News
SpaceX launches back-to-back Starlink missions
SpaceX completed two successful launches of Starlink satellites this past weekend.
The two launches took place yesterday evening, just over five hours apart, from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and Space Launch Complex-4E in California.
The 46 Starlinks sent to orbit yesterday represent the 23rd and 24th missions of the year so far for SpaceX and already the 5th mission of the month.
The Falcon 9, which carried 23 Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida, launched them to the Southeast into a 42-degree orbital inclination to continue the build-out of the Group 6 constellation, with this batch being dubbed Group 6-43. The satellites deployed just over an hour after lift-off.
This Falcon 9, designated B1077, launched and landed for the 11th time, previously launching 40 days ago. The Falcon 9 landed on the droneship ‘Just Read the Instructions’ about eight and a half minutes after launch. The fairings were also re-used on this mission; both halves protected the USSF-124 mission just 25 days ago and marked the fastest turnaround time for fairing re-use.
Payload fairing separation confirmed pic.twitter.com/tdDXgPu19E
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 10, 2024
Just over 5 hours later, Falcon 9 B1063 successfully completed its 17th mission. B1063’s last mission was 47 days ago. The Falcon 9 made a soft landing on the droneship ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ just over 8 minutes after launching away from the Californian coastline.
The 23 Starlink satellites on this mission were the Group 7-17 batch and launched into a 53-degree orbital inclination. SpaceX recently began adding additional Starlink satellites to missions thanks to further refinement in Falcon 9’s performance.
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/AvuLS1EKhp
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 11, 2024
The 53-degree orbital inclination Starlink missions have been exclusive to launching from California, but thanks to a new agreement with the Bahamian government, those missions will now also be possible to lift off from Florida, allowing SpaceX to increase their launch cadence even further.
Coming up next for SpaceX is the return of Crew 7 to Earth following a nearly 6 month stay aboard the International Space Station. Crew 7 has already undocked from the ISS, and the splashdown of Crew Dragon Endurance is scheduled for tomorrow, March 12th.
Questions or comments? Shoot me an email at rangle@teslarati.com, or Tweet me @RDAnglePhoto.
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.