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Floods, Mudslides Kill 2 in Southwest China, Destroy Homes, Bridge

A drone view shows the aftermath of a landslide in Zhoumensi town after heavy rainfall brought by remnants of Typhoon Gaemi in Zixing, Hunan province, China July 31, 2024. cnsphoto via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
A drone view shows the aftermath of a landslide in Zhoumensi town after heavy rainfall brought by remnants of Typhoon Gaemi in Zixing, Hunan province, China July 31, 2024. cnsphoto via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
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Floods, Mudslides Kill 2 in Southwest China, Destroy Homes, Bridge

A drone view shows the aftermath of a landslide in Zhoumensi town after heavy rainfall brought by remnants of Typhoon Gaemi in Zixing, Hunan province, China July 31, 2024. cnsphoto via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
A drone view shows the aftermath of a landslide in Zhoumensi town after heavy rainfall brought by remnants of Typhoon Gaemi in Zixing, Hunan province, China July 31, 2024. cnsphoto via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights

Floods and mudslides destroyed village homes and part of a highway in China's southwestern province of Sichuan on Saturday, killing at least two people and leaving 17 missing in two incidents, state media reported on Saturday.

Overnight in Kangding, a mountainous region in Sichuan's western highlands, mudslides took down some homes in a village, killing two, while 12 were missing, national broadcaster CCTV reported.

A bridge connecting two tunnels on an expressway linking Kangding and Ya'an collapsed on Saturday morning, causing three vehicles to fall off the highway. One of the six passengers has been rescued, CCTV said. It did not specify whether they had fallen off the bridge.

According to Reuters, China has been roiled by record rain and heatwaves this summer as scientists warn of more extreme weather fuelled by climate change. In the past decade, Sichuan and Hunan in the south have suffered the most damage from storms and floods, reporting cumulative economic losses of more than 100 billion yuan ($14 billion) each, according to some estimates.

In Zixing, a city in Hunan province, 30 residents died after Typhoon Gaemi lashed the region with record rains in late July. Local officials said on Friday that 35 people were still missing.

Across Hunan, the rains induced by China's most powerful typhoon so far this year have affected 1.15 million people and caused direct economic losses of about 6 billion yuan.

A highway bridge collapse triggered by flash floods in the northwestern province of Shaanxi killed 38 people, local authorities said on Friday in their latest tally of fatalities.

Despite search and rescue work in the past two weeks, 24 people remained missing after the Shaanxi bridge collapse, which plunged 25 vehicles into a river.

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2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
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2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH

In a two-for-one moonshot, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers Wednesday for US and Japanese companies looking to jumpstart business on Earth’s dusty sidekick.
The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a stream of private spacecraft aiming for the moon, The Associated Press reported. They shared the ride to save money but parted company an hour into the flight exactly as planned, taking separate roundabout routes for the monthslong journey.
It’s take 2 for the Tokyo-based ispace, whose first lander crashed into the moon two years ago. This time, it has a rover on board with a scoop to gather up lunar dirt for study and plans to test potential food and water sources for future explorers.
Lunar newcomer Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is flying 10 experiments for NASA, including a vacuum to gather dirt, a drill to measure the temperature below the surface and a device that could be used by future moonwalkers to keep the sharp, abrasive particles off their spacesuits and equipment.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost — named after a species of US Southeastern fireflies — should reach the moon first. The 6-foot-6-inches-tall (2-meter-tall) lander will attempt a touchdown in early March at Mare Crisium, a volcanic plain in the northern latitudes.
The slightly bigger ispace lander named Resilience will take four to five months to get there, targeting a touchdown in late May or early June at Mare Frigoris, even farther north on the moon’s near side.
“We don’t think this is a race. Some people say ‘race to the moon,’ but it’s not about the speed,” ispace’s founder CEO Takeshi Hakamada said this week from Cape Canaveral.
Both Hakamada and Firefly CEO Jason Kim acknowledge the challenges still ahead, given the wreckage littering the lunar landscape. Only five countries have successfully placed spacecraft on the moon since the 1960s: the former Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan.
“We’ve done everything we can on the design and the engineering,” Kim said. Even so, he pinned an Irish shamrock to his jacket lapel Tuesday night for good luck.
The US remains the only one to have landed astronauts. NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo, aims to get astronauts back on the moon by the end of the decade.
Before that can happen, “we’re sending a lot of science and a lot of technology ahead of time to prepare for that,” NASA's science mission chief Nicky Fox said on the eve of launch.
If acing their respective touchdowns, both spacecraft will spend two weeks operating in constant daylight, shutting down once darkness hits.
Once lowered onto the lunar surface, ispace’s 11-pound (5-kilogram) rover will stay near the lander, traveling up to hundreds of yards (meters) in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. The rover has its own special delivery to drop off on the lunar dust: a toy-size red house designed by a Swedish artist.
NASA is paying $101 million to Firefly for the mission and another $44 million for the experiments. Hakamada declined to divulge the cost of ispace’s rebooted mission with six experiments, saying it's less than the first mission that topped $100 million.
Coming up by the end of February is the second moonshot for NASA by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. Last year, the company achieved the first US lunar touchdown in more than a half-century, landing sideways near the south pole but still managing to operate.