SpaceX has also retired Starlink satellites because of malfunctions in the hardware. In February 2024, the company decided to deorbit 100 Starlink satellites, citing a potential f

SpaceX on Wednesday night launched a Spanish communications satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and retired the first-stage booster rather than landing on a drone.

The Falcon 9 rocket carrying SpainSat Next Generation 1 (SpainSat NG-1), a communications satellite for the European Space Agency (ESA) and Hisdesat communications, lifted off from Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, in Florida at 8:34 p.m. EST (0134 GMT on Jan. 30).

Starbase is an industrial installation built by SpaceX to fabricate and test a number of the company’s rocket types. The area around it is a unique and delicate ecosystem that includes estuaries and coastal grasslands, mud flats and more, where falcons, hawks, ravens, gulls and songbirds live.

Despite the statement from President Trump, NASA had already scheduled the astronauts' return for late March or April.

The founder of SpaceX said President Trump had asked his company to return two astronauts aboard the space station to Earth “as soon as possible.” NASA said it would do that “as soon as practical.”

Castelion's Series A funding round raised $100 million, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and including several other firms.