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SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 booster preps for next launch as fairing fragments surface

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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.

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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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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.

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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Cybertruck

Tesla Cybertruck fleet takes over at SpaceX’s Starbase

Interestingly, the Cybertruck uses the same exterior, a stainless steel alloy, as SpaceX rockets. This synergy between the two companies and their very different products shows a very unified mentality between Musk companies.

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Credit: @derek1ee | X

Tesla Cybertrucks have taken over at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas, as hundreds of the all-electric pickup trucks were spotted late last week rounding out a massive fleet of vehicles.

The Cybertruck fleet is geared toward replacing gas vehicles that are used at Starbase for everyday operations. The only surprise about this is that it was not done sooner:

Deliveries have been going on for a few weeks, as Cybertrucks have made their way across the state of Texas from Austin to Starbase so they could be included in SpaceX’s fleet of vehicles at the facility.

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Interestingly, the Cybertruck uses the same exterior, a stainless steel alloy, as SpaceX rockets. This synergy between the two companies and their very different products shows a very unified mentality between Musk companies.

However, there are some other perspectives to consider as SpaceX is utilizing such a massive fleet of Cybertrucks. Some media outlets (unsurprisingly) are seeing this as a move of weakness by both Tesla and SpaceX, as the aerospace company is, in a sense, “bailing out” lagging sales for the all-electric pickup.

It’s no secret that Tesla has struggled with the Cybertruck this year, and deliveries have been underwhelming in the sense that the company was anticipating between 1 million and 2 million orders for the vehicle before it was widely produced.

A lot of things changed with the Cybertruck between its 2019 unveiling and 2023 initial deliveries, most notably, price.

The price of the Cybertruck swelled significantly and priced out many of those who had pre-ordered it. Some have weighed the option of whether this purchase was a way to get rid of sitting inventory.

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However, it seems more logical to consider the fact that SpaceX was likely always going to transition to Teslas for its fleet, especially at Starship, at some point.

It doesn’t seem out of the question that one Musk company would utilize another Musk company’s products, especially considering the Cybertruck has been teased as the vehicle that would be present on Mars.

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SpaceX successfully launches 100th Starlink mission of 2025

With 100 Starlink missions completed for 2025, space enthusiasts have noted that SpaceX has successfully launched 2,554 Starlink satellites so far this year.

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(Credit: Starlink)

SpaceX achieved its 100th Starlink mission of the year on Friday, October 31, marking another milestone for 2025. 

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink broadband satellites successfully lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 4:41 p.m. ET, carrying another 28 Starlink satellites to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

Falcon 9 booster’s 29th flight

Roughly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage touched down on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean. This marked the booster’s 29th flight, which is approaching SpaceX’s reuse record of 31 missions.

This latest mission adds to SpaceX’s impressive 138 Falcon 9 launches in 2025, 99 of which were dedicated to Starlink, according to Space.com. The company’s focus on reusing boosters has enabled this breakneck pace, with multiple launches each week supporting both Starlink’s expansion and external customers.

Starlink’s network continues massive global expansion

Starlink remains the largest active satellite constellation in history, with more than 10,000 satellites launched, nearly 8,800 of which are currently active. SpaceX recently achieved Starlink’s 10,000-satellite milestone. With 100 Starlink missions completed for 2025, space enthusiasts have noted that SpaceX has successfully launched 2,554 Starlink satellites so far this year.

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Starlink, which provides high-speed, low-latency internet connectivity even to the world’s most remote areas, has been proven to be life-changing technology for people across the globe. The service is currently operational in about 150 countries, and it currently has over 5 million subscribers worldwide. From this number, 2.7 million joined over the past year.

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SpaceX checks off 49 lunar lander milestones in push toward Artemis III

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX has revealed that it has completed 49 major milestones for NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program, marking significant progress in the development of the Starship lunar lander that will deliver astronauts to the Moon. 

The updates were detailed in SpaceX’s new blog post To the Moon and Beyond, which was recently posted on the private space company’s official website.

As noted by SpaceX, the 49 milestones that were completed by its HLS team were “tied to developing the subsystems, infrastructure, and operations” needed to safely land humans back into the lunar surface. SpaceX noted that it has only received funding on contractual milestones that have been successfully completed, the vast majority of which have been achieved on time or ahead of schedule.

Following are highlights of SpaceX’s completed milestones, as per the company’s post. 

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  • Lunar environmental control and life support and thermal control system demonstrations, using a full-scale cabin module inhabited by multiple people to test the capability to inject oxygen and nitrogen into the cabin environment and accurately manage air distribution and sanitation, along with humidity and thermal control. The test series also measured the acoustic environments inside the cabin
  • Docking adapter qualification of the docking system that will link Starship and Orion in space, an androgynous SpaceX docking system capable of serving as the active system or passive system and based on the flight-proven Dragon 2 active docking system
  • Landing leg drop test of a full-scale article at flight energies onto simulated lunar regolith to verify system performance and to study foot-to-regolith interaction
  • Raptor lunar landing throttle test demonstrating a representative thrust profile that would allow Starship to land on the lunar surface
  • Micrometeoroid and orbital debris testing of shielding, insulation, and window panels, analyzing different material stackups that will be used to protect Starship from impact hazards and harsh thermal conditions
  • Landing software, sensor, and radar demonstrations testing navigation and sensing hardware and software that will be used by Starship to locate and safely descend to a precise landing site on the Moon
  • Software architecture review to define the schematic of major vehicle control processes, what physical computers they will run on, and software functions for critical systems like fault detection, caution and warning alerts, and command and telemetry control
  • Raptor cold start demonstrations using both sea-level and vacuum-optimized Raptor engines that are pre-chilled prior to startup to simulate the thermal conditions experienced after an extended time in space
  • Integrated lunar mission operations plan review, covering how SpaceX and NASA will conduct integrated operations, develop flight rules and crew procedures, and the high-level mission operation plan
  • Depot power module demonstration, testing prototype electrical power generation and distribution systems planned to be used on the propellant depot variant of Starship
  • Ground segment and radio frequency (RF) communications demonstration, testing the capability to send and receive RF communications between a flight-equivalent ground station and a flight-equivalent vehicle RF system
  • Elevator and airlock demonstration, which was conducted in concert with Axiom to utilize flight-representative pressurized EVA suits, to practice full operation of the crew elevator which will be used to transfer crew and cargo between Starship and the lunar surface
  • Medical system demonstration covering the crew medical system on Starship and the telemedicine capability between the ground and crew
  • Hardware in the loop testbed activation for the propellant transfer flight test which uses a testbed with flight representative hardware to run simulations for the upcoming propellant transfer flight test

Ultimately, SpaceX’s message is clear. With its plans for a simplified architecture, the timeframe of the first crewed lunar landing of the current century could happen sooner than expected.

Musk definitely seems determined to prove skeptics wrong, with the CEO declaring on X that Starship will be the vehicle that would pave the way for the buildout of a base on the Moon. “Starship will build Moonbase Alpha,” Musk wrote.

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