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A different angle of Falcon Heavy Flight 2's liftoff from Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin. (Pauline Acalin) A different angle of Falcon Heavy Flight 2's liftoff from Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin. (Pauline Acalin)

SpaceX

SpaceX preps for Cargo Dragon, Falcon Heavy launches despite setbacks

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Despite suffering the loss of the first Falcon Heavy Block 5 center core and a catastrophic failure of the first flight-proven Crew Dragon spacecraft in nearly the same week, SpaceX’s core operations continue as usual to prepare for multiple launches in the coming months.

The echoes of the past week’s failures and ‘anomalies’ will undoubtedly ring for months to come but SpaceX now finds itself in a unique situation. Despite the imminent start of a major failure investigation, it appears unlikely – at least for the time being – that it will impact the majority of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches planned for the rest of 2019. Currently on the Q2 2019 manifest are Cargo Dragon’s 17th operational mission (CRS-17), the first operational Starlink launch, Spacecom’s Amos-17 satellite, the Canadian Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM), and Falcon Heavy’s third launch (STP-2).

Spotted on April 20th, this Falcon upper stage is most likely bound for the launch of either Starlink-1 or Amos-17.

Cargo Dragon – CRS-17

Following an April 20th explosion that destroyed Crew Dragon C201, SpaceX’s next launch – Cargo Dragon CRS-17 – has likely just become the most important in the near-term. Although Crew Dragon shares almost nothing directly in common with Cargo Dragon, both spacecraft still do come from the same lineage, relying on the same propellant and Draco maneuvering thrusters, as well as similar plumbing (excluding SuperDraco pods) and many of the same engineers and technicians.

On the other hand, Cargo Dragon has never suffered a catastrophic anomaly on the ground or in flight, although SpaceX has dealt with a fair share of less serious issues throughout the spacecraft’s operational life. Further, following the August 2017 launch of CRS-12, every CRS mission has launched with a flight-proven Cargo Dragon spacecraft. In fact, it’s quite likely that the CRS-12 Cargo Dragon capsule is the same spacecraft that has been refurbished for CRS-17, as it is currently the only flightworthy capsule to have only flown one orbital resupply mission.

It’s unclear which Falcon 9 booster has been assigned to CRS-17. NASA’s agreement with SpaceX for flight-proven boosters has been predicated on keeping those boosters ‘in-family’, so to speak, meaning that NASA will only accept flight-proven boosters if they have only flown NASA missions. The only booster that currently fits that bill is B1051, previously flown during Crew Dragon’s orbital launch debut on March 2nd, but B1051 has reportedly been assigned to SpaceX’s second Vandenberg launch of 2019 at the customer’s request. CRS-17 will thus likely launch on a new Falcon 9 booster (B1056). There is a chance that Crew Dragon’s catastrophic failure has severely contaminated the Landing Zone area with unburnt MMH and NTO, both of which are extraordinarily toxic to humans in even the tiniest of quantities.

Some launch-related questions may be answered in a NASA media briefing planned for 11am EDT, April 22nd. CRS-17 is scheduled to launch no earlier than 4:22 am EDT (08:22 UTC), April 30th.

Cargo Dragon capsule C113 and its expendable trunk depart the ISS after successfully completing CRS-12, September 2017. (NASA)
CRS-17’s fresh Cargo Dragon trunk is shown here with two major unpressurized payloads, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3) and STP-H6, which will investigate communicating with X-rays, among other things. (SpaceX via NASA)

Starlink, Falcon Heavy, and more

Meanwhile, the Falcon upper/second stage (S2) spotted in the tweet at the top of the article serves as evidence of preparations for launches planned in May/June, as do a duo of first stage boosters spied during their own Cape Canaveral arrivals. All that’s missing to round out a busy week of SpaceX transportation is the appearance of one or several payload fairings, although CEO Elon Musk says that the company will try to reuse Falcon Heavy Flight 2’s fairing on the first Starlink launch.

Said Starlink launch – unofficially labeled Starlink-1 – is currently scheduled for liftoff no earlier than mid-May, likely making it the SpaceX mission that will follow CRS-17. The most likely Falcon 9 S1 candidate is the thrice-flown Block 5 booster B1046, a move that would retire risk otherwise transmitted to customers. SpaceX has now flown two separate Falcon 9 boosters (B1046 and B1048) three times without major issue, meaning that the fourth flight of the same booster (and beyond) will be new territory for reuse at some level.

B1046.3 landed aboard drone ship Just Read The Instructions after a successful third launch, December 2018. (SpaceX)
Falcon 9 B1048 returned to Port Canaveral on Feb. 24 after the rocket’s own third successful launch and landing. (Tom Cross)

Beyond Starlink-1, SpaceX has the communications satellite Amos-17 and Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM), both of which are understood to be targeting launch no earlier than (NET) early June. Finally, Falcon Heavy Flight 3 – carrying the US Air Force’s STP-2 mission – is scheduled to launch NET June 22nd, although some additional delays are probable.

From a business-as-usual perspective, the fact that Crew Dragon C201 failed during intentional testing on the ground means that it will likely be SpaceX’s least commercially disruptive failure yet. This could change for any number of reasons, depending on the conclusions drawn by the joint NASA-SpaceX investigation soon to begin, and it’s far too early to draw far-reaching conclusions. Chances are good that the impact to non-Crew Dragon launches will be minimal but only time will tell as SpaceX begins to quite literally pick up the pieces and start a deep-dive analysis of all data gathered from Saturday’s failure.

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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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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.

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.

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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News

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

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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