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SpaceX Starlink launch offers rare live view of Falcon 9 booster landing

Pictured here in January 2021 on its fifth launch, Falcon 9 B1058 is scheduled to fly for the seventh time on April 7th. (Richard Angle)

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Update: SpaceX has aced the first its tenth launch of 2021 and 23rd operational Starlink launch while simultaneously offering an uninterrupted live view of a Falcon 9 booster landing from the rocket’s onboard camera for the first time in months.

While SpaceX’s official webcast got off to a rough start with no onboard camera views throughout the entirety of ascent and beginning of booster descent, whatever was causing the camera outage was fixed around seven minutes after liftoff, returning live onboard views after the first outage of its kind in years. For whatever reason, Falcon 9 booster B1058 and the satellite link it uses to transmit telemetry and live camera views behaved almost perfectly for the next few minutes, providing a nearly uninterrupted two-minute-long view of the rocket’s seventh successful landing.

For unknown reasons, those uninterrupted onboard views may have still been unusual but were substantially less rare a few years ago. Over the last several-dozen SpaceX Falcon launches, they’ve effectively faded into a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence. Regardless, Falcon 9 B1058 has become the second SpaceX booster ever to fly twice in less than four weeks, falling just four hours short of setting a new turnaround record for reusable rockets.

Falcon 9 B1058 lifts off on its second Starlink launch in 27 days. (Richard Angle)
B1058 stuck the landing aboard drone ship Of Course I Still Love (OCISLY). (SpaceX)

45 minutes after liftoff, Falcon 9’s expendable second stage relit for a brief one-second burn. Around 20 minutes later, after spinning itself end over end, the rocket commanded the deployment of its batch of 60 operational Starlink satellites, sending the spacecraft on their way to gradually spread apart, deploy solar arrays, and begin propelling themselves to their final orbits. With Starlink-23 complete, SpaceX has successfully launched 10 orbital missions in the first 95 days of 2021, a cadence that would equate to almost 40 launches this calendar year if SpaceX can sustain it.

SpaceX is scheduled to attempt its tenth orbital launch of 2021 – also Falcon 9’s two-dozenth dedicated Starlink mission – as early as 12:34 pm EDT (UTC-4) on Wednesday, April 7th.

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Known as Starlink-23 SpaceX’s 23rd dedicated launch of operational Starlink satellites and 24th operational launch overall will also mark the first time a Falcon 9 rocket lifts off under daylight since January 24th – a welcome reprieve after half a dozen late-night or early-morning Starlink launches. SpaceX will offer an official webcast of the launch as usual, with coverage beginning around 12:20 pm at the links below.

In what has rapidly become the company’s default, Starlink-23 will also continue to establish that SpaceX is on track for a record-breaking number of launches this year.

Encapsulating the mission’s stack of 60 Starlink v1.0 satellites to protect them from the environment and the aerothermal stresses of launch, one of Starlink-23’s two fairing halves will be flying for the fourth time – the second of its kind for rocket fairing reusability. The other fairing half supported one other Starlink mission prior to Wednesday’s launch, making it SpaceX’s 15th launch – and Falcon 9’s fifth consecutive launch – with a fully flight-proven payload fairing since the company first began reusing the carbon composite nosecones in November 2019.

One of the two fairing halves pictured here on April 21st, 2020 will be flying for the fourth time on Starlink-23. (Richard Angle)
Mere weeks after its last launch, Falcon 9 B1058 is scheduled to support Starlink-23 – the booster’s seventh flight. (Richard Angle)

Beneath Starlink-23’s flight-proven fairing and expendable second stage, SpaceX has assigned Falcon 9 booster B1058 to the launch. Barring delays, the historic rocket – famous for debuting in May 2020 on SpaceX’s inaugural ‘Demo-2’ astronaut launch – will narrowly miss beating SpaceX’s Falcon booster turnaround record (27d 4h) by a little over four hours. In other words, Starlink-23 will mark the second time in spaceflight history that a rocket booster has flown twice in less than four weeks and achieve that feat just two months after Falcon 9 B1060 became the first to do so.

Beyond individual feats of rocket reuse, Starlink-23 will also be SpaceX’s 10th orbital launch in three months – just 95 days into the new year. On average, that means that the company and its Falcon rockets are on track to complete nearly 40 orbital launches (~39) in 2021 – shy of CEO Elon Musk’s ambitious 48-launch target but still a major achievement if SpaceX can sustain its first-quarter cadence.

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After Starlink-23, SpaceX is expected to enter a rare two-week stand-down as it turns its focus to Crew-2, Crew Dragon’s second operational astronaut launch. That mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) April 22nd.

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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Tesla revises new Intervention Reporting system with Full Self-Driving

It is the second revision to the program as Tesla is trying to make it easier to decipher driver and owner complaints, but also to make it easier to report issues within the suite for them.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has revised its new Intervention Reporting system within the Full Self-Driving suite that now categorizes reasons that drivers take over when the semi-autonomous driving functionality is active.

It is the second revision to the program as Tesla is trying to make it easier to decipher driver and owner complaints, but also to make it easier to report issues within the suite for them.

With the initial rollout of Full Self-Driving v14.3.2, Tesla included a new reporting menu that gave four options for an intervention: Preference, Comfort, Critical, and Other. A slightly revised version of Full Self-Driving with the same ID number then came out a few days later, changing the “Other” option to “Navigation” after numerous complaints from owners.

It appears Tesla has listened to those owners once again and has not only made it smaller and more compact, but also easier to report the issues than previously.

The new menu is now embedded within the request for a Voice Memo from Tesla, and does not block the entire screen, as the second rollout of the menu was:

There will likely be one additional revision to the Interventions Menu, as we have coined it here at Teslarati.

Unfortunately, at times, there are no reasons for an intervention at all, but the menu does not give an option to simply disregard the reporting and forces the driver to choose one of the options. We, as well as other notable Tesla influencers, indicated that there is not always a reason for an intervention.

For example, I choose to back into my parking spot in my neighborhood at least some of the time for the reason of charging. I usually hit “Preference” for this, but it sends a false positive to Tesla that there was a reason I took over that I was unhappy with.

Tesla begins probing owners on FSD’s navigation errors with small but mighty change

Instead, I’m simply performing a maneuver that is not yet available to us. When Tesla allows drivers to choose the orientation at which their car enters a parking spot, I and many others won’t have to deal with this menu.

Others are still skeptical that it will help resolve any issues whatsoever and prefer to disregard the menu altogether. It does seem as if Tesla will issue another revision in the coming days to allow this to happen.

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California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law

California just gave police power to ticket driverless cars, including Tesla’s Cybercab fleet.

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Concept rendering of Tesla Cybercab being cited by CA Highway Patrol (Credit: Grok)

California DMV formally adopted new rules on April 29, 2026 that allow law enforcement to issue “notices of noncompliance”, or in other words ticket autonomous vehicle companies when their cars commit moving violations. The rules take effect July 1, 2026 and officially closes a regulatory gap that previously let driverless cars operate on public roads with nearly no traffic enforcement consequences.

Until now, state traffic laws only applied to human “drivers,” which meant that when no person was behind the wheel, police had no mechanism to issue a ticket. Officers were limited to citing driverless vehicles for parking violations only. A well-known example came in September 2025, when a San Bruno officer watched a Waymo robotaxi execute an illegal U-turn and could do nothing but notify the company.

Under the new framework, when an officer observes a violation, the autonomous vehicle company is effectively treated as the driver. Companies must report each incident to the DMV within 72 hours, or 24 hours if a collision is involved. Repeated violations can result in fleet size restrictions, operational suspensions, or full permit revocation. Local officials also gained new authority to geofence driverless vehicles out of active emergency zones within two minutes and require a live emergency response line answered within 30 seconds.

Tesla Cybercab ramps Robotaxi public street testing as vehicle enters mass production queue

California’s new enforcement rules arrive at a pivotal moment for Tesla. The company is ramping Cybercab production at Giga Texas toward hundreds of units per week, targeting at least 2 million units annually at full capacity, while simultaneously pushing to expand its Robotaxi service to dozens of U.S. cities by end of 2026. Unsupervised FSD for consumer vehicles is currently targeted for Q4 2026, and when it arrives, Tesla’s fleet may not have a human to absorb legal accountability, under the July 1 rules.

Tesla has confirmed plans to expand its Robotaxi service to seven new cities in the first half of 2026, including Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas, with the service already running without safety drivers in Austin. Musk has said he expects robotaxis to cover between a quarter and half of the United States by end of year.

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Tesla Model X shocks everyone by crushing every other used car in America

The Model X is one of Tesla’s flagship models, the other being the Model S. Earlier this year, Tesla confirmed it would discontinue production of both the Model S and Model X to make way for Optimus robot production at the Fremont Factory in Northern California.

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Credit: Tesla Asia | X

The Tesla Model X was the fastest-selling used vehicle in the United States in the first quarter of the year, crushing every other used car in America.

iSeeCars data for the first quarter shows that the Model X was the fastest-selling used car, lasting just 25.6 days on the market on average, two days better than that of the second-place Lexus RX 350h. The Cybertruck, Model Y, and Model S, in seventh, ninth, and thirteenth place, respectively, also made the list.

The Model X is one of Tesla’s flagship models, the other being the Model S. Earlier this year, Tesla confirmed it would discontinue production of both the Model S and Model X to make way for Optimus robot production at the Fremont Factory in Northern California.

Tesla brings closure to flagship ‘sentimental’ models, Musk confirms

Bringing closure to these two vehicles signaled the end of the road for the cars that have effectively built Tesla’s reputation for luxury and high-end passenger vehicles.

Relying on the sales of its mass market Model Y and Model 3, as well as leaning on the success of future products like the Cybercab, is the angle Tesla has chosen to take.

Teslas are also performing extremely well as a whole on the resale market. iSeeCars data shows that, “while the average price of a 1- to 5-year-old non-Tesla EV fell 10.3% in Q1 2026 year-over-year, the average price of a used Tesla was essentially flat at 0.1% lower across the same period. Traditional gas car prices dropped 2.8% during this same period.”

Additionally, market share for gas cars has dropped nearly 3 percent since the same quarter last year. Tesla has remained level, while the non-Tesla EV market share has increased 30 percent, mostly due to more models available.

Nevertheless, those non-Tesla EVs have seen their value drop by over 10 percent, while Tesla’s values have remained level.

Executive Analyst Karl Brauer said:

“Used electric vehicles without a Tesla badge have lost more than 10% of their value in the past year. This compares to stable values for Teslas and hybrids, and a modest 2.8% drop for traditional gasoline vehicles.”

Teslas, as well as non-luxury hybrids, are displaying the strongest resistance in the face of faltering demand, the publication says. But the more impressive performance is that of the Model X alone.

Tesla’s decision to stop production of the Model X may have played some part in the vehicle’s pristine performance in Q1. With the car already placed at a premium price point, used models are already more appealing to consumers. Perhaps second-hand versions were more than enough for those who wanted a Model X, and only a Model X.

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