This was the last flight of SpaceX's V2 Starship design. Version 3 arrives next year. SpaceX closed a troubled but instructive chapter in its Starship rocket program Monday with a near-perfect test flight that carried the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world from South Texas to the Indian Ocean. The rocket's 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines roared to life at 6:23 pm CDT (7:23 pm EDT; 23:23 UTC), throttling up to generate some 16.7 million pounds of thrust, by a large measure more powerful than any rocket before Starship. Moments later, the 404-foot-tall (123-meter) rocket began a vertical climb away from SpaceX's test site in Starbase, Texas, near the US-Mexico border.

A Japanese-owned commercial tanker was attacked by a drone launched from Iran in the Indian Ocean on Saturday, causing a fire but leaving no one injured, the U.S. Department of Defense said. The Liberian-flagged, Netherlands-operated chemical tanker was struck about 370 kilometers off India "by a one-way attack drone fired from Iran," the Pentagon said in a statement, adding the fire on board has been extinguished. The Associated Press reported the tanker had ties with Israel, citing a British maritime security firm. The tanker, which was carrying 20 Indians and one Vietnamese, had left Saudi Arabia on Tuesday and was heading to Mangalore, southwestern India, according to the U.S. Defense Department and the Indian Coast Guard. But the vessel decided to head to Mumbai for repairs and to have the damage assessed with the assistance of the Indian Coast Guard.

A suspected drone attack has hit a container ship owned by an Israeli businessman in the Indian Ocean, according to a United States defence official. The attack was likely carried out using an Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone on Friday, an unnamed US defence official told The Associated Press news agency on Saturday. Pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen also reported that an Israeli ship had been targeted in the Indian Ocean. The drone targeted the Malta-flagged, French-operated CMA CGM Symi vessel while in international waters. The ship reportedly suffered damage after the drone exploded, but no crew members were injured.

Over the weekend, debris from an out-of-control Chinese rocket crashed to Earth over the Indian and Pacific oceans. There had been fears that pieces of the 23-tonne Long March 5B booster could come down over a populated area, but experts had said the probability of this was extremely low. Nevertheless, NASA hit out at China by accusing Beijing of not sharing the'specific trajectory information' needed to calculate where possible debris might fall. Elsewhere at the weekend, a 10ft (3m) piece of space junk – thought to be from one of Elon Musk's spacecrafts – crashed into a farmer's property in Australia at around 15,500mph (25,000km/h). The object, believed to be part of the SpaceX Crew-1 craft, was found in a sheep paddock by a farmer living on a large property in the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales.

As fishermen have noticed this behaviour, they have used both natural and man-made floating objects, or drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (dFADs), as a tool for finding and catching tropical tunas. The use of dFADs in tuna purse-seine fisheries has gradually increased since the 1980s to the present time, where vessels using dFADs now contribute to 36% of the world's total tropical tuna catch (Davies et al., 2014; Wain et al., 2021; ISSF, 2021). These widespread changes have highlighted the need to better understand the potential ecological effects of dFADs on tuna ecology and the marine environment, in order to ensure adequate management of fish stocks and dFAD usage. Indeed, both the dynamics of how and why tuna associate to dFADs are still poorly understood. Regarding the reasons behind tuna aggregation to dFADs, a number of hypotheses have been suggested (Fréon and Dagorn, 2000; Dempster and Taquet, 2004; Castro et al., 2002). Of these, two have gained traction: the "meeting-point" hypothesis, which considers that dFADs facilitate the encounter between individuals or schools, thus constituting larger schools that could benefit survival rates (Castro et al., 2002); and the "indicator-log" hypothesis, by which tunas may be safeguarding the survival of their eggs, larvae and juvenile stages by using drifting objects as indicators of areas where plankton and food is readily available (Hall et al., 1992). This scenario has led some authors to postulate that man-made dFADs could have detrimental effects on tuna populations by creating a so-called "ecological trap" which would lead tuna to remain associated to dFADs even as these drift into areas that could negatively affect the tuna's behaviour and biology (Marsac et al., 2000; Hallier and Gaertner, 2008). To the best of our knowledge, there is yet no sufficient evidence to either confirm or reject this hypothesis (see Dagorn et al. (2012) and references therein). Given the concerns around the widespread use of dFADs in tuna fisheries today, it is not surprising that a considerable amount of research has been devoted to characterizing the dynamics at play when tunas aggregate to dFADs.

NEW DELHI – Japan and India agreed Saturday to conduct their first joint fighter aircraft exercise in Japan as part of efforts to promote bilateral security cooperation in the face of China's military buildup and regional assertiveness. In inaugural "two-plus-two" security talks, the nations' foreign and defense ministers also welcomed the significant progress in negotiations for a pact that would allow the sharing of defense capabilities and supplies including fuel and ammunition. They called for a speedy conclusion to the acquisition and cross-servicing agreement (ACSA), according to a joint statement issued after the talks in New Delhi. The two governments are planning to sign the deal when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits India for talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in mid-December, according to Japanese officials. Tokyo and New Delhi aim to have a joint exercise involving fighter jets from the Air Self-Defense Force and the Indian Air Force next year, the officials said.

The high seas are probably the most lawless place left on Earth. They're a portal back in time to the way the world looked for most of our history: fierce and open competition for resources and contested territories. Pirating continues to be a way to make a living. It's not a complete free-for-all--most countries require registration of fishing vessels and enforce environmental protocols. Cooperative agreements between countries oversee fisheries in international waters.

The renewed search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 entered its next phase as the initial search of 3,160 sq. Texas-based Ocean Infinity -- which has signed a "no cure, no fee" deal with the Malaysian government to find the jetliner -- is scouring a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean, where the ill-fated plane is believed to have gone down. The second leg of the search includes scouring through an area of the 9,652 sq. According to a report, citing an update posted Tuesday by Malaysia's MH370 Response Team, Ocean Infinity's search ship, the Seabed Constructor, was able to launch all eight of its autonomous underwater vehicles following favorable weather conditions. Earlier, the search operation was hampered due to bad weather.

NEW YORK – The foreign ministers of Japan, the United States and India agreed Monday in New York to work together to develop strategically important ports and other infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region, apparently seeking to balance China's bid to strengthen its regional influence. Foreign Minister Taro Kono said he, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj "completely agreed to coordinate with each other toward the realization of a free and open Indo-Pacific." They agreed to work to spread and establish their shared basic values of the rule of law and the freedom of navigation and overflight in the region, Foreign Ministry officials said. The ministers affirmed that they will strengthen connectivity in the region through investment in infrastructure and work together to assist strategically important coastal nations in the region with maritime capacity-building, centering on key ports. According to the U.S. State Department, the ministers "discussed the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific region underpinned by a resilient, rules-based architecture that enables every nation to prosper."

The mystery behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airline Flight MH370 continues with no closure for the families of 239 people who were on board the jet. On Monday, Malaysia Airline's CEO Peter Bellew told The Australian newspaper that advances in science and technology, including artificial intelligence, can help pinpoint the resting place of the missing jet. The Boeing 777-200 went missing March 8, 2014, while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. After over three years of search in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean where the plane was believed to have crashed, no concrete clues as to what happened to the jet have been yielded. The multimillion-dollar hunt for MH370 was suspended this year after search vessels failed to find it.