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Chinese Cities Suspend Schools, Cancel Flights ahead of Super Typhoon Yagi

A man looks up on a promenade at Victoria harbor in Hong Kong on September 5, 2024, as super typhoon Yagi tracked across the South China Sea towards the southern China coast. (Photo by Dale DE LA REY / AFP)
A man looks up on a promenade at Victoria harbor in Hong Kong on September 5, 2024, as super typhoon Yagi tracked across the South China Sea towards the southern China coast. (Photo by Dale DE LA REY / AFP)
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Chinese Cities Suspend Schools, Cancel Flights ahead of Super Typhoon Yagi

A man looks up on a promenade at Victoria harbor in Hong Kong on September 5, 2024, as super typhoon Yagi tracked across the South China Sea towards the southern China coast. (Photo by Dale DE LA REY / AFP)
A man looks up on a promenade at Victoria harbor in Hong Kong on September 5, 2024, as super typhoon Yagi tracked across the South China Sea towards the southern China coast. (Photo by Dale DE LA REY / AFP)

Cities in southern China suspended schools and canceled some flights on Thursday, as tropical storm Yagi strengthened into a super typhoon and barreled straight for the holiday island province of Hainan.
Yagi triggered floods and landslides on the main Philippine island of Luzon this week, leaving at least 13 dead, according to official figures.
The tropical storm intensified into a super typhoon as it tracked west across the South China Sea, China's Xinhua news agency said, packing winds of up to 209 kilometers (130 miles) per hour as it headed for Hainan.
"Hainan upgraded its emergency response to Yagi to the highest level at 11:30 am Thursday, according to the provincial disaster management authority," Xinhua said.
The typhoon is expected to make landfall on Friday afternoon in either Hainan or neighboring Guangdong, AFP said.
Work, school and local transport services were suspended from Thursday noon (0400 GMT) in Haikou, Hainan's capital.
In Hong Kong, which Yagi is expected to bypass, the weather observatory said it will issue the city's third-highest typhoon warning at 6:20 pm (1020 GMT), limiting public transport across the finance hub.
Classes at kindergarten and special schools in Hong Kong were suspended Thursday, while budget airline Hong Kong Express said six flights have been rescheduled.
Greater Bay Airlines said they would cancel four flights and reschedule two more due to the weather.
"Yagi will remain at super typhoon intensity and skirt around 300 kilometers (186 miles) to the southwest of Hong Kong tomorrow morning," the observatory said.
"Gale winds associated with Yagi are expected to affect the vicinity of the Pearl River Estuary tonight and tomorrow morning."
After southern China, Yagi will move towards Vietnam, on course to hit the northern and north-central regions around the famed UNESCO heritage site Halong Bay.
Vietnam's meteorological agency issued a storm warning on Thursday, and the government mobilized more than 2,700 military personnel for storm response.
Coastal provinces are planning a sailing ban on Friday, while Vietnam's mountainous provinces were ordered to prepare rescue vehicles.

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Varieties

SpaceX-Polaris Crew Exits Capsule for First Private Spacewalk

Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
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SpaceX-Polaris Crew Exits Capsule for First Private Spacewalk

Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

A crew of four aboard a SpaceX capsule embarked on the world's first private spacewalk on Thursday, as an astronaut eased out of the Crew Dragon spacecraft on a tether into the vacuum of space, hundreds of miles from Earth.

Billionaire Jared Isaacman, 41, exited first about 6:52 a.m. ET (1052 GMT). After he returned a few minutes later, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, 30, was scheduled to take her turn in space, all their maneuvers streaming live on the company's website, Reuters reported.

"Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," Isaacman said after emerging from the spacecraft, the planet glittering in half shadow below him.

Before the spacewalk began, the capsule was completely depressurized, with the whole crew relying on their slim, SpaceX-developed spacesuits for oxygen, provided via an umbilical connection to Crew Dragon.

The spacewalk was scheduled to last only about 30 minutes, but the procedures to prepare for it and to finish it safely last about two hours. It was meant to test the new spacesuit designs and procedures for the capsule, among other things.

Isaacman, Gillis, Scott Poteet, 50, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, 38, had been orbiting Earth aboard Crew Dragon since Tuesday's pre-dawn launch from Florida of the Polaris Dawn mission. Menon and Poteet remained inside the spacecraft during the spacewalk.

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It is the Elon Musk-led company's latest and riskiest bid to push the boundaries of commercial spaceflight.

Isaacman, a pilot and the billionaire founder of electronic payments company Shift4 (FOUR.N), opens new tab, is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

He has declined to say how much he is paying, but the missions are likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, based on Crew Dragon's price of roughly $55 million a seat for other flights.

-FARTHEST SINCE APOLLO

Throughout Wednesday, the craft circled Earth at least six times in an oval orbit as shallow as 190 km (118 miles) and stretching out as far as 1,400 km (870 miles), the farthest in space that humans have traveled since the last US Apollo mission in 1972.

The gumdrop-shaped spacecraft then began to lower its orbit into a peak 700-km (435-mile) position and adjust cabin pressure to ready for the spacewalk, formally called Extravehicular Activity (EVA), the Polaris program said on social media on Wednesday.

"The crew also spent a few hours demonstrating the suit’s pressurized mobility, verifying positions and accessibility in microgravity along with preparing the cabin for the EVA," it said.

Only government astronauts with several years of training have done spacewalks in the past.

There have been roughly 270 on the International Space Station (ISS) since it was set up in 2000, and 16 by Chinese astronauts on Beijing's Tiangong space station.

The Polaris crew has spent 2-1/2 years training with SpaceX mission simulations and "experiential learning" in challenging, uncomfortable environments, said Poteet.

A record 19 astronauts are now in orbit, after Russia's Soyuz MS-26 mission ferried two cosmonauts and a US astronaut to the International Space Station on Wednesday, taking its headcount to 12.

Three Chinese astronauts are aboard the Tiangong space station.

The first US spacewalk in 1965, aboard a Gemini capsule, used a similar procedure to the one planned for Polaris Dawn: the capsule was depressurized, the hatch opened, and a spacesuited astronaut ventured outside on a tether.

Since 2001, Crew Dragon, the only US vehicle capable of reliably putting humans in orbit and returning them to Earth, has flown more than a dozen astronaut missions, mainly for NASA.

The agency seeded development of the capsule under a program meant to establish commercial, privately-built US vehicles capable of ferrying astronauts with the ISS.

Also developed under that program was Boeing's Starliner capsule, but it is farther behind.

Starliner launched its first astronauts to the ISS in June in a troubled test mission that ended this month with the capsule returning empty, leaving its crew on the space station for a Crew Dragon capsule to fetch next year.