Four Russian military aircraft detected in Alaska defense zone, NORAD says
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(WASHINGTON) — Four Russian military aircraft passed through the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone on Monday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said.
All four aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter either American or Canadian sovereign airspace, NORAD said in a press release. There was no intercept, it added.
“This Russian activity in the Alaska ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat,” NORAD said.
Monday’s detection is the fifth such incident in September so far, according to NORAD’s public statements noting detections. NORAD did not specify what type of Russian aircraft were involved. The command identified Russian IL-38 maritime patrol aircraft inside the Alaska ADIZ earlier this month.
The ADIZ begin at the limit of national airspace — in this case that of the U.S. and Canada. Such zones require “the ready identification of all aircraft in the interest of national security,” NORAD said.
The command “employs a layered defense network of satellites, ground-based and airborne radars and fighter aircraft to track aircraft and inform appropriate actions,” it said in its press release.
“NORAD remains ready to employ a number of response options in defense of North America,” it added.
(NEW YORK) — A third house has collapsed in four days on the North Carolina coast as officials closed off the beach due to dangerous debris on the shore and in the water, officials said.
Cape Hatteras National Seashore law enforcement rangers responded to a Dare County dispatch call at approximately 1:08 p.m. on Tuesday to reports of a house collapsing on G A Kohler Court in Rodanthe, North Carolina, according to a statement from the National Park Service.
“Once on scene, rangers confirmed the collapse of the unoccupied house,” officials said. “The owner of the house has hired a debris cleanup contractor and Seashore employees plan on supplementing cleanup efforts.”
Due to dangerous debris on the beach and in the water, Cape Hatteras National Seashore has temporarily closed the beach from G A Kohler Court in Rodanthe to Wimble Shores North Court in Waves, a coastal length of just over two miles.
“Swimmers and surfers are urged to stay out the water in front of the villages of Rodanthe, Waves and Salvo, as there is a large amount of hazardous floating debris being transported by the waves that will cause injuries to those entering the water along the tri-villages area,” the National Park Service said. “Additionally, at the north end of Rodanthe and for miles to the south, the Seashore continues to urge visitors to wear hard-soled shoes when walking on the beach to avoid injuries from nail-ridden wooden debris.”
“The biggest concern is just cleaning everything up, you know?” Paul Troy, the homeowner of the first collapsed house, told ABC News’ Raleigh station WTVD-TV. “We get a lot of slack, all of these homeowners do that they don’t care. These are money machines and that’s not the case. We lose sleep over littering the beach.”
Troy and his family have owned the home since 2008 and hoped to move it before the collapse.
“At the beginning of the summer, we lost 13 vertical feet. We lost the staircase. We lost part of the septic system,” he said. “We chose not to rent it out the rest of the summer because we were going to wait and see what the beach did, see if it came back.”
Homeowners there say the ocean’s threat to their property is a major concern.
“We’ve stayed in many of these houses that are completely underwater now. It’s a shame and I think the town of Rodanthe is going to be suffering,” Nancy Engel, who lives in Rodanthe, told WTVD in August.
Collapsing homes along the ocean can cause a myriad of problems for people as well as the local ecosystem which led to the superintendent of the National Park Service covering Cape Hatteras launching a pilot program to buy up some of the homes to tear them down, according to WTVD.
“We had to have willing sellers’ houses that were essentially in the ocean at high tide every day. We found the money to purchase those properties. We removed the houses completely, demolished them completely and restored the beach. And if we went out to that location today, you wouldn’t have much to see because it would just be a beautiful beach,” David Hullac with the U.S. National Park Service told WTVD.
Tuesday’s house collapse is the third home to collapse in Rodanthe since Friday and the 10th house collapse in the past four years.
No injuries were reported in connection with any of the collapses and the clean up efforts by authorities is ongoing.
An ABC News graphic shows the expected path of a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. — ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Tropical Storm Francine is churning in the Gulf and is set to strengthen to a hurricane before making landfall in Louisiana.
Francine is forecast to be a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds by Wednesday. Landfall is forecast in western Louisiana on Wednesday afternoon.
A hurricane watch has been issued in Louisiana, from Cameron to Grand Isle.
A storm surge watch is in effect from Texas to the Mississippi-Alabama border.
By Tuesday morning, Francine’s outer bands will bring heavy rain and gusty winds to Texas. The rough weather will last through the day along the coast, including Houston.
By Wednesday morning, conditions will deteriorate rapidly in southwestern Louisiana. Heavy rain and flooding is expected throughout the day.
About 5 to 8 inches of rain, with locally up to 1 foot, is forecast from Louisiana to the western Florida Panhandle through Thursday morning.
(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — After two weeks of delays, the ambitious Polaris Dawn space mission, led by billionaire Jared Isaacman and in collaboration with SpaceX, launched early Tuesday morning.
The four-person civilian crew launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday at 5:23 a.m. ET in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, according to a social media post by the aerospace company.
Lift off came after one final two-hour delay due to “unfavorable weather at the launch site,” as reported SpaceX.
Isaacman, the CEO of the payment-processing company Shift4, is joined on the mission by former Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.
The highly anticipated program faced a series of delays since the originally planned Aug. 26 launch due to unfavorable weather conditions and a ground system issue at the launch site.
Prepping for another possible delay, SpaceX said ahead of the launch that the weather forecast for Tuesday remained uncertain.
“Weather is currently 40% favorable for liftoff, and conditions at the possible splashdown sites for Dragon’s return to Earth remain a watch item,” the company wrote on X Sunday.
Despite the forecast, Issacman remained hopeful about this week’s launch possibility, writing on X, “This is a big improvement over the last two weeks. We are getting closer to getting this mission to orbit.”
The mission was previously delayed due to a ground-side helium leak on the Quick Disconnect (QD) umbilical, SpaceX said on Aug. 26. Umbilical systems employ QD fluid connectors to transfer fluids into a vehicle, according to NASA.
If successful, the Polaris Dawn mission is poised to make history by launching four private citizens into ultrahigh orbit, ascending to 870 miles above Earth. This would be the highest altitude of any human spaceflight mission since the Apollo program, more than a half century ago.
The program is set to span five days under normal conditions and will see two of the crew members exit the spacecraft in the first commercial spacewalk, at an altitude of 435 miles above Earth.
Due to the absence of an airlock on the SpaceX Dragon capsule, all four crew members will be exposed to the vacuum of space during the ambitious spacewalk.
The spacewalk will also serve as a critical test for SpaceX’s new extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits, an evolution of the intravehicular activity (IVA) suit.
This new design includes a heads-up display, helmet camera, and enhanced joint mobility. It also features thermal insulation, solar protection, and a suspension system that allows the wearer to pressurize the suit, don a harness and execute operations as if they were weightless.
The Dragon spacecraft also has undergone significant modifications, including upgrades to the life support systems to supply more oxygen during spacewalks, according to the Polaris program. Environmental sensing has been improved, and a new nitrogen re-pressurization system has been installed, according to the program.
The Polaris Dawn mission will be Isaacman’s second journey to space. In 2021, he funded his first mission to orbit Earth. The project was billed as a childhood cancer fundraiser, garnering $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and marked the first all-civilian mission in Earth orbit.
