Germany to authorise police to shoot down drones
Germany will grant police the power to shoot down rogue drones like those that have disrupted airports across Europe and that some European leaders ha...
SpaceX’s Starship rocket successfully deployed its first batch of mock Starlink satellites and tested new heat shield tiles during its tenth test flight on Tuesday, marking key development milestones after a streak of earlier failures.
The 403-foot-tall (123 m) Starship lifted off around 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT) from SpaceX’s Starbase in south Texas.
Three minutes later, its towering Super Heavy booster released the Starship upper stage into orbit.
About 30 minutes into the flight, Starship’s “Pez”-like deployment system released eight dummy Starlink satellites for the first time, a critical demonstration for the rocket that underpins SpaceX’s dominant launch business.
Roughly an hour into the flight, Starship underwent a supersonic reentry over the Indian Ocean, testing a new hexagonal heat shield designed to require minimal refurbishment after each mission.
The mission concluded with a vertical, engine-guided landing on the ocean’s surface west of Australia. The Starship then toppled and exploded in a controlled fireball, an expected outcome likely triggered by the flight termination system.
The Super Heavy booster executed a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico instead of returning to the launch tower, demonstrating an alternate landing configuration.
The flight was broadcast live on SpaceX’s webcast, attracting hundreds of thousands of viewers online.
Much is riding on Starship’s success, as NASA selected the rocket to land the first astronauts on the Moon since the Apollo programme, and Elon Musk views it as essential for future missions to Mars.
Despite the progress, several challenges remain, including in-space refuelling demonstrations and ensuring a safe lunar landing.
This flight follows a series of earlier Starship test failures, including explosions during ascent and at landing, making this successful satellite deployment and heat shield test a key milestone in SpaceX’s test-to-failure development strategy.
Returning spacecraft have historically required extensive repairs due to high-speed atmospheric friction.
“There are thousands of engineering challenges that remain, for both the ship and the booster, but maybe the single biggest one is the reusable orbital heat shield,” Musk said on Monday during a SpaceX live stream.
Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy congratulated SpaceX on X, writing, “Flight 10’s success paves the way for the Starship Human Landing System that will bring American astronauts back to the Moon on Artemis III.”
NASA awarded SpaceX a contract to develop Starship as the Human Landing System for Artemis III, tasked with returning American astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years.
The first crewed Artemis mission, currently scheduled for 2027, will use Starship, though analysts expect the date may slip.
SpaceX continues to rapidly build new Starship prototypes at its Starbase complex.
Starship is also critical to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet business, which has so far relied on Falcon 9 rockets. The new system is designed to launch larger batches of satellites more efficiently.
Video from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) showed on Friday (19 September) the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupting and spewing lava.
At least eight people have died and more than 90 others were injured following a catastrophic gas tanker explosion on a major highway in Mexico City’s Iztapalapa district on Wednesday, authorities confirmed.
At least 69 people have died and almost 150 injured following a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Cebu City in the central Visayas region of the Philippines, officials said, making it one of the country’s deadliest disasters this year.
A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on 13 September with no tsunami threat, coming just weeks after the region endured a devastating 8.8-magnitude quake — the strongest since 1952.
Authorities in California have identified the dismembered body discovered in a Tesla registered to singer D4vd as 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who had been missing from Lake Elsinore since April 2024.
Germany will grant police the power to shoot down rogue drones like those that have disrupted airports across Europe and that some European leaders have attributed to a hybrid war being waged by Russia.
Czech Republic election winner ANO hopes to conclude negotiations with two small parties on forming a new government by the beginning of November, party leader Andrej Babis said on Wednesday (8 October).
Türkiye on Wednesday slammed an intervention by Israeli forces against a flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza as an act of piracy and a violation of international law.
Caretaker French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu struck a cautiously optimistic tone on Wednesday (8 October), saying a deal could potentially be reached on the country's budget by year end, making the risk of a snap election more remote.
Four people have been confirmed dead after a six-storey building collapsed in central Madrid while being converted into a hotel, authorities said, following a 15-hour rescue effort involving drones and sniffer dogs.
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