Last month, two young paddleboarders found themselves stranded in the ocean, pushed 2,000 feet from the shore by strong winds and currents. Thanks to the deployment of a drone, rescuers kept an eye on them the whole time and safely brought them aboard a rescue boat within minutes.

In North Carolina, the Oak Island Fire Department is one of a few in the country using drone technology for ocean rescues. Firefighter-turned-drone pilot Sean Barry explained the drone’s capabilities as it was demonstrated on a windy day. 

“This drone is capable of flying in all types of weather and environments,” Barry said. 

Equipped with a camera that can switch between modes — including infrared to spot people in distress — responders can communicate instructions through a speaker. It also can carry life-preserving equipment.

The device is activated by a CO2 cartridge when it comes in contact with water. Once triggered, it inflates into a long tube, approximately 26 inches long, providing distressed swimmers something to hold on to.

In a real-life rescue, after a 911 call from shore, the drone spotted a swimmer in distress. It released two floating tubes, providing the swimmer with buoyancy until help arrived.

Like many coastal communities, Oak Island’s population can swell from about 10,000 to 50,000 during the summer tourist season. Riptides, which are hard to detect on the surface, can happen at any time.

Every year, about 100 people die due to rip currents on U.S. beaches. More than 80% of beach rescues involve rip currents, if you’re caught in one, rescuers advise to not panic or try to fight it, but try to float or swim parallel to the coastline to get out of the current.

Oak Island Fire Chief Lee Price noted that many people underestimate the force of rip currents.

“People are, ‘Oh, I’m a good swimmer. I’m gonna go out there,’ and then they get in trouble,” Price said.

For Price, the benefit of drones isn’t just faster response times but also keeping rescuers safe. Through the camera and speaker, they can determine if someone isn’t in distress.

Price said many people might not be aware of it. 

“It’s like anything as technology advances, it takes a little bit for everybody to catch up and get used to it,” said Price.

In a demonstration, Barry showed how the drone can bring a safety rope to a swimmer while rescuers prepare to pull the swimmer to shore.

“The speed and accuracy that this gives you … rapid deployment, speed, accuracy, and safety overall,” Price said. “Not just safety for the victim, but safety for our responders.”

Manuel Bojorquez

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Manuel Bojorquez is a CBS News national correspondent based in Miami. He joined CBS News in 2012 as a Dallas-based correspondent and was promoted to national correspondent for the network’s Miami bureau in January 2017.

A blockchain entrepreneur, a cinematographer, a polar adventurer and a robotics researcher plan to fly around Earth’s poles aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule by the end of the year, becoming the first humans to observe the ice caps and extreme polar environments from orbit, SpaceX announced Monday.

The historic flight, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will be commanded by Chun Wang, a wealthy bitcoin pioneer who founded f2pool and stakefish, “which are among the largest Bitcoin mining pools and Ethereum staking providers,” the crew’s website says.

“Wang aims to use the mission to highlight the crew’s explorational spirit, bring a sense of wonder and curiosity to the larger public and highlight how technology can help push the boundaries of exploration of Earth and through the mission’s research,” SpaceX said on its website.

Wang’s crewmates are Norwegian cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen, Australian adventurer Eric Philips and Rabea Rogge, a German robotics researcher. All four have an interest in extreme polar environments and plan to carry out related research and photography from orbit.

The mission, known as “Fram2” in honor of a Norwegian ship used to explore both the Arctic and Antarctic regions, will last three to five days and fly at altitudes between about 265 and 280 miles.

“This looks like a cool & well thought out mission. I wish the @framonauts the best on this epic exploration adventure!” tweeted Jared Isaacman, the billionaire philanthropist who charted the first private SpaceX mission — Inspiration4 — and who plans to blast off on a second flight — Polaris Dawn — later this month.

The flights “showcase what commercial missions can achieve thanks to @SpaceX’s reusability and NASA’s vision with the commercial crew program,” Isaacman said. “All just small steps towards unlocking the last great frontier.”

Like the Inspiration4 mission before them, Wang and his crewmates will fly in a Crew Dragon equipped with a transparent cupola giving them a picture-window view of Earth below and deep space beyond.

No astronauts or cosmonauts have ever viewed Earth from the vantage point of a polar orbit, one tilted, or inclined, 90 degrees to the equator. Such orbits are favored by spy satellites, weather stations and commercial photo-reconnaissance satellites because they fly over the entire planet as it rotates beneath them.

The high-inclination record for piloted flight was set in the early 1960s by Soviet Vostok spacecraft launched into orbits inclined 65 degrees. The U.S. record was set by a space shuttle mission launched in 1990 that carried out a classified military mission in an orbit tilted 62 degrees with respect to the equator.

The International Space Station never flies beyond 51.6 degrees north and south latitude. NASA planned to launch a space shuttle on a classified military mission around the poles in 1986, but the flight was canceled in the wake of the Challenger disaster.

“The North and South Poles are invisible to astronauts on the International Space Station, as well as to all previous human spaceflight missions except for the Apollo lunar missions but only from far away,” the Fram2 website says. “This new flight trajectory will unlock new possibilities for human spaceflight.”

SpaceX has launched 13 piloted missions carrying 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and private citizens to orbit in nine NASA flights to the space station, three commercial visits to the lab and the Inspiration4 mission chartered by Isaacman.

Isaacman and three crewmates plan to blast off Aug. 26 on another fully commercial flight, this one featuring the first civilian spacewalks. NASA plans to launch its next Crew Dragon flight to the space station around Sept. 24.

The saga of the large invasive Joro spiders that parachute through the air isn’t over. A new study found that the critters with 4-inch-long legs are truly built differently, with hearts that are able to withstand the loud and bustling noises of big cities. 

University of Georgia researcher Andy Davis made the discovery while conducting cardiac stress tests on Joro spiders and their cousin, the golden silk spider. The research, published in Physiological Entomology on Monday, found that the species know how to chill out and stay calm when put in heart rate-raising situations. 

The Joro spider, also known as Trichonephila clavata, “is known for making webs not only in natural green spaces but also in cities and towns, often on buildings and human dwellings,” the study says. “The stress reactions of Trichonephila spiders could be characterized as ‘even-tempered,’ which may factor into their ability to live in habitats with frequent disturbances.”

Davis and his team evaluated the physiological reactions of Joro spiders and golden silk spiders and compared them to those of another pair of similarly-sized species that are related to each other, garden spiders and banded garden spiders. 

Researchers recorded baseline heart rates of the arachnids while they were resting and inactive, and then recorded their heart rates after restraining them under electronic sensors for 10 minutes.

“When subjected to the novel restraint stress, heart rates of all spider species became elevated, which is an expected reaction that other spider researchers have noted,” the study says. “However, there were differences among species in the magnitude of this elevation, and of how the responses progressed during the 10 min period.”

The garden spiders, both of which belong to the Argiope genus, showed “distinct periods of fluctuations during the restraint” and were even found to struggle against the restraints, researchers said. Joro spiders and their golden silk cousins, on the other hand, were “less variable and more even.” They were also observed entering a state of thanatosis for more than an hour after stressors, meaning they essentially froze up during that time. 

The tests “are beginning to paint a picture of how the invasive Joro spider and its cousin, the golden silk spider, have a unique way of tolerating novel stressors, which may be the reason for their ability to occupy anthropogenic landscapes,” researchers said, noting that other spider species in their family line could share this trait, although that would need further investigation.

Joro spiders have been making headlines for years as they continue to spread up the East Coast. Originally from Asia, the spiders are believed to have been first introduced to north Georgia around 2010. They have since been found across nearly a dozen other states. In December, Davis told The New York Times that New York is “right in the middle of where they like to be.” It’s been predicted that they could pop up in the New York tri-state area this summer, although no reports of such have been made.

“They seem to be OK with living in a city,” he told the paper, adding that they’ve been seen hanging out on street lamps and telephone poles, where “regular spiders wouldn’t be caught dead in.” 

The latest findings may not definitively prove that the spiders’ relaxed demeanor is the reason for “their affinity for urban settings,” the study says, adding that more research is needed. It does, however, bolster Davis’ research from February, which also found that Joro spiders don’t necessarily mind the increased noise and vibrations that come with city living. 

“These Joro webs are everywhere in the fall, including right next to busy roads, and the spiders seem to be able to make a living there. For some reason, these spiders seem urban tolerant,” Davis said of his earlier research. 

UGA student and co-author of that study, Alexa Schultz, agreed, saying, “It looks like Joro spiders are not going to shy away from building a web under a stoplight or an area where you wouldn’t imagine a spider to be.” 

But don’t worry — while the spiders are venomous, they don’t pose a danger to humans, although they may elevate your heart rate more than you elevate theirs.  

Reykjavik — Icelandic authorities said Friday that a second fissure had formed on the southwestern Reykjanes peninsula after lava started spewing forth for the sixth time in the region since December. After weeks of warnings, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said Thursday that a new eruption had started at 9:26 p.m. (5:26 p.m. Eastern) that evening, following a series of earthquakes.

Video showed orange lava bursting out of a long fissure, which the IMO estimated to be 2.4 miles.

Early Friday, the IMO announced on social media that a second fissure had opened up to the north of the original one, but it said the volcanic activity mostly remained on the first crack.

The weather agency, which also monitors geological events, had previously reported that there was “considerable seismic activity” at the northern end of the fissure.

About an hour after the eruption started an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.1 was recorded in the area.

This is the sixth eruption to hit the area since December, coming just two months after the end of a previous eruption that lasted more than three weeks.

The chief of police of the Sudurnes region, Ulfar Ludviksson, told Icelandic media that the evacuation of the nearby fishing village of Grindavik had gone well.

He added that 22 or 23 houses in the village were currently occupied. Most of Grindavik’s 4,000 residents had evacuated in November, prior to a December eruption, and while residents have since been allowed to return in between eruptions, only a few have opted to stay overnight.

According to the IMO, there was no lava flowing towards Grindavik in the latest eruption.

Iceland’s famed Blue Lagoon thermal spa tourist attraction said late Thursday that it had taken “the precautionary measure of evacuating and temporarily closing all our operational units.”

The Reykjanes peninsula had not experienced an eruption for eight centuries until March 2021. Further eruptions occurred in August 2022 and in July and December 2023, leading volcanologists to warn that a new era of seismic activity had begun in the region.

Iceland is home to 33 active volcano systems, the highest number in Europe. It straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a crack in the ocean floor separating the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

A team of paleontologists found matching dinosaur footprints on what are now two different continents, separated by thousands of miles of ocean.

The footprints, dating back to the Early Cretaceous period, were found in Brazil and in Cameroon, researchers wrote in a study published Monday by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science. The discovery shows where land-dwelling dinosaurs were able to cross freely between South America and Africa before the two continents split apart millions of years ago. 

Land shifts

The more than 260 footprints researchers studied were found impressed into mud and silt along ancient rivers and lakes, with more than 3,700 miles separating the ones in South America and Africa, according to the study. Paleontologists determined they were similar in age, shape and in geological and plate tectonic contexts.

Dinosaurs made the tracks 120 million years ago on a single supercontinent known as Gondwana, which had broken off from the larger landmass of Pangea — once the world’s only continent, Southern Methodist University paleontologist Louis Jacobs said. 

“One of the youngest and narrowest geological connections between Africa and South America was the elbow of northeastern Brazil nestled against what is now the coast of Cameroon along the Gulf of Guinea,” Jacobs, the lead study author, said. “The two continents were continuous along that narrow stretch, so that animals on either side of that connection could potentially move across it.”

The continents now known as Africa and South America started to split around 140 million years ago, researchers said. The south Atlantic Ocean eventually filled the void. 

Basins formed as the continents pulled apart; rivers flowed and lakes formed in those basins, Jacobs said. The basins where the footprints were discovered can be found on both sides of the split.  

What we know about the dinosaurs 

Most of the footprints were made by three-toed theropods, a group of carnivorous dinosaurs, researchers said. There were also prints left behind by sauropods or ornithischians.

“Plants fed the herbivores and supported a food chain,” Jacobs said. “Muddy sediments left by the rivers and lakes contain dinosaur footprints, including those of meat-eaters, documenting that these river valleys could provide specific avenues for life to travel across the continents 120 million years ago.”