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SpaceX Starlink Gen2 mission marks Falcon 9 rocket’s 200th successful launch
A day and a half after its 200th launch overall, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has successfully launched for the 200th time.
Falcon 9 has only suffered two mission-related failures in flight: one partial failure in 2012 and a catastrophic failure in 2015. Falcon 9’s 2015 failure entirely destroyed the rocket and its cargo-carrying Dragon spacecraft before they reached orbit. Its 2012 failure only doomed a secondary Orbcomm satellite payload, while the primary mission – a Cargo Dragon supply delivery for NASA – was technically successful.
Excluding partial failures, Starlink 5-3 was SpaceX’s 200th successful Falcon 9 launch since the rocket debuted in June 2010. Indicative of the company’s aggressive launch cadence as of late, Falcon 9 completed its 200th launch overall (199th success) less than two days prior, on January 31st.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
Starlink 5-3 was SpaceX’s third launch for its Starlink Gen2 constellation, though the mission carried 53 ordinary Starlink V1.5 satellites. Oddly, the Starlink 5-2 mission carried 56 Starlink V1.5 satellites and set a new record for the heaviest SpaceX and Falcon 9 payload on January 26th. Just a few weeks prior, Falcon 9’s Starlink 5-1 launch carried 54 satellites – a curious amount of variability for three missions launching the same type of satellite to similar orbits.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, perhaps the single most important upgrade meant for SpaceX’s Starlink Gen2 constellation was a move to larger V2.0 satellites with almost a magnitude more usable bandwidth. But full-size Starlink V2.0 satellites can only be efficiently launched on SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket, which is likely at least 6-12 months away from its first satellite launch. SpaceX also told the FCC that it was building a mid-sized Starlink V2.0 satellite that could be launched on its existing Falcon rockets, but those compromised satellites have yet to appear.
Instead, SpaceX is launching Starlink V1.5 satellites under its Gen2 constellation license, which currently allows the company to launch and operate 7,500 of the almost 30,000 satellites it requested permission for. SpaceX’s Starlink Gen1 constellation is still ~1100 satellites away from completion. One possible explanation is that nearly all of the missing Gen1 satellites are headed to polar or semi-polar Earth orbits. Those polar satellites will spend far more time over regions of Earth with few to no Starlink customers, making them less capital-efficient than their mid-latitude siblings.
In other words, polar Starlink satellites – while necessary to ensure truly global coverage – effectively add less capacity to SpaceX’s network than they would if launched to midlatitude orbits. That appears to be exactly what SpaceX is currently doing with Starlink Gen2. The mid-latitude ‘shells’ of its Gen1 constellation are close to full, so the company is launching Starlink V1.5 satellites under its Gen2 license to increase the capacity of the overall network as quickly as possible.
Eventually, SpaceX will almost certainly replace those smaller, less capable V1.5 satellites with V2.0 satellites. In the near term, though, SpaceX has concluded that an inefficient gap-filler is better than waiting for a more optimal solution. It should not take long for the impact of Gen2 launches to be felt. Once the 163 ‘Gen2’ satellites launched in the last five weeks reach operational orbits, they will increase Starlink’s mid-latitude capacity by more than 5%.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s X goes down as users report major outage Friday morning
Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.
Elon Musk’s X experienced an outage Friday morning, leaving large numbers of users unable to access the social media platform.
Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.
Downdetector reports
Users attempting to open X were met with messages such as “Something went wrong. Try reloading,” often followed by an endless spinning icon that prevented access, according to a report from Variety. Downdetector data showed that reports of problems surged rapidly throughout the morning.
As of 10:52 a.m. ET, more than 100,000 users had reported issues with X. The data indicated that 56% of complaints were tied to the mobile app, while 33% were related to the website and roughly 10% cited server connection problems. The disruption appeared to begin around 10:10 a.m. ET, briefly eased around 10:35 a.m., and then returned minutes later.
Previous disruptions
Friday’s outage was not an isolated incident. X has experienced multiple high-profile service interruptions over the past two years. In November, tens of thousands of users reported widespread errors, including “Internal server error / Error code 500” messages. Cloudflare-related error messages were also reported.
In March 2025, the platform endured several brief outages spanning roughly 45 minutes, with more than 21,000 reports in the U.S. and 10,800 in the U.K., according to Downdetector. Earlier disruptions included an outage in August 2024 and impairments to key platform features in July 2023.
News
Tesla wins top loyalty and conquest honors in S&P Global Mobility 2025 awards
The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.
Tesla emerged as one of the standout winners in the 2025 S&P Global Mobility Automotive Loyalty Awards, capturing top honors for customer retention and market conquest.
The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.
Tesla claims loyalty crown
According to S&P Global Mobility, Tesla secured its 2025 “Overall Loyalty to Make” award following a late-year shift in consumer buying patterns. This marked the fourth consecutive year Tesla has received the honor. S&P Global Mobility’s annual analysis reviewed 13.6 million new retail vehicle registrations in the U.S. from October 2024 through September 2025, as noted in a press release.
In addition to overall loyalty, Tesla also earned the “Highest Conquest Percentage” award for the sixth consecutive year, highlighting the company’s continued ability to attract customers away from competing brands. This achievement is particularly notable given Tesla’s relatively small vehicle lineup, which is largely dominated by just two models: the Model 3 and Model Y.
Ethnic market strength and conquest
Tesla also captured top honors for “Ethnic Market Loyalty to Make,” a category that highlighted especially strong retention among Asian and Hispanic households. According to the analysis, Tesla achieved loyalty rates of 63.6% among Asian households and 61.9% among Hispanic households. These figures exceeded national averages.
S&P Global Mobility executives noted that loyalty margins across categories were exceptionally narrow in 2025, underscoring the significance of Tesla’s wins in an increasingly competitive market. Joe LaFeir, President of Mobility Business Solutions at S&P Global Mobility, shared his perspective on this year’s results.
“For 30 years, this analysis has provided a fact-based measure of brand health, and this year’s results are particularly telling. The data shows the market is not rewarding just one type of strategy. Instead, we see sustained, high-level performance from manufacturers with broad portfolios. In the current market, retaining customers remains a critical performance indicator for the industry,” LaFeir said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft is heading to jury trial
The ruling keeps alive claims that OpenAI misled the Tesla CEO about its charitable purpose while accepting billions of dollars in funding.
OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft will face a jury trial this spring after a federal judge rejected their efforts to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit, which accuses the artificial intelligence startup of abandoning its original nonprofit mission. The ruling keeps alive claims that OpenAI misled the Tesla CEO about its charitable purpose while accepting billions of dollars in funding.
As noted in a report from Bloomberg News, a federal judge in Oakland, California, ruled that OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft failed to show that Musk’s claims should be dismissed. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers stated that while the evidence remains unclear, Musk has maintained that OpenAI “had a specific charitable purpose and that he attached two fundamental terms to it: that OpenAI be open source and that it would remain a nonprofit — purposes consistent with OpenAI’s charter and mission.”
Judge Gonzalez Rogers also rejected an argument by OpenAI suggesting that Musk’s use of an intermediary to donate $38 million in seed money to the company stripped him of legal standing. “Holding otherwise would significantly reduce the enforcement of a large swath of charitable trusts, contrary to the modern trend,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers wrote.
The judge also declined to dismiss Musk’s fraud allegations, citing internal OpenAI communications from 2017 involving co-founder Greg Brockman. In an email cited by the judge, fellow OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis informed Musk that Brockman would “like to continue with the non-profit structure.”
Just two months later, however, Brockman wrote in a private note that he “cannot say that we are committed to the non-profit. don’t want to say that we’re committed. if three months later we’re doing b-corp then it was a lie.”
Marc Toberoff, a member of Musk’s legal team, said Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s ruling confirms that “there is substantial evidence that OpenAI’s leadership made knowingly false assurances to Mr. Musk about its charitable mission that they never honored in favor of their personal self-enrichment.”
OpenAI, for its part, maintained that Musk’s legal efforts are baseless. In a statement, the AI startup said it is looking forward to the upcoming trial. “Mr. Musk’s lawsuit continues to be baseless and a part of his ongoing pattern of harassment, and we look forward to demonstrating this at trial. We remain focused on empowering the OpenAI Foundation, which is already one of the best-resourced nonprofits ever,” OpenAI stated.
Elon Musk’s X goes down as users report major outage Friday morning
Tesla wins top loyalty and conquest honors in S&P Global Mobility 2025 awards
