Science

The “catch” marks SpaceX’s first successful touchdown of Starship’s booster back at its launch site in South Texas.

Starship launched about 25 minutes later than planned, at about 8:25AM ET, as SpaceX needed to clear its range of boats.

You can catch the livestream on SpaceX’s website, its X account, or the X TV app.

The company now expects its fifth Starship flight test to lift off at 8:25AM ET from its launch site in South Texas. SpaceX has a 30-minute window that started at 8AM ET, so it’s cutting it a little close.

Rolling Stone reports that just like FEMA, meteorologists are dealing with more pushback than they’re used to — one is quoted saying “ideas that once would have been ridiculed as very fringe, outlandish viewpoints are suddenly becoming mainstream.”

CBS Morning meteorologist Katie Nickolaou also tweeted one example of what she’s seeing (below).

Power outages affect more than 3.3 million customers in Florida, out of the 11.5 million customers tracked by poweroutage.us (which collects data from utilities). Milton made landfall as an “extremely dangerous category 3 hurricane” Wednesday night.

Correction: It is 11.5 million customers, not 11.5.

We might not hear from them for a while if Milton knocks out power and communicates like Hurricane Helene did. “Life-threatening” hurricane-force winds and flash floods are on the way, the National Hurricane Center warns.

You are still the queen of fat bears. Bear 128 ‘Grazer’ won the March Madness-style popularity contest for Katmai National Park’s famous brown bears.

The House Oversight Committee will investigate the FCC’s decision to deny the Elon Musk-owned Starlink $885.5 million in federal subsidies through the Rural Digital Opportunity fund in 2022.

Last week, Musk claimed the satellite internet company “would probably have saved lives” in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina if the FCC didn’t “illegally” revoke Starlink’s funding.

This morning, the European Space Agency launched its Hera mission, which will revisit Didymos, the asteroid system that NASA’s Dart operation punched in 2022.

Key sites for producing high-purity quartz used in chipmaking “only sustained minor damage,” according to an initial assessment by Sibelco, one of the mining companies in Spruce Pine, NC. But power outages are still a big problem for its operations after the devastating storm.

The Quartz Corp, meanwhile, says “damage is mostly concentrated around ancillary units,” and that it’s confident it can “avoid” supply disruptions.

Turns out it’s pretty neat. After a decade of work, scientists have mapped out all 140,000 neurons of Drosophila melanogaster — or a fruit fly. The pictures are pretty sick, and scientists hope to use the fly brain map to figure out how bigger brains might work.

The company has a guide on how to sign up on its website.

The 320-mile line would connect the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) power grid to other states for the first time. Unlike most states that send each other electricity in times of need, the Lone Star state has historically been isolated. That made it more vulnerable to power outages during extreme weather like deadly Winter Storm Uri in 2021.

The monstrous storm devastated North Carolina, a key swing state in the presidential election. Communities face a long recovery ahead after Helene leveled towns. With so many people displaced and polling locations flooded, officials are worried about how much harder it could be now for people to cast their votes.