SpaceX is closing out the year in overdrive, with fresh drama in orbit, big-money spectrum moves on the ground, and a surge of social media chatter that keeps Elon Musk’s space company at the center of the tech conversation.

According to SpaceX’s own Starlink post on X, confirmed by outlets like Space.com and the Economic Times, one of the company’s Starlink satellites, number 35956, suffered an “anomaly” in low Earth orbit on December 17, losing all contact with controllers at about 418 kilometers altitude. The propulsion tank vented, the satellite’s orbit dropped by roughly 4 kilometers, and a handful of new pieces of trackable debris were created. SpaceX says the satellite is now largely intact, tumbling, and expected to reenter and burn up in the atmosphere within weeks, safely below the International Space Station, and it is working with NASA and the U.S. Space Force to monitor the fragments. The company is already pushing new software to the fleet to better guard against similar failures.

That mishap comes as Starlink’s scale reaches almost unbelievable proportions. Space.com reports that nearly 9,300 active Starlink satellites are now in orbit, meaning SpaceX controls around two‑thirds of all working spacecraft around Earth, while Blockchain.News notes social‑media visualizations showing more than 9,000 Starlink satellites crisscrossing the planet and enabling a new wave of AI‑driven connectivity. Internally, Starlink satellites have been performing about 145,000 automated collision‑avoidance maneuvers in just six months, a glimpse of the traffic‑management challenge SpaceX now shoulders.

On the policy and business front, Communications Today reports that two Democratic lawmakers have just raised concerns over EchoStar’s plan to sell key spectrum licenses to AT&T and SpaceX in a package worth about 40 billion dollars. The lawmakers are pressing regulators on competition, pricing, and national security implications, underscoring how central SpaceX has become to the future of broadband and satellite communications.

Meanwhile, the latest round of Musk‑adjacent gossip is all about hardware on wheels. Stocktwits, citing reporting from Electrek, says SpaceX has quietly ordered more than 1,000 Tesla Cybertrucks, with internal chatter suggesting that could rise to 2,000. Listeners have been sharing photos and clips on X and other platforms of matte‑gray Cybertrucks roaming SpaceX facilities in Texas and California, fueling speculation they’ll be used as rugged support vehicles at Starship sites and even as rolling billboards for a future Starlink IPO that Stocktwits says could target a valuation near 1.5 trillion dollars later this decade. Retail traders on social platforms are leaning bullish on both Tesla and SpaceX, blending memes with real excitement about Musk’s intertwined empire.

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