WASHINGTON, Sept 30: The SpaceX crew that will ferry back two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station docked with the orbiting laboratory Sunday, a live stream of the mission showed.

The Falcon 9 rocket took off at 1:17 pm (1717 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday, with the Crew-9 mission on a Dragon spacecraft making contact with the ISS at 5:30 pm Sunday.

After docking was completed, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov boarded the station just after 7:00 pm, embracing their floating colleagues on the space station.

"What a fabulous day it was today," NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy said at a news conference.

When Hague and Gorbunov return from the space station in February, they will bring back two space veterans -- Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams -- whose stay on the ISS was prolonged for months due to problems with their Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft.

The newly developed Starliner was making its first crewed flight when it delivered Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in June.

They were supposed to be there for only an eight-day stay, but after problems with the Starliner's propulsion system emerged during the flight there, NASA was forced to weigh a radical change in plans.

After weeks of intensive tests on the Starliner's reliability, the space agency finally decided to return it to Earth without its crew, and to bring the two stranded astronauts back home on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission.

SpaceX, the private company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has been flying regular missions every six months to allow the rotation of ISS crews.

But the launch of Crew-9 was postponed from mid-August to late September to give NASA experts more time to evaluate the reliability of the Starliner and decide how to proceed.

It was then delayed a few more days by the destructive passage of Hurricane Helene, a powerful storm that roared into the opposite side of Florida on Thursday.

In total, Hague and Gorbunov will spend some five months on the ISS; and Wilmore and Williams, eight months.

In all, Crew-9 will conduct some 200 scientific experiments.

Apple iPhone 16 series launched with Apple Intelligence

NEW YORK, Sept 9: Apple has launched the new iPhone 16 series in India and other global markets.

The iPhone 16 comes with a starting price tag of $799 (around Rs 67,000), whereas the iPhone 16 Plus is priced at $899 (around Rs 75,500). The iPhone 16 Pro price starts at $999 (around Rs 83,870) for 128GB, and $1199 (around Rs 1 lakh) for iPhone 16 Pro Max for 256GB. These prices are for the US market.

In India, the iPhone 16 is priced at Rs 79,900 and the iPhone 16 Plus will be available at Rs 89,900. The iPhone 16 Pro, on the other hand, comes with a starting price tag of Rs 1,19,900 in India. The most premium, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, will cost you Rs 1,44900 in the Indian market.

The pre-order for the iPhone 16 series starts on September 13, at 5:30PM in India. The first sale will take place on September 20.

Apple has unveiled the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, made with "aerospace-grade aluminum" and featuring a new colour-infused backglass. The devices come in ultramarine, teal, pink, white, and black colours. The iPhone 16 has a 6.1-inch display, while the iPhone 16 Plus offers a larger 6.7-inch screen. Both models boast 2000nits of peak brightness and can dim to as low as 1nit in dark environments.

Apple has introduced the Action Button to the standard models as well, which allows users to quickly access features such as recording voice memos, identifying songs, or translating phrases. It can also be customised with shortcuts or used for in-app functionality, such as locking or unlocking a car via the FordPass app.

Additionally, the iPhone 16 comes with a new camera control feature that enables users to adjust settings by sliding a finger on the screen, located on the right side below the on/off switch.

The new camera control button has been added, flush to the surface and protected by sapphire glass. A single click opens the camera, a second click captures a photo, and holding it will start recording a video. There is also support for advanced touch gestures in the camera control, distinguishing between a full click and a lighter press. A lighter press offers a clean preview, aiding in framing the shot more accurately. Additionally, a new overlay provides quick access to essential camera functions like Zoom.

The iPhone 16 and its Plus model are powered by Apple's latest A18 chipset, which uses second-generation 3nm technology. The A18 chip comes with a 6-core CPU, featuring 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. According to Apple, the iPhone 16 offers up to 30 per cent faster performance compared to the A16 Bionic in the iPhone 15, and the chip also provides 17 per cent more system memory bandwidth.

The iPhone 16 now comes with a powerful 48-megapixel main camera, which combines 48MP and 12MP photos into a clearer 24MP image. It also has a 2x telephoto zoom option using the middle 12MP of the sensor, along with a faster f/1.6 aperture for better low-light shots.

You can shoot 4K60 video with Dolby Vision HDR, and the new 12MP ultra-wide camera has a larger aperture and bigger pixels, letting in 2.6x more light for brighter, sharper photos.

Apple says the iPhone 16 offers the equivalent of four camera lenses in one phone, and it can capture special Spatial Video and Photos using both its lenses.

One of the key highlights is the inclusion of Apple Intelligence in the standard iPhone 16 models. This AI-powered feature can understand and generate languages, images, and more, with Apple promising that data is never stored or shared, thanks to its private cloud computing and verifiable privacy promises.

With the iPhone 16 series, Apple is also improving productivity by summarising emails and prioritising notifications. Users can search Photos using descriptions like “Shani dancing in a red dress” or specific moments in videos. Siri will now offer step-by-step guidance, even if users fumble over words, and can be typed directly.

A new feature, Visual Intelligence, allows users to point their camera at objects like menus or event flyers to get details or add events to calendars. It can also identify dog breeds and more, keeping data private. Both Intelligence features will launch in US English initially, with more languages arriving next year.

Boeing's Starliner Spaceship Returns To Earth Without Astronauts

Sept 7: Boeing's beleaguered Starliner returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) without astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry E Wilmore.

The gumdrop-shaped capsule landed gently at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at approximately 0401 GMT (9:30 am), its descent slowed by parachutes and cushioned by airbags, having departed the ISS around six hours earlier.

After years of delays, Starliner launched in June for what was meant to be a roughly weeklong test mission -- a final shakedown before it could be certified to ferry crew to and from the orbital laboratory.

But unexpected thruster malfunctions and helium leaks on its way up derailed those plans, and NASA ultimately decided it was safer to bring Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back on a rival SpaceX Crew Dragon -- though they'll have to wait until February 2025.

The gumdrop-shaped capsule touched down softly at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at approximately 0401 GMT, its descent slowed by parachutes and cushioned by airbags, having departed the ISS around six hours earlier.

Ground teams reported hearing sonic booms as it streaked red hot across the night sky, having endured temperatures of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius) during atmospheric reentry.

A smooth, uneventful ride was seen as critical not only for salvaging some pride but also for Boeing's prospects of achieving certification in the future.

The century-old aerospace giant had carried out extensive ground testing aimed at replicating the technical issues the spaceship had experienced on its ascent and devised plans to prevent more problems.

With its reputation already battered by safety concerns affecting its passenger jets, Boeing made assurances in public and in private that it could be trusted to bring the astronauts home -- an assessment not shared by NASA.

"Boeing believed in the model that they had created that tried to predict the thruster degradation for the rest of the flight," Steve Stich, program manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, told reporters this week.

But "the NASA team, due to the uncertainty in the modeling, could not get comfortable with that," he added, characterizing the mood during meetings as "tense."