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SpaceX Starlink launch scheduled day after ULA NASA Mars mission [updated]

SpaceX could launch a batch of Starlink satellites less than a day before ULA is set to send a NASA Mars rover on its way to Mars. (SpaceX/ULA)

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Update: SpaceX’s Starlink-9 mission has been delayed from July 29th to July 31st, meaning that it could launch less than 24 hours after NASA’s Mars 2020 instead of before it.

SpaceX’s 10th Starlink internet satellite mission could launch just a day before after a ULA Atlas V rocket is scheduled to send NASA’s Mars 2020 ‘Perseverance’ rover on its way to Mars.

Following a full month of launch delays for SpaceX’s Starlink-9 mission and a bit less than two weeks of delays for ULA’s launch of NASA’s next Mars exploration mission, both missions have converged on the same ~24-hour period. Set be the third time SpaceX launches a single Falcon 9 booster on five orbital-class missions, Falcon 9 B1051 is scheduled to launch 57 Starlink v1.0 satellites and two BlackSky Earth imaging spacecraft no earlier than (NET) 3:45 am EDT (07:45 UTC) on Friday, July 31st.

Barring additional delays (arguably likely for both missions), a ULA Atlas V 541 rocket is scheduled to launch NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover NET 7:50 am EDT (11:50 UTC) on Thursday, July 30th – less than 24 hours prior.

Delayed by a month for various reasons, Falcon 9 booster B1051 could finally launch for the fifth time on SpaceX’s 10th Starlink mission next week. (Richard Angle)

On July 8th, SpaceX got the closest yet to actually launching its tenth Starlink internet satellite mission but ultimately scrubbed just a handful of minutes before launch by stormy weather. Starlink-9 was later rescheduled to July 10th and then 11th but was indefinitely delayed shortly thereafter. Ironically, SpaceX was forced to steal Starlink-9’s Falcon 9 upper stage for use on the commercial ANASIS II satellite launch for South Korea after issues were discovered in the mission’s original hardware.

Falcon 9 booster B1058 and the former Starlink-9 upper stage successfully launched the ANASIS II military commsat on July 20th, breaking a world record for fastest orbital-class rocket turnaround (i.e. time between consecutive flights).

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Part of the former Starlink-9 Falcon upper stage is visible underneath the ANASIS II payload fairing on July 20th. (Richard Angle)

After a flight-ready upper stage already in Florida was presumably reassigned, SpaceX is once again ready to attempt to launch Starlink-9. In an unexpected twist, so long as the beleaguered mission can escape additional delays, the Starlink launch could come barely a day before the United Launch Alliance (ULA) is scheduled to send a NASA Mars rover on its way to the Red Planet. Currently scheduled to launch ~27 hours apart. If both missions avoid further delays, it would be one of the fastest back-to-back SpaceX-ULA launches ever, requiring close cooperation between both companies, NASA, and the US military’s 45th Space Wing.

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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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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.

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Credit: Linda Yaccarino/X

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.

Credit: Downdetector

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.

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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.

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Credit: Tesla Malaysia/X

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.

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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.

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Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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.”

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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.

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