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In an engineering feat, mechanical SpaceX arms catch Starship rocket booster back at the launch pad

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SpaceX pulled off the boldest test flight yet of its enormous Starship rocket on Sunday, catching the returning booster back at the launch pad with mechanical arms.

A jubilant Elon Musk called it “science fiction without the fiction part.”

Towering almost 400 feet (121 meters), the empty Starship blasted off at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. It arced over the Gulf of Mexico like the four Starships before it that ended up being destroyed, either soon after liftoff or while ditching into the sea. The previous one in June had been the most successful until Sunday’s demo, completing its flight without exploding.

This time, Musk, SpaceX’s CEO and founder, upped the challenge for the rocket that he plans to use to send people back to the moon and on to Mars.

At the flight director’s command, the first-stage booster flew back to the launch pad where it had blasted off seven minutes earlier. The launch tower’s monstrous metal arms, dubbed chopsticks, caught the descending 232-foot (71-meter) stainless steel booster and gripped it tightly, dangling it well above the ground.

“The tower has caught the rocket!!” Musk announced via X. “Big step towards making life multiplanetary was made today.”

Company employees screamed in joy, jumping and pumping their fists into the air. NASA joined in the celebration, with Administrator Bill Nelson sending congratulations.

Continued testing of Starship will prepare the nation for landing astronauts at the moon’s south pole, Nelson noted. NASA’s new Artemis program is the follow-up to Apollo, which put 12 men on the moon more than a half-century ago.

“Folks, this is a day for the engineering history books,” SpaceX engineering manager Kate Tice said from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

“Even in this day and age, what we just saw is magic,” added company spokesman Dan Huot from near the launch and landing site. “I am shaking right now.”

It was up to the flight director to decide, in real time with a manual control, whether to attempt the landing. SpaceX said both the booster and launch tower had to be in good, stable condition. Otherwise, it was going to end up in the gulf like the previous ones. Everything was judged to be ready for the catch.

The retro-looking spacecraft launched by the booster continued around the world, soaring more than 130 miles (212 kilometers) high. An hour after liftoff, it made a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean, adding to the day’s achievement. Cameras on a nearby buoy showed flames shooting up from the water as the spacecraft impacted precisely at the targeted spot and sank, as planned.

“What a day,” Huot said. “Let’s get ready for the next one.”

The June flight came up short at the end after pieces came off. SpaceX upgraded the software and reworked the heat shield, improving the thermal tiles.

SpaceX has been recovering the first-stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets for nine years, after delivering satellites and crews to orbit from Florida or California. But they land on floating ocean platforms or on concrete slabs several miles from their launch pads — not on them.

Recycling Falcon boosters has sped up the launch rate and saved SpaceX millions. Musk intends to do the same for Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built with 33 methane-fuel engines on the booster alone.

Musk said the captured Starship booster looked to be in good shape, with just a little warping of some of the outer engines from all the heat and aerodynamic forces. That can be fixed easily, he noted.

NASA has ordered two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX intends to use Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and, eventually Mars.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Police say death of young woman found in Halifax Walmart walk-in oven not suspicious

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Halifax police have determined that the death of a young woman whose body was found in a Walmart’s walk-in oven was not suspicious and did not involve foul play.

The death of the 19-year-old employee in the store’s bakery was reported on Oct. 19.

Halifax Regional Police say they have informed the woman’s family of their findings.

A Sikh organization confirmed the body of Gursimran Kaur was found by her mother, who had worked with her daughter at the Mumford Road store for about two years.

The Maritime Sikh Society says Kaur, a Sikh woman originally from India, had immigrated to Canada with her mother.

Last month, Nova Scotia’s Labour Department lifted a stop-work order after officials determined the store had complied with safety standards.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Typhoon Man-yi leaves 7 dead in Philippines and worsens crisis from back-to-back storms

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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Typhoon Man-yi left at least seven people dead in a landslide, destroyed houses and displaced large numbers of villagers before blowing away from the northern Philippines, worsening the crisis wreaked by multiple back-to-back storms, officials said Monday.

Man-yi was one of the strongest of the six major storms to hit the northern Philippines in less than a month and had sustained winds of up to 195 kilometers (125 miles) per hour when it slammed into the eastern island province of Catanduanes on Saturday night.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. In Manila and offered his prayers, announcing an additional $1 million in humanitarian aid for typhoon victims. He told Marcos he has authorized U.S. troops to help Filipino forces provide lifesaving aid.

Torrential rains and fierce wind unleashed by Man-yi set off a landslide early Monday in the northern town of Ambaguio in Nueva Vizcaya province that buried a house and killed seven people, including children, and injured three others inside, regional police chief Brig. Gen. Antonio P. Marallag Jr. said.

Army troops, police and villagers were scrambling to search for three other people who were believed to have been entombed in the avalanche of mud, boulders and uprooted trees, Marallag said.

Disaster response officials said they were checking if the deaths of two villagers in a motorcycle accident and an electrocution were directly related to Man-yi’s onslaught so they could be added to the overall death toll. They said a separate search was underway for a couple and their child after their shanty was swept away in rampaging rivers in northern Nueva Ecija province.

More than a million people were affected by the typhoon and two previous storms, including nearly 700,000 who fled their homes and moved to emergency shelters or relatives’ homes, according to the Official of Civil Defense.

Nearly 8,000 houses were damaged or destroyed and more than 100 cities and towns were hit by power outages due to toppled electric posts, it said.

In the worst-hit province of Camarines, officials pleaded for additional help after fierce winds and rain damaged more houses and cut off electricity and water supplies in the entire province, along with cellphone connections in many areas, provincial information officer Camille Gianan said.

Welfare officials transported food aid, drinking water and other help but more is needed over the coming months, Gianan said. Many villagers will need construction materials to rebuild their houses, she said.

“They have not recovered from the previous storms when the super typhoon hit,” Gianan told The Associated Press. “It’s been one calamity after another.”

The rare number of back-to-back storms and typhoons that lashed Luzon — the country’s largest and most populous island — in just three weeks left more than 160 people dead, affected 9 million people and caused such extensive damage to communities, infrastructure and farmlands that the Philippines may have to import more rice, a staple food.

In an emergency meeting as Man-yi approached, Marcos asked his Cabinet and provincial officials to brace for “the worst-case scenario.”

At least 26 domestic airports and two international airports were briefly shut and inter-island ferry and cargo services were suspended due to rough seas, stranding thousands of passengers and commuters. Most transport services have now resumed, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippine and the coast guard.

The U.S., Manila’s treaty ally, along with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei provided cargo aircraft and other storm aid to help the government’s overwhelmed disaster-response agencies. Last month, the first major storm, Trami, left scores of people dead after dumping one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours in several towns.

The Philippines is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It’s often hit by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Nine people injured after alleged stolen car crashes into Toronto bus: police

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TORONTO – Police say nine people were injured after an overnight collision between a Toronto Transit Commission bus and an alleged stolen car in the city’s north end.

Police say they were called to the scene in North York shortly before 2 a.m. near Bathurst Street and Wilson Avenue.

They say all nine people involved in the crash were injured, and two were taken to hospital in life-threatening condition.

They say one female was ejected from the bus, but only had minor injuries.

Police say the car was allegedly stolen, and its occupants had to be extricated.

They say the intersection will be closed for an extended period while police investigate.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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