Orlando Sentinel

A suspected bat bite turned into a $6,000 hospital bill for a Seminole County, Florida, woman. Worried she may have been exposed to rabies, Caroline Ford sought treatment from AdventHealth Altamonte Springs. She called her insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross, and expected she’d need to pay about $600 based on her conversation over the phone. Rabies is fatal if left untreated. A regimen of immune globulin and four vaccination shots over two weeks is lifesaving if administered quickly after exposure to the deadly disease. “With rabies, there are no second chances,” she said. “That’s why I decid......

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The Daytona 500 was postponed until 4 p.m. Monday due to inclement weather for just the third time in the illustrious 66-year history of NASCAR’s showcase event. Sunday morning’s decision signaled that NASCAR officials wanted to avoid fans having to play the waiting game on Florida’s Surf Coast. Previously, bad weather — including heavy rains or even tornado warnings — had created multiple-hour delays, forced crowds of more than 100,000 to seek shelter, wait out storms and return for the race. Fans travel long distances in many cases and spend several days in anticipation......

ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA was riding a high after the overall success of Artemis I when the uncrewed rocket made a test run to the moon and back in 2022, so the message remained full steam ahead to push for a crewed Artemis II flight in 2024 and the return of humans to the moon in 2025. But under the surface were issues, and the sheen of success hit reality, prompting NASA to delay Artemis’ first human spaceflight until no earlier than September 2025, and then pushing the moon landing until at least one year later. A big driver of that delay was a NASA-driven, lessons-learned initiative that is clo......

ORLANDO, Fla. — While NASA is rooting for SpaceX to achieve Starship success so it can land humans on the moon, the U.S. military has plans of their own for the massive rocket that could include launches from Florida’s Space Coast. Elon Musk’s next-generation rocket currently in development at SpaceX’s southeast Texas facilities is gearing up for its third suborbital test flight as soon as this month after its first two ended in explosions last year. It’s part of the company’s long-term plans for a completely reusable spacecraft with more payload capacity into space than any other rocket ever.......

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — The first human spaceflight of the year is headed home as the four crew of the Axiom Space Ax-3 mission climbed aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom and departed the International Space Station on Wednesday heading for a planned Friday morning splashdown offFlorida’s coast. The astronauts spent nearly 18 days docked to the ISS after launching from KSC on Jan. 18 and arriving two days later. On board are Axiom chief astronaut and mission commander Michael López-Alegría along with Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, Alper Gezeravcı of Turkey and European Space Agency ......