, setting up a record fast Dragon docking.
SpaceX launched NASA’s Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station on Thursday morning, getting four astronauts to orbit despite a forecast of thunderstorms and gusty winds that had threatened to push the flight to Friday.
Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:10 a.m. ET carrying Dragon Grace, NASA confirmed. On board are NASA commander Jessica Watkins, NASA pilot Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. The first stage booster, B1101, landed at Landing Zone 40 beside the pad on its third flight after previously supporting Crew-12 and a Starlink mission.
Liftoff of Crew-13! pic.twitter.com/vteT0DXMTh
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 1, 2026
It was the first spaceflight for Delaney, Kutryk and Teteryatnikov. Watkins, who flew on Crew-4 in 2022, became the first NASA astronaut to launch aboard a Crew Dragon twice.
Before launch, the crew rode to the pad in Teslas, a tradition on NASA’s SpaceX crew flights since 2020. This time the cars carried specialty plates reading “Lucky 13.” Watkins said the mission patch leans into the number on purpose, as a nod to Apollo 13 and the resilience of that crew.
Grace is now on a short trip to the station. Docking at the forward port of the Harmony module is scheduled for about 7 p.m. ET, roughly 7 hours and 50 minutes after liftoff, which Space.com notes would be the fastest Crew Dragon transit to the ISS yet. Most Dragon flights take around 15 to 24 hours to catch the station. Hatch opening is planned for 8:25 p.m. ET.
The launch came more than two weeks later than originally planned. An oxidizer leak was found in Grace’s propulsion system in August, and NASA and SpaceX added time for tests. That pushed back the return of Crew-12, which has been aboard the station since February and is now set to splash down off Southern California next week. Crew-13 is expected to stay about six months.
SpaceX rescue mission for stranded ISS astronauts nears end — Here’s when they’ll return home
SpaceX already holds NASA orders for crew rotations through Crew-17, while Boeing is preparing an uncrewed Starliner flight to the station as early as December.
Crew-13 was only the first of three SpaceX launches planned for Thursday, as Teslarati previewed on Wednesday. A Falcon 9 launched its Transporter-18 mission from California today, where Google will be launching its first orbital artificial intelligence (AI) test satellite. Meanwhile, Falcon Heavy is set to launch the classified NROL-97 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office from Launch Complex 39A at 11:53 p.m. ET. Its two side boosters will return to Landing Zones 1 and 2, which means Central Florida could hear up to three sonic booms in a single day. The busy stretch follows Starship’s Flight 14 on Monday, which reached orbit for the first time.
Elon Musk
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Hegseth named Elon Musk to help lead Project Meridian, a Pentagon study of future warfare.
Elon Musk has a new role in the Trump administration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on war.gov Wednesday that Musk will help lead Project Meridian, a new Pentagon study meant to identify the weapons and technologies the U.S. military will need to fight wars decades from now.
Hegseth unveiled the project during his State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. Musk will direct the effort alongside Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, working under Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael. All three men were in attendance, and Hegseth said their first meeting would take place directly after the speech inside a secure compartmented facility, according to The Hill.
Hegseth said the group “will be focused on discovering, developing, and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes, without any creative limitations or restrictions, on any future battlefield, from under the Earth to beyond the Moon.” He added that Meridian is not meant to produce new strategy or policy documents.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
A memo released after the announcement gives Michael until January 28, 2027, to deliver findings, a window of 120 days. It names artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology as the fields expected to change how wars are fought. The results will come as a public report with a classified annex. The memo says the study will run through a partner organization it does not name, and it does not mention Musk directly. His role comes from Hegseth’s speech and a Pentagon press release.’
Musk had not commented publicly on the appointment as of Wednesday evening. This will be Musk’s first official advisory role in the administration since he left DOGE last year.
The mandate overlaps heavily with Musk’s companies. SpaceX is one of the Pentagon’s largest contractors, with 2026 defense awards topping $8 billion, much of it tied to launches and a suspected Starshield buildout out of Vandenberg. The Pentagon’s release says Meridian will examine domains “from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier,” which maps onto The Boring Company’s tunneling and Starship’s lunar plans. Tesla’s work on autonomy and Optimus falls within the fields the memo lists.
Meridian was one of six initiatives Hegseth announced Wednesday. Another is a new Autonomous Warfare Command, which the department wants operating as a four-star combatant command by October 1, 2027.
The news lands a day before SpaceX is scheduled to fly a classified National Reconnaissance Office payload on Falcon Heavy, one of three launches the company has planned for Thursday.
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SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
