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The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed it had grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket pending an investigation into why the rocket’s second stage missed its deorbit landing target zone after this weekend’s Crew-9 launch from Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX announced it was halting launches in a social media post late Saturday, but the FAA did not confirm whether or not it had grounded the rocket until late Monday.

“The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX NASA Crew-9 mission that launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on September 28,” the emailed statement reads. “The incident involved the Falcon 9 second stage landing outside of the designated hazard area. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is requiring an investigation.”

This is the third time this year the FAA has grounded the Falcon 9, and the second time because of an issue with the rocket’s second stage.

SpaceX said in its social media post the second stage “was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn.  As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause.” read more

NEW YORK (AP) — Some Verizon customers across the U.S. were hit by a service outage Monday.

The issue appeared to knock out cellphone service for tens of thousands of Verizon users. Data from outage tracker DownDetector shows that reports topped 100,000 shortly after 11 a.m. ET — and while that number dropped significantly, nearly 48,000 were still facing issues closer to 4 p.m. ET.

Frustrated users online shared that they didn’t have service in many parts of the country — including the Southeastern U.S., where residents are still reeling from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. But the outage wasn’t isolated to one region. DownDetector’s map also showed many reports coming from the West Coast, Midwest and Northeast.

In an update posted on social media platform X, New York-based Verizon wrote that it was “aware of an issue impacting service for some customers.” The company added that it had engineers looking into the problem and was “working quickly to identify and solve the issue.” read more