SpaceX’s Starship Flight 13 successfully landed in the Indian Ocean with an intact heat shield, a major milestone for the company as it looks to put men back on the moon. Instead of hitting the water with a fireball, as in previous flights, the rocket flipped into its vertical landing position and touched down in the Indian Ocean before falling over and floating on top of the water. “That is a first,” Dan Huot, communications manager for SpaceX, said during the livestream. “That is the softest splashdown we have ever had with the Starship there in the Indian Ocean.” Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the 13th flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/g27YJCQgiN — SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 24, 2026 The July 24 flight was the second test of Starship’s V3 rocket and the first flight to deploy Starlink V3 satellites, according to SpaceX’s website. SpaceX originally planned the test flight for July 16 but aborted just before the launch after some of the engines failed to start. In the first test of the V3, the rocket hit the Indian Ocean with a planned explosion. This time, the rocket bobbed gently in the water while waiting for the recovery team. The landing was so successful that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said SpaceX might try to catch the rocket on the next test flight. “Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight,” Musk said on X. Cameras on Starship continued sending video of the rocket after landing and provided views of the rocket’s heat shield, which was mostly intact. “This is the first time we’ve put an intact Starship in the water,” Huot said on the livestream. “This is a dream scenario for the team that’s trying to get this heat shield data.” Musk highlighted an X post showing the progress the company has made with the heat shield in four test flights. “Latest heat shield design looks great!” Musk said on X. Latest heat shield design looks great! https://t.co/PitlHFwilp — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026 NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman celebrated Flight 13’s successful launch. “Excited for what will be learned from this mission,” Isaacman wrote on X. “When Starship comes online, its capabilities will be game-changing, not least of which will be ensuring we never give up the Moon again!” Pretty clear from this shot that @SpaceX knows where we are going! Congrats on getting Flight 13 underway. Excited for what will be learned from this mission. When Starship comes online, its capabilities will be game-changing, not least of which will be ensuring we never give up… https://t.co/aTSUCqUPcB — NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) July 24, 2026 The successful flight is a major milestone for SpaceX as it prepares for NASA’s Artemis III mission. NASA partnered with SpaceX to create a version of Starship to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon, according to NASA’s website. This was the first test flight since SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took the company public in the largest initial public offering in history. “Lucky Number 13,” Huot said. “Hell of a flight for Starship.”

An Illinois maintenance worker was trapped inside a gas station sign 130 feet in the air for over six hours on Tuesday. AJ Gow was doing repair work on a gas station sign near Interstate 55 right before 11:00 a.m. when his telescopic boom lift malfunctioned, leaving him 13 stories in the air. At around 2:00 p.m., the Wilmington Fire Protection District received a call about the stranded man. Its Technical Rescue Team, “specializing in confined space, collapse, and high angle rescue,” was sent to help.  The fire crew soon realized that their 100-foot ladders were not long enough to help Gow. “No ladders or stairs built into the sign pole were present eliminating the possibility of rescue team personnel ascending to the victim’s location as would normally occur in a high angle rescue,” the Wilmington Fire Protection District Deputy Chief Todd Friddle said. “The victim’s location was also beyond fire department ladder truck capabilities.” The Wilmington fire department found a boom lift in a town around 17 miles away that could ascend the distance and wheeled it to the site. In the meantime, an aerial drone monitored the man, who gave an optimistic thumbs-up. At around 4:00 p.m., the maintenance worker was lifted down and “returned to safety with no victim or rescuer injuries,” the report concluded. Gow thanked local officials for their help in saving him. “Thank you to every department that showed up for me today,” the maintenance worker posted on Facebook. “It was greatly appreciated! Seeing that lift roll up with police escorts was the highlight of my day for sure!!” Gow also posted a photo of himself standing inside the sign in the comments of one of his posts, telling one of his friends, “I was up there on this. [I] couldn’t fully stand either and it kept swaying with the wind. It was miserable.” Besides feeling severe dehydration and anxiety, Gow stated that he is fine. “My adrenaline was pumping once I saw that lift arriving and [it] gave me a 2nd wind. After the adrenaline crash, I felt like crap all night and still do.”

A black school board member supporting Michigan Democrat Haley Stevens told the congresswoman’s opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, to stop speaking and playing Arabic music on the campaign trail, inflaming racial tensions in one of the nation’s most contentious Senate primaries. In a viral video circulating on social media, Farmington school board member Angie Smith explained why she backs Stevens over El-Sayed. “We need someone that can represent all of us, not just one race, but all races,” Smith said at a campaign event. “I am supporting Haley Stevens because she’s that candidate.” The individual behind the camera pressed Smith, who was first elected to the school board in 2016, for clarification. “When you say you know not just for one, what do you mean by that?” he asked. Smith, a single mother of three daughters, doubled down. “The other candidate seems to be … doesn’t work a room. You have to know how to work the room. Don’t come out speaking only Arabic. Don’t come out with your Arabic music on,” Smith said. “Represent everyone.” “You know, I’m the mother of a lesbian. I’m Puerto Rican and Cherokee, with a grandfather that was a white man from Ireland. Represent us all. Don’t just represent one ethnicity or one race,” she added. Farmington school board member Angie Smith says she’s backing Stevens because she believes she will represent everyone, “not just one race… You have to know how to work the room, don’t just come in here speaking Arabic, don’t come out with your Arabic music on.” pic.twitter.com/L6VYip6Xft — Sam Robinson (@samueljrob) July 24, 2026 The criticism of El-Sayed — a Muslim Democratic socialist backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — infuriated leftists. “This is insanely racist,” left-wing commentator Mehdi Hasan wrote on X. “Not only should this Angie Smith be asked to apologize but @HaleyforMI should be asked to disown and condemn these racist remarks about @AbdulElSayed and Arab-Americans.” Leftist streamer Hasan Piker, who has said America “deserved” 9/11, also criticized the viral exchange. “This is not who we are as America. Especially sad to see it in the Democratic Party primary,” Piker said. The flareup comes as Stevens and El-Sayed barnstorm Michigan, competing for support from crucial Democratic voting blocs, including Black and Muslim voters. With the party’s far-left wing behind El-Sayed, establishment Democrats have increasingly consolidated behind Stevens in the campaign’s homestretch. On Friday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) endorsed Stevens. “Just like me, Haley will do whatever it takes to get things done for the people of Michigan, and we need her now more than ever,” Whitmer said in a video posted to X. The congresswoman, who recently went viral for her quirky “stick it to them” slogan, celebrated the endorsement, calling Whitmer “a champion for our state” who understands “the stakes of this race.” Following the high-profile endorsement, Stevens’s odds of winning the Democratic primary on prediction market Polymarket rose from 21% to 36%. Michigan’s Democratic primary is August 4.

Video captured a good Samaritan dressed in a Spider-Man costume rushing across the road to push a struggling man’s wheelchair across the street in busy traffic in Arkansas on Tuesday. As cars waited for the traffic light, a wheelchair-bound man attempted to slowly cross the intersection. Eventually, he tried thrusting himself forward to move the wheelchair faster. Then, the web-slinger jumped out of a red Jeep and ran to the rescue, pushing the man’s wheelchair across the intersection to safety.  The 20-year-old hero, Christopher Hellenthal, was coming home from his work at Ultimate Air Trampoline Park in Jonesboro, which held Superhero Day, according to Jonesboro Right Now.  “That morning we had a superhero day, and so I brought it for the toddlers, and they had a blast,” Hellenthal said, according to Fox News. “And I noticed that there was this man, and he was in a wheelchair, and he was having a lot of trouble, he wasn’t going to make it.” According to Jonesboro Right Now, Hellenthal was “a little bit hesitant at first,” thinking, “Man, I’m wearing this suit, everyone’s gonna think I’m a little dork.” “But I got out and I went up to him,” he continued. “I said, ‘Don’t worry, I got you.’ And I grabbed a hold of his wheelchair, and I put him somewhere where he’d be safe, out of traffic.” Afterward, Hellenthal went home to Lake City and took a nap. Later, his mom woke him up to a video shared by the Jonesboro Police Department on Facebook, which quickly went viral. “Some people say cops are heroes, but even we need a little helping hand,” the post read. “Thank you, sir, for helping this gentleman reach his destination safely. Whether it’s a red light or green light, there is always time to do what’s right!” Hellenthal said he wears the suit while driving to “get a kick out of people.” Now, the huge Spiderman fan, who wears the costume for all sorts of kid events at the trampoline park, has been interviewed by The New York Times and Good Morning America, as well as other local and national media outlets.   “This kind of stuff just doesn’t happen,” Hellenthal said. “I’m pretty quiet, I keep to myself, I keep a small group of people around me, and then all of a sudden, I got all sorts of people, and millions of people who know who I am now. It’s just crazy.” Hellenthal has worked at the Ultimate Air trampoline park for three years, and the business’ assistant manager, Packy Magel, said Hellenthal is a “good kid” and “that’s just like him to help somebody.” 

Charles Barkley was not known for holding back on the basketball court during his 16 seasons in the NBA. After retiring and entering broadcasting, that trend continued, though his tools shifted from physical prowess to rhetorical flourishes. The man has opinions. Some are commonsense, some are controversial — such as the time he suggested that even Stevie Wonder could hit a free throw if given 23 chances to do so. On a recent episode of Barstool Sports’ “Pardon My Take” podcast with Big Cat and PFT Commenter, he offered one of his more outlandish personal rules: he never attends weddings and only occasionally attends funerals. It sounds crazy. Only it’s not. When he explained his reasoning, it became apparent that Sir Chuck has a point, or at least a fourth or maybe even half of one. When it comes to funerals, he will make exceptions for people who were “really special,” even though, in his words, they’re not going to know he was there. For more casual acquaintances, he’s staying home. In both situations, though, his justification for doing so is the same. As he told the two hosts, “I don’t really want to go and see somebody who I liked, the last time I saw him was dead, period.” Fair point. I wholeheartedly agree with him. I’ll always regret walking past my grandfather’s casket when I was in the fourth grade. That body inside wasn’t him, or even the shell he was at the end after the stroke, and that image will stay with me until the day I die. It’s not a memory I want to be seared in my mind, but it’s never coming out. Frankly, funerals aren’t really for the person who died; they’re for the family, so maybe Barkley could try my novel approach to attending. It’s pretty complicated and involves going but not walking past the casket during the viewing portion of the service. It’s a solid tactic and one that I strongly recommend everyone employ. Remember the person for who they were when they were still operating on this plane and skip that one last look. His position on weddings is less defensible. He skips those because it’s the bride’s day and he doesn’t want to upstage her. I am not the man’s personal assistant. I do not know what weddings he’s being invited to. During that portion of “Pardon My Take,” he discussed turning down his invite to the recent low-key event at which Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce tied the knot. If he skips weddings for non-famous people to avoid upstaging the bride, he’s got a point. It’s fairly easy to imagine the bride having a less-than-stellar day because the guests, at least the male guests, spent more time trying to get autographs and pictures with Chuck rather than focusing on her and the solemn joining of two into one. When the bride is Taylor Swift, though? Yeah, he’s not going to steal any of her sparkle. It is important to note that when his daughter Christiana wed in 2021, Barkley did walk her down the aisle. Whether or not she shares her father’s views on weddings and funerals is unknown. What is known, though, is that the Round Mound of Rebound is at least honest when RSVPing rather than making up excuses, and in an increasingly discourteous world, that’s worth something. But, Charles, if you’re reading this, please send a gift from the registry for the happy celebrations. Or flowers for celebrations that end with the phrase “of life.” You may not understand how the internet works, but there are people you can call to handle such tasks for you. *** Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin’ Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to here. You can also follow him on X: @rcromwell4