NASA released the crew’s first downlinked images Friday, 1 1/2 days into the first astronaut moonshot in more than half a century.

The first photo taken by commander Reid Wiseman shows a curved slice of Earth in one of the capsule’s windows. The second shows the entire globe with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds. A green aurora even glows, according to NASA.

“It’s great to think that with the exception of our four friends, all of us are represented in this image," said NASA's Lakiesha Hawkins, an exploration systems leader. She added the mission was going well.

As of late Friday afternoon, Wiseman and his crew were more than 110,000 miles (180,000 kilometers) from Earth and were quickly gaining on the moon with another 150,000 miles (240,000 kilometers) to go. They should reach their destination on Monday.

The three Americans and one Canadian will swing around the moon in their Orion capsule, hang a U-turn and then head straight back home without stopping. They fired Orion's main engine Thursday night that set them on their course.

After Mission Control shifted the position of their capsule, the entire Earth complete with northern lights filled their windows.

“It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks,” Wiseman said in a TV interview.

They're the first lunar travelers since Apollo 17 in 1972.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

But another unofficial face of the male-led church has emerged in American pop culture: digitally savvy, female influencers, often seen sporting athleisure, a giant soda in hand — and varying degrees of adherence to church teachings.

These influencers have found an enthusiastic audience across the country, curious about their faith and families. Some explain the tenets of what's widely known as the Mormon church, but others bring attention to the rules they often break — drinking alcohol, having premarital sex and in one high-profile instance, a “soft-swinging” scandal that birthed the hugely popular Hulu reality series, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”

ABC sought to capitalize on that interest by casting “Mormon Wives” star Taylor Frankie Paul in “The Bachelorette,” but recently had to scuttle the already filmed season after a video of a domestic violence incident surfaced.

These viral moments and “Mormon Wives” project a version of the faith that appears more progressive and lenient than church leadership and other Latter-day Saint influencers might like. “The internet really challenged the church’s ability to maintain its own narratives about itself,” said Nancy Ross, an associate professor at Utah Tech University who studies Mormon feminism.

Church says misrepresentation can have ‘real-life consequences’

The church has worked to distance itself from “Mormon Wives,” issuing a statement ahead of the first season’s premiere in 2024 without naming the show specifically. It said that some media portrayals of Latter-day Saint women resort to “stereotypes or gross misrepresentations that are in poor taste and have real-life consequences for people of faith.”

Camille N. Johnson, the president of the church’s Relief Society organization for women, said in an emailed statement that it’s important to seek out trusted sources of information about the church and its members in light of recent media attention.

“Millions of Latter-day Saint women around the world strive to live faith-filled lives grounded in a love for God and all of His children,” she said.

It would be impossible for the “Mormon Wives” cast to fully represent millions of women in the church. But they are not the only Latter-day Saint influencers online — nor are they the only ones with large followings.

Many are women in their early twenties who are married with young children. They post about young motherhood and experiences like buying a house before they turn 25. Lauren Yarro, a Latter-day Saint content creator and podcast host, said she can see this being a foreign image to some.

“Our culture is fascinating to an outsider, and I can understand why it would pull people in,” she said. “That Mormon timeline is intriguing to the rest of the world. I think most people innately have a desire for a happy marriage and a happy family life and we tend to create those in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Cultural fascination with the church endures

The beliefs and practices of church members have often been the subject of intense interest and scrutiny because of how they differ from other religions. Some of these include the belief that church leadership can receive revelations from God, or the practice of wearing garments under clothing that have deep religious significance.

Latter-day Saint influencers are not a new phenomenon, but they have found staying power by driving pop culture discourse and documenting their lifestyles. Many of them use content creation as a way to be stay-at-home parents while also generating income for their families. Several prominent creators live in Utah, the home of the church’s administrative and cultural hub, but there is a broad spectrum in terms of how much they bring their faith into their content.

While “Mormon Wives” and its controversial star, Paul, have been the recent high-profile drivers of public interest, the cast talks about the church only sparingly. Rosemary Avance, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University whose research includes religious identity and digital media, said “there’s so little reference” to the cast's faith once people are hooked on the show from its title. Many cast members have left the church or are no longer active in it.

“It was clearly a marketing strategy on behalf of the people putting these shows together. They think that’ll draw people in, and it does,” she said. “It’s not like you have these women sitting down talking about their secret temple practices that they’re not supposed to speak about, or challenging the authority of the church in some way. They’re just not talking about it.”

Avance sees parallels between now and about 15 years ago, when Republican Mitt Romney was running for president and “The Book of Mormon” debuted on Broadway. At the time, people wanted to know “what’s going on behind the scenes in Mormonism,” she said.

“People think they know a lot about it (Mormonism), and they’ve heard a lot about it because there’s prominent stories and prominent people who are well-known and those narratives are circulated, but it’s almost always second-, third-hand,” she said. “A lot of people don’t know any Mormons and may never meet a Mormon, or if they have, they don’t know it, and so it’s what you’ve heard and the preconceptions you think you have about Mormonism.”

‘Secret Lives’ draws mixed reaction from influencers

Creators like Yarro, who speak about their faith openly online and closely follow the church's teachings, said “Mormon Wives” does not feel representative of their experiences in the church or their lives in Utah. The Latter-day Saint content creators who spoke with The Associated Press emphasized they don't place fault on the individual cast members, but rather the production of the show and the way it Hollywoodizes their faith. Representatives for Hulu did not respond to a request for comment.

“The only thing I don’t like about what they do is sometimes they will play on things, twist things, use what is sacred to us as members of the church, and they’ll put it out and it feels like mockery to us,” said Shayla Egan, another Latter-day Saint content creator.

Some of the more devout members use their online platforms to respond to and course-correct more salacious social media content or “Mormon Wives” storylines they believe don't align with their understanding of church teachings or experiences.

Mimi Bascom, a Latter-day Saint content creator who says the mission behind her social media presence is to “show that members of the church are real people,” often makes videos responding to “Mormon Wives” clips. She finds the show to be a “net positive for our church” since it gives everyday members the opportunity to “share what we actually believe and get that more out there into the world,” she said.

Bascom, for one, had always prepared to serve on a mission but no longer could after getting married. Making content about the church has felt like a way she's “able to still live that out,” she said.

“We want to be missionaries and spread the good word of the Gospel,” she continued, “and so this is just another way we can do it.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

The so-called translunar ignition came 25 hours after liftoff, putting the three Americans and a Canadian on course for a lunar fly-around early next week. Their Orion capsule bolted out of orbit around Earth right on cue and chased after the moon nearly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am so, so excited to be able to tell you that for the first time since 1972 during Apollo 17, human beings have left Earth orbit,” NASA’s Lori Glaze announced at a news conference.

The engine firing was flawless, she noted.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said he and his crewmates were glued to the capsule's windows as they left Earth in the rearview mirror, taking in the “phenomenal” views. Their faces were pressed so tightly against the windows that they had to wipe them clean.

“Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of, and it’s your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the moon,” Hansen said.

NASA had the Artemis II crew stick close to home for a day to test their capsule’s life-support systems before clearing them for lunar departure.

Now committed to the moon, the Artemis II test flight is the opening act for NASA’s grand plans for a moon base and sustained lunar living.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Hansen will dash past the moon then hang a U-turn and zip straight home without stopping on land. In the process, they will go the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth, breaking the Apollo 13 distance record set in 1970. They also may become the fastest during their reentry at flight’s end on April 10.

History already made

Glover, Koch and Hansen already have made history as the first Black person, the first woman and the first non-U.S. citizen to launch to the moon. Apollo’s 24 lunar travelers were all white men.

“Trust us, you look amazing. You look beautiful," Glover said in a TV interview after beholding the globe from pole to pole. "And from up here you also look like one thing: homo sapiens as all of us no matter where you’re from or what you look like, we’re all one people.”

To set the mood for the day’s main event, Mission Control woke up the crew with John Legend’s “Green Light” featuring Andre 3000 and a medley of NASA teams cheering them.

“We are ready to go,” Glover said.

Mission Control gave the final go-ahead minutes before the critical engine firing, telling the astronauts that they were embarking on “humanity’s lunar homecoming arc” to bring them back to Earth. The capsule is relying on the gravity of Earth and the moon — termed a free-return lunar trajectory — to complete the round-trip figure-eight loop. The engine accelerated their capsule to more than 24,000 mph (38,000 kph) to shove them out of Earth's orbit.

“I’ve got to tell you, there is nothing normal about this," Wiseman said. "Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a herculean effort, and we are now just realizing the gravity of that.”

Flight director Judd Frieling said he and his team were all business while on duty but will likely reflect on the momentousness of it all once they go home.

“I suspect everybody understands that this is a once-in-a-lifetime moment," he told reporters.

Savoring views of Earth

The next major milestone will be Monday’s lunar flyby.

Orion will zoom 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) beyond the moon before turning back, providing unprecedented and illuminated views of the lunar far side, at least for human eyes. The cosmos will even treat the Artemis II astronauts to a total solar eclipse as the moon temporarily blocks the sun from their perspective.

While awaiting their orbital departure earlier Thursday, the astronauts savored the views of Earth from tens of thousands of miles high. Koch told Mission Control that they can make out the entire coastlines of continents and even the South Pole, her old stomping ground.

NASA is counting on the test flight to kickstart the entire Artemis program and lead to a moon landing by two astronauts in 2028.

The so-called lunar loo may need some design tweaks, however.

Orion's toilet malfunctioned as soon as the Artemis crew reached orbit Wednesday evening. Mission Control guided astronaut Koch through some plumbing tricks and she finally got it going, but not before having to resort to using contingency urine storage bags.

The urine pouches are serving double duty. Mission Control ordered the crew to fill a bunch of the empty bags with water from the capsule’s dispenser on Thursday. A valve issue arose with the dispenser following liftoff, and NASA wanted plenty of drinking water on hand for the crew in case the problem recurred. The astronauts used straws and syringes to fill the pouches with more than 2 gallons (7 liters) worth before pivoting to the moon.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

And it happened millions of years earlier than researchers thought.

More than 700 fossils found in southwestern China’s Yunnan province offer a window into life from 539 million years ago, during the waning end of the Ediacaran period, a time of simple but strange animals that lived two-dimensionally in the oceans, never going up or down, researchers said.

But a study in Thursday’s journal Science said many of the fossils in this trove are remnants of more complex animals that lived three-dimensional lives, traveling up through the water and eating. Those are traits that had been thought to only spring to life at least 4 million years later in the Cambrian period, during what was called the Cambrian explosion of complex and recognizable animal life.

“This really is the first window we have into how basically the modern animal-dominated biosphere was formed and developed and came through this weird Ediacaran transitional interlude,” said co-author and paleontologist Frankie Dunn of the Museum of Natural History at Oxford University. “We go from a two-dimensional world, and within the geological blink of an eye, animals have diversified. They’re everywhere. They’re doing everything, and they’re changing biogeochemical cycles. They’ve changed the world.”

The new finds were a short distance from a United Nations Chengjiang world natural heritage site for other fossils in an exposure along a roadside that’s not glamorous, but has different layers “where you can literally walk through time, geological time, in a landscape,” Dunn said. And one of those areas provides a “snapshot” where evolution brings forces together.

Complex animals with symmetry developed

In that spot, Dunn said, the group of fossils includes both bizarre examples of life that existed in earlier periods and disappeared, along with early examples of organisms that would evolve into modern animals. What's important in those more modern animals are that their bodies are mostly the same on the left and right.

Nearly all of the animal life on Earth now have similar features on left and right sides, as well as a head and an anus. Before the fossils discovered in China, scientists saw traces of this symmetric body type in fossil tracks, but not the critters themselves.

“Now we know what's making them because we have those fossils for the first time,” said study co-author Ross Anderson, also of Oxford's Museum of Natural History.

Help in settling ‘rocks versus clocks’ debate

Until now, there was a conflict in the field of paleontology. Genetic analysis of how fast traits mutated and evolved suggested that humans and starfish had their earliest common ancestor in the Ediacaran period, but the fossils or rocks weren't there to show it happening, Dunn said. It was called a debate of “rocks versus clocks,” she said.

“What our new fossil site tells us is that actually perhaps the rocks and the clocks are in closer agreement than we thought,” Dunn said.

Emily Mitchell, a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge who wasn't part of the research, said the new study “makes a huge amount of sense because the Ediacaran contains animals, we know there must have been a transitional stage between them and the Cambrian fauna. But until now we didn't really have any evidence of this.”

Some outside scientists, such as Jonathan Antcliffe at the University of Lausanne, questioned whether there's enough evidence to call these fossils of complex animals, but most experts contacted by The Associated Press felt they were.

Trying to figure out how and why

Now that scientists know when this life explosion happened, they’ve got more questions and some theories.

“I’m really interested in understanding, not just when it happened, which is interesting, but how it happened and why it happened the way that it happened,” Dunn said. “So whether there are feedbacks that we can disentangle between Earth and life or between life and life. Once you have Ediacaran on the sea floor, is it inevitable that you’ll end up with something approaching a Cambrian explosion? They’re the kinds of questions that I find really interesting.”

Life on Earth started 3 billion years ago, but it took another 2.4 billion years before complex animals developed. Then they multiplied, diversified and took over rapidly, Dunn said.

That's probably because Earth had to build up oxygen levels high enough and evolution had to kick in with genetic changes, said University of California at Berkeley paleontologist Charles Marshall, who wasn’t part of the research.

Marshall said, "The Cambrian explosion was sudden because of the already rich developmental system that was in place.”

“What fundamentally changed across this period is the way the animals on the planet interacted with each other," said Duncan Murdock, curator of Oxford's museum, where many of the authors work. "Once animals turned up and started eating each other and churning up the sediment, they changed the planet forever. And the planet that we live on is very much built on the foundations from the Ediacaran and Cambrian.”

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Associated Press journalist Siobhan Starrs contributed from London.

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With a Ph.D in neuropsychology and decades of experience running his own business, Goldberg, 74, didn't picture chauffeuring strangers around when he retired. But financially, things didn’t go as planned. So he makes the best of his situation shuttling passengers through New York City at night.

“I like the freedom. I like the flexibility. I like meeting people,” Goldberg said. “I like that most of the time I can get, once or twice a day, a good conversation with somebody.”

Goldberg is one of a growing number of Americans who have “unretired” in recent years. After concluding decades-long careers at hospitals, universities and corporations, they returned to the workforce due to insufficient retirement savings, rising living costs and a desire to stay active.

Some are finding gig work, or contract jobs, through apps or digital platforms. Delivering people and parcels, taking care of pets or folding other people’s laundry suits them because they can set their own hours and work, or not, when they choose.

“We’re living longer, so people are working longer because they have to fund those extra years,” said Carly Roszkowski, vice president of financial resilience at the nonprofit organization AARP. “And this concept of retirement for most people as like a cliff or a day they’re working towards really isn’t a reality for most.”

Goldberg wanted to teach after winding down his software and telemarketing company. But he needed to earn more money than what the occasional adjunct professor job teaching statistics would pay.

“Uber came up, and it was not a bad choice for me because I was comfortable driving people,” he said. “I felt it could be a good way to make money and keep most of it.”

About 1 in 5 Americans over age 50 who aren't retired say they have no retirement savings, according to a survey the AARP conducted in January 2025.

Retirees and employment experts say gig work has advantages and downsides, including limited job protections and wages that may be insufficient to cover on-the-job expenses. Here are some factors to consider.

Stay active, but know your limits

Barbara Baratta, 72, retired as a pediatric nurse in 2018. But she got restless after a few years and signed up with the pet care app Rover, which connected her to jobs walking dogs and using her nursing skills to administer medications to cats.

The work keeps her active. “I get my steps in and do hill climbing,” she said.

In a leafy New Jersey suburb, Baratta set out to coax Barley, a mix of pit bull, beagle and shepherd, into the afternoon air with a wind chill pushing the temperature down into the 20s.

“Barley, if you turn this way, the wind will be blowing behind you,” she said gently, leading the dog down a wide street.

Baratta likes the physical nature of dog walking. She ran two half-marathons in the past year but notices that "being older and not having knees that are totally great” makes steep or uneven terrain a challenge even for her. She advises people in her age group to be careful about which pets they agree to walk.

“Some dogs are big and strong, which can be an issue, a lesson I learned very early on,” Baratta said. “An 80-pound dog, ... they’re going to pull, they’re going to run away.”

Driving can be hard on the back and legs, and the challenge of finding restrooms to use on the go becomes difficult to deal with as you age, Goldberg cautioned.

A social buzz

Days can feel long and lonely after one retires. Working part-time can provide social interaction.

Baruch Schwartz, 78, was a wedding photographer for decades until the work became too physically demanding to do full-time. He started driving for Uber and Lyft and derives satisfaction from feeling needed. “I feel like I’m on a mission,” he said after taking a passenger home from a kidney dialysis appointment.

Driving for Uber gives Goldberg a chance to meet a variety of people. One night he spoke with a Scottish historian about the movie “Braveheart.” Another night a passenger asked him how to know whether it was the right time to propose to his girlfriend.

“I'm amazed at what people will tell me about their relationships,” Goldberg said.

Flexibility — for a price

One of the draws of working for gig platforms is the ability to set your own hours. Baratta's schedule allowed her to babysit her grandchildren.

Goldberg appreciated the flexibility of setting his own hours when there was a recent death in his family. But between that unplanned trip and a root canal, and no vacation or sick days offered by his job, he went several days without income.

“When that happens, even though you have the flexibility, which you like, and you don’t have to call anybody and say ‘I’m not driving today,’ you still don’t make the money that day. And you’re still paying insurance,” Goldberg said.

Make sure the work is worth it

Before investing time into gig work, research what percentage the company takes from workers' earnings.

“The house always wins, so the amount of money you are going to get as a driver or delivery worker is very much controlled by the platform,” said Alexandrea Ravenelle, a sociologist and gig economy researcher at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “There are no workplace protections, so if you get injured on the job, if you have any types of problems, if you have a car accident, for instance, you are entirely out of luck.”

Uber maintains commercial auto insurance coverage on behalf of its drivers, although New York City requires drivers to hold that insurance themselves, said Uber spokesman Ryan Thornton.

Goldberg hit three nasty potholes in three weeks, paying $144 each time to replace the tires. He lost money those weeks, despite working, he said.

“I’d say most drivers are not happy with the money that they’re making, unless they’re working more hours than I’m willing to do,” Goldberg said.

LisaKay “LK” Foyle, 64, of Orange, Texas, found a way to maximize her earnings on Poplin, an app which connects her with clients who need help with laundry. She has seniority among workers on the app so chooses to accept express orders, which pay the highest rate, and declines lower-paying jobs.

Foyle marvels at the state of some families’ dirty laundry: “all the socks are inside-out, all the underwear is in the pants, and you’ve got to check every single pocket, or you’re washing marbles or frogs or the snacks they had that day.”

Baratta's dog-walking income supplements several small pensions and Social Security benefits. She charges $20 for a half-hour walk, not including her driving time to and from the location. Rover keeps about 20%, she said. The $1,000 to $2,000 she makes per month helps pay the bills, she said.

“The dogs and cats are delights,” Baratta said. “I’m not becoming rich doing this, ... but I’ve met a lot of great families doing it."

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Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at cbussewitz@ap.org. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well

Department of Justice attorneys filed a notice in San Francisco federal court on Thursday of their intention to appeal last week's ruling by U.S. District Judge Rita Lin. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which will review Lin's order, set an April 30 deadline for the Justice Department to file documents outlining their reasons why the decision should be overturned.

Lin last week said she was blocking the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk. She also said she was blocking enforcement of President Donald Trump’s social media directive ordering all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic and its chatbot Claude.

Lin said the “broad punitive measures” taken against the AI company by the Trump administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared arbitrary, capricious and could “cripple Anthropic,” particularly Hegseth’s use of a rare military authority that’s previously been directed at foreign adversaries.

“Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” Lin wrote.

A top Pentagon official last week called Lin's order a “disgrace.” U.S. Defense Undersecretary Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, said on social media it would disrupt Hegseth's “full ability to conduct military operations with the partners it chooses.”

Lin had stayed her order for a week, which gave time for the Pentagon to take the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She had also said her order doesn’t require the Pentagon to use Anthropic’s products or prevent it from transitioning to other AI providers.

Anthropic has also filed a separate and more narrow case that is still pending in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. That case involves a different rule the Pentagon is using to try to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk.

Trump and Hegseth publicly announced their actions against Anthropic on Feb. 27 after negotiations over a defense contract went sour over the company’s attempt to prevent its AI technology from being deployed in fully autonomous weapons or surveillance of Americans. The Pentagon had argued that it should be able to use Claude in any way it deems lawful.

A number of third parties had filed legal briefs supporting Anthropic’s case, including Microsoft, industry trade groups, rank-and-file tech workers, retired U.S. military leaders and a group of Catholic theologians.

Jonathan is still kicking — albeit slowly — on the island of St. Helena.

“It was a hoax,” Anne Dillon, head of communications on the island, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “I can just assure you that he is very much alive.”

News of the Seychelles giant tortoise's demise spread rapidly on social media on Wednesday.

An account on X, falsely claiming to be by Joe Hollins, a veterinarian who had worked with the reptile on the island in the south Atlantic Ocean between Africa and Brazil, said he was heartbroken to announce the death of the “gentle giant” that “outlived empires, wars, and generations of humans.”

The post quickly accumulated nearly 2 million views through Thursday, mostly an outpouring of condolences.

But Hollins later said on Facebook that he didn't even have an X account and something more sinister was afoot.

“There is a hoax — not even an April Fool — going around,” Hollins wrote. “The hoaxer is asking for crypto donations. It’s a con.”

Guinness World Records lists Jonathan as the oldest living land animal and the oldest tortoise ever. He was believed to be about 50 years old when he was brought to St. Helena in 1882.

The St. Helena government sent a photo of Jonathan taken Thursday of him roaming the grounds of the governor's residence on the island best known as the place Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled following his defeat by the British at Waterloo in 1815. It was the place where the former emperor of France died in 1821, about a decade before Jonathan is believed to have taken the first steps in what would become a very long life.

Look no further than the Iran war. Since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, researchers have identified an unprecedented number of false and misleading images that were generated using artificial intelligence and have reached countless people around the world. Among them, fake footage of bombings that never happened, images of soldiers who were supposedly captured and propaganda videos created by Iran that depict President Donald Trump and others as blocky, Lego-like miniatures.

Thursday, the 10th annual International Fact-Checking Day, provides a good opportunity to look at these evolving challenges.

Misinformation created with AI is being shared with unprecedented speed from an endless number of sources. From the outset of the Iran war, accounts from all sides of the conflict promoted such content.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks disinformation and online extremism, has been examining social media posts around the Iran war. Among their findings was a group of X accounts that regularly post AI-generated content and collectively gained more than 1 billion views since the conflict began. This was done by roughly two dozen accounts, many of which had blue check verification.

Here are some tips for distinguishing AI-generated content from reality in an online world where that continues to get harder.

Look for visual cues

When AI-generated images first began spreading widely online, there were often obvious tells that could identify them as fabricated. Perhaps a person had too few — or too many — fingers or their voice was out of sync with their mouth. Text may have been nonsensical. Objects were frequently distorted or missing key components. As the technology continues to evolve, these clues aren’t as common as they once were, but it’s still worth looking for them. Watch for inconsistencies such as a car that is in a video one moment and gone the next or actions that aren’t possible according to the laws of physics. Some images may also be overly polished or have an unnatural sheen.

Seek out a source

AI-generated images get shared over and over again. One way to determine their authenticity (or lack thereof) is to hunt for their origin. Using a reverse image search is a simple way to do this. If you’re looking at a video, take a screenshot first. This can lead to a social media account that specifically generates AI content, an older image that is being misrepresented, or something entirely unexpected.

Listen to the experts

Look for multiple verified sources that can help authenticate the image. For example, that can mean a fact-check from a reputable media outlet, a statement from a public figure, or a social media post from a misinformation expert. These sources may have more advanced techniques for identifying AI-generated content or access to information about the image that is not accessible by the general public.

Make use of technology

There are many AI detection tools that can be a helpful place to start. But be wary, as they are not always correct in their assessments. Images that have been generated or altered with AI using Google’s Gemini app include an invisible digital watermarking tool called SynthID, which the app can detect. Other AI creation tools have added visible watermarks to content they generate. They are often easy to remove though, meaning the absence of such a watermark is not proof that an image is genuine.

Slow down

Sometimes it’s just about going back to basics. Stop, take a breath and don’t immediately share something you don’t know is real. Bad actors are often counting on the fact that people let their emotions and existing viewpoints guide their reactions to content. Looking at the comments may provide clues about whether the image you’re looking at is real or not. Another user might have noticed something you didn’t or been able to find the original source. Ultimately though, it’s not always possible to determine with 100% accuracy whether an image is AI-generated so remain alert to the possibility it might not be real.

See something that looks false or misleading? Email us at FactCheck@ap.org.

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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Strong shaking lasting 10 to 20 seconds was felt in Bitung in North Sulawesi province as well as in Ternate city in neighboring North Maluku province, according to the Disaster Management Agency. The provinces border the Molucca Sea, where the quake was centered.

Initial assessments showed light to severe damage in parts of Ternate, including a church and two houses. In Bitung, damage assessments were still underway, the agency said.

“We had just woken up and suddenly the earthquake hit... we all ran out of the house,” Bitung resident Marten Mandagi said. “The shaking was very strong,”

Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency reported a 70-year-old woman died in a building collapse in North Sulawesi's Manado city and another resident was injured. At least three injured people were hospitalized in Ternate.

Videos released by the rescue agency showed damaged structures and flattened houses, while television stations broadcast scenes of people rushing outside and gathering in streets to avoid the risk of collapsing buildings.

Dozens of aftershocks followed, including one of 6.2 magnitude. Authorities are continuing to gather information on damage and possible victims from multiple areas, particularly remote villages, as they work to assess the scope of the disaster.

Tsunami waves up to 75 centimeters (30 inches) above normal tides were recorded at several monitoring stations around the Molucca Sea coast. Indonesia’s meteorological agency lifted its tsunami warning hours after the quake, and the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said there was no destructive threat to the country, which is north of the quake’s epicenter.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 280 million people, sits on major seismic faults and is frequently hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

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Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.

The birds hunt for food at sea and lay eggs on land. So traditional navigators like her, who look to the stars, waves and other elements in nature to pilot across the ocean, see the bird's presence as a sign that land is near.

These days voyagers returning to Honolulu have more white terns to track than at any other time in modern history. New data shows their numbers have jumped more than 50% in the past decade — evidence the seabirds are thriving amid the concrete towers, traffic-clogged roads and Waikiki hotels in the state’s largest metropolis.

They're defying the fate of many other native birds in Hawaii, where disease and predators that aren't native to the islands have caused indigenous bird numbers to collapse.

“This is our big city,” said Murphy, who has navigated canoes to Tahiti, Japan and Rapa Nui. “It’s crazy to me that they’re getting to such a big population within Honolulu.”

There were 691 eggs and chicks in Honolulu trees as of this week, said Rich Downs, coordinator of the volunteer organization Hui Manu-o-Kū.

The group takes its moniker from the Hawaiian name for the white tern, which means “bird of Kū,” the god of war.

Manu-o-Kū can breed year round, but activity peaks from winter into early spring. They're the only seabirds that don't build nests, but instead lay their eggs on bare tree branches, cliff ledges or window sills. After hatching, the young sit on a branch until they can fly, their strong claws helping them hold on even in strong storms.

They're found near islands in warm waters around the world, but in Hawaii they live mostly among remote, primarily uninhabited atolls in the northwest. The only place they've settled among the archipelago's larger islands is Oahu, which is home to 1 million people.

Scientists aren't sure why the birds are thriving in Honolulu. The city might be hospitable because humans have reduced the numbers of predators like rats and cats around restaurants and buildings. Busy roads can also deter predators. Barn owls and mongoose, other species that like to feed on terns, are rare in the urban core.

“All the lights and the noise, the commotion of people and traffic, and things like that, doesn’t seem to bother them,” said Eric VanderWerf, the executive director of Pacific Rim Conservation, a nonprofit that supports native birds in Hawaii and the Pacific.

Downtown trees offer favorable habitat. A cup created by the scar tissue of a trimmed tree branch is an ideal place for an egg, so well-maintained trees create plentiful homes.

The most recent population survey, conducted by Hui Manu-o-Kū in 2023 but unpublished until now, showed Oahu's population of breeding adults jumped 1.5 times to 3,600 compared to 2016.

It offers a stark contrast with Hawaii’s other native birds. Since humans arrived in Hawaii, 71 of 113 bird species found only on the islands have gone extinct. Those remaining are often listed as threatened or endangered. Many are found in small numbers in higher elevation forests.

While native to the islands, manu-o-Kū were not observed breeding on Oahu until 1961, when scientists saw a pair of adults with a single egg.

Decades later, as the bird's population soared, Honolulu named manu-o-Kū its official bird in 2007. School children sing songs about the species. An annual festival celebrates them every May.

Hui Manu-o-Kū staff tie blue plastic ribbons around the trunks of trees hosting eggs and chicks to alert tree trimmers to stay clear. The ribbons also help bird-watchers keep track of the white terns, as does an online map.

For eight years, Joyce Hsieh's been taking photos of the birds as they incubate their eggs, feed young birds and raise hatchlings. One of her preferred spots is a Target parking garage, because she can drive up to the third floor to reach the same level as the birds in nearby trees.

White terns have about the same body length as pigeons but a larger wingspan. They fly up to about 120 miles (193 kilometers) from land and feast on small fish and squid chased to the ocean surface by larger species like tuna.

Murphy, the traditional voyager, is Native Hawaiian. She sees parallels between Hawaii's birds and her people.

Diseases introduced by the first Europeans killed Native Hawaiians in vast numbers in the 1800s. But Hawaiians — resilient and adaptive like manu-o-Kū — are still here, and their population is growing.

When she encounters the birds offshore en route to Oahu, she said it's like seeing old friends.

“It’s just a special feeling,” she said.

Carrying three Americans and one Canadian, the 32-story rocket rose from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where tens of thousands gathered to witness the dawn of this new era. Crowds also jammed the surrounding roads and beaches, reminiscent of the Apollo moonshots in the 1960s and ’70s. It is NASA’s biggest step yet toward establishing a permanent lunar presence.

“On this historic mission, you take with you the heart of this Artemis team, the daring spirit of the American people and our partners across the globe, and the hopes and dreams of a new generation,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson told the crew right before liftoff. “Good luck, Godspeed Artemis II. Let’s go.”

Artemis II set sail from the same Florida launch site that sent Apollo’s explorers to the moon so long ago. The handful still alive cheered this next generation’s grand adventure as the Space Launch System rocket thundered into the early evening sky, a nearly full moon beckoning some 248,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away.

Five minutes into the flight, Commander Reid Wiseman saw the team’s target: “We have a beautiful moonrise, we’re headed right at it,” he said from the capsule. On board with him are pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen. It is the most diverse lunar crew ever with the first woman, person of color and non-U. S. citizen riding in NASA’s new Orion capsule.

“NASA is back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told reporters following liftoff, calling the half-century hiatus a brief intermission.

Tensions high in the hours leading up to launch

Tensions were high earlier in the day as hydrogen fuel started flowing into the rocket. Dangerous hydrogen leaks erupted during a countdown test earlier this year, forcing a lengthy flight delay.

To NASA’s relief, no significant hydrogen leaks occurred. The launch team loaded more than 700,000 gallons of fuel (2.6 million liters) into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket on the pad, a smooth operation that set the stage for the Artemis II crew to board.

Then NASA had to overcome a flurry of last-minute technical issues — bad battery sensors and an inability to get commands through to the rocket's flight termination system. In both cases, the issues were quickly resolved, allowing the launch to proceed.

What's on tap for 10-day test flight?

The astronauts will stick close to home for the first 25 hours of their 10-day test flight, checking out the capsule in orbit around Earth before firing the main engine that will propel them to the moon.

They won’t pause for a stopover or orbit the moon like Apollo 8’s first lunar visitors did so famously on Christmas Eve 1968, reading from Genesis. But they stand to become the most distant humans ever when their capsule zooms past the moon and continues another 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) beyond, before making a U-turn and tearing straight home to a splashdown in the Pacific.

Once settled in a high orbit around Earth, the astronauts assumed manual control and practiced steering their capsule around the rocket’s detached upper stage, venturing as close as 33 feet (10 meters). NASA wants to know how Orion handles in case the self-flying feature fails and the pilots need to take control.

Crew has an amazing sight in store

During Monday's lunar flyby, the moon will appear to be the size of a basketball held at arm’s length. The astronauts will take turns peering through Orion’s windows with cameras. If the lighting is right, they should see features never before viewed through human eyes. They’ll also catch snippets of a total solar eclipse, donning eclipse glasses as the moon briefly blocks the sun from their perspective and the corona is revealed.

All of NASA’s moon plans — a surge in launches over the next several years leading to a sustainable moon base for astronauts assisted by robotic rovers and drones — hinge on Artemis II going well.

It’s been more than three years since Artemis I, the only other time NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion capsule have soared. With no one aboard, the Artemis I capsule lacked life-support equipment and other crew essentials like a water dispenser and toilet.

These systems are now making their space debut on Artemis II, ratcheting up the risk. That’s why NASA is waiting a full day before committing Wiseman and his crew to a four-day trip to the moon and four-day journey back.

The capsule's toilet is already acting up. Koch informed Mission Control that it shut down seconds after she activated it. Mission Control advised her to to use a handheld bag-and-funnel system for now — CCU, short for Collapsible Contingency Urinal — while engineers pondered how to deal with the so-called lunar loo.

“There’s always been a lot riding on this mission,” NASA’s Lori Glaze said ahead of launch. But the teams are even more “energized” now that the space agency is finally accelerating the lunar launch pace and laser-focusing on surface operations — seismic changes recently announced by Isaacman.

Artemis offers a fresh beginning

With half the world’s population not yet born when NASA’s 12 moonwalkers left their boot prints in the gray lunar dust, Artemis offers a fresh beginning, NASA’s science mission chief Nicky Fox said earlier this week.

“There are a lot of people who don’t remember Apollo. There are generations who weren’t alive when Apollo launched. This is their Apollo,” said Fox, who was 4 when Apollo 17 closed out the era.

NASA is in it for the long haul this time. Unlike Apollo, which focused on fast flags and footprints in a breakneck race against the Soviet Union, Artemis is striving for a sustainable moon base elaborate enough to satisfy even the most hard-core science fiction fans. But make no mistake: Isaacman and the Trump Administration want the next boot prints to be made by Americans, not the Chinese.

Until Isaacman’s program makeover, Artemis III was crawling toward a moon landing no sooner than 2029. The billionaire spacewalker slid in a new Artemis III for 2027 so astronauts could practice docking their Orion capsule with a lunar lander in orbit around Earth. Astronauts’ momentous landing near the moon’s south pole shifted to Artemis IV in 2028 — two years before an anticipated Chinese crew’s arrival.

Like Apollo 13 — astronauts’ only moon landing miss — Artemis II will use a free-return, lunar flyby trajectory to get home with gravity’s tug and a minimum of gas. The gravity of both the moon and Earth will provide much if not most of the oomph to keep Orion on its out-and-back, figure-eight loop.

There are inherent dangers

The danger is right up there for Artemis II. NASA has refused to release its risk assessment for the mission. Managers contend it’s better than 50-50 — the usual odds for a new rocket — but how much more is murky.

The SLS rocket leaked flammable hydrogen fuel during ground tests, a recurring problem that engineers still do not completely understand. The hydrogen leaks and unrelated helium blockages stalled the flight for two months, coming on top of years of vexing delays and cost overruns. Both problems also thwarted Artemis I, whose capsule returned with excessive heat shield damage. To NASA’s relief, Wednesday’s countdown was leak-free.

Beating the Soviet Union to the moon made the huge risks acceptable for Apollo, said Charlie Duke, one of only four surviving moonwalkers.

“I’m cheering you on,” Duke said in a note to Wiseman and his crew before their flight.

During a weekend news conference, Koch stressed how humanity’s path to Mars goes through the moon, the proving ground for points beyond.

“It is our strong hope that this mission is the start of an era where everyone, every person on Earth, can look at the moon and think of it as also a destination,” she said.

Added Glover: “It’s the story of humanity. Not Black history, not women’s history, but that it becomes human history.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

NASA's launch team loaded more than 700,000 gallons of fuel into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket early Wednesday, setting the stage for blast off in the evening at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Artemis astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are on board. They’ll hurtle several thousand miles beyond the moon, hang a U-turn and then come straight back. No circling around the moon, no stopping for a moonwalk — just a quick out-and-back lasting less than 10 days. NASA promises more boot prints in the gray lunar dust, but not before a couple practice missions.

Unlike the Apollo missions that sent astronauts to the moon from 1968 through 1972, Artemis’ debut crew includes a woman, a person of color and a Canadian citizen.

Artemis II is the opening shot of NASA’s grand plans for a permanent moon base. The space program is aiming for a moon landing near the lunar south pole in 2028.

The Latest:

Astronauts troubleshoot issues with toilet system

Koch ran into trouble with the toilet, seconds after starting it up.

“The toilet shut down on its own, and I have a blinking amber fault light,” she told Mission Control. She was advised to use a handheld bag-and-funnel system for now — CCU, short for Collapsible Contingency Urinal — while flight controllers pondered how best to deal with the so-called lunar loo.

The toilet is located in the “floor” of the capsule, with a door and curtain for privacy. It’s an upgraded version of an experimental toilet that launched to the International Space Station in 2020. That station toilet is currently out of order; two others are working fine.

Communication issue quickly resolved

Mission Control’s communication link with the orbiting capsule cut out after switching from one tracking and data relay satellite to another. But the problem was quickly resolved by resetting ground equipment.

Into higher orbit

An hour into the flight, the upper stage boosted the Orion capsule, Integrity, and its crew into a higher orbit around Earth.

“The sun is rising on Integrity,” Wiseman radioed. Koch, meanwhile, had an extremely important job: Getting the toilet working.

The to-do list for the Artemis II crew

The four astronauts will be sticking close to home for the next day or so, checking out the capsule in orbit around Earth.

Later tonight the upper stage of the rocket will separate, and the crew will manually fly the Orion capsule toward it to practice docking, preparing for future missions to the moon’s surface.

Tomorrow night they will fire Orion’s main engine to escape Earth’s gravity and head for the moon, 248,000 miles away.

Artemis II crew reaches orbit

The four astronauts headed to the moon have reached orbit. They will circle the Earth for about 25 hours before catapulting toward the moon.

‘A beautiful moonrise’

Five minutes into humanity’s first flight to the moon in 53 years, Commander Reid Wiseman saw the team’s target: “We have a beautiful moonrise, we’re headed right at it,” he said from the capsule.

Artemis II blasted off from same site as Apollo explorers

Artemis II set sail from the same Florida launch site that sent Apollo’s explorers to the moon so long ago. The handful still alive cheered this next generation’s grand adventure as the Space Launch System rocket thundered into the early evening sky, a nearly full moon beckoning some 248,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away.

Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman led the charge into space with “Let’s go to the moon!” accompanied by pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen. It was the most diverse lunar crew ever with the first woman, person of color and non-U.S. citizen riding in NASA’s new Orion capsule.

Artemis II astronauts bound for moon after rocketing away on NASA’s first lunar voyage in decades

The four astronauts have embarked on a high-stakes flight around the moon, humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than 53 years and the thrilling leadoff in NASA’s push toward a landing in two years.

The 32-story rocket rose from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where tens of thousands gathered to witness the dawn of this new era. Crowds also jammed the surrounding roads and beaches, reminiscent of the Apollo moonshots in the 1960s and ’70s. It is NASA’s biggest step yet toward establishing a permanent lunar presence.

After final poll, Artemis II gets the go

Commander Reid Wiseman said it all: “Artemis II crew is go for launch. Full set.” This after a planned hold to check in with the whole team.

How Artemis II will fly around the moon

On flight day six, Orion will reach its farthermost point from Earth as it sails 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) beyond the moon.

That will surpass Apollo 13’s distance record, which would make Artemis astronauts the most remote travelers.

Apollo 13 set the record in 1970 — nearly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth — days after its “Houston, we’ve had a problem” oxygen tank rupture. To return home, the Apollo astronauts relied on the moon and Earth’s gravity to swing back around, minimizing the need for fuel.

After emerging from behind the moon using this maneuver, the Artemis crew will head straight home with a splashdown on flight day 10 — nine days, one hour and 46 minutes after liftoff.

Artemis II cleared for launch after battery issue

NASA has cleared the mission for launch after a battery issue was resolved. It is believed to be an instrumentation issue and not a problem with the battery itself.

What is a c

ountdown hold?

Holds or pauses are built into the countdown ahead of time to provide a buffer to the schedule.

NASA can extend these holds if a problem is detected. This gives the launch team time to investigate the issue and resume counting if it can be fixed in time. NASA can also call an unplanned hold if necessary.

The first planned was set at the 12-hour, 35-minute mark — before fueling — and lasted for two hours and 45 minutes.

The second planned hold occurs at the 40-minute mark and lasts 30 minutes. It’s during this hold that the launch director polls the team to determine whether everyone is “go” or to proceed.

A battery issue crops up

With 52 minutes remaining in the countdown, NASA’s Derrol Nail reported that one of two batteries in the abort system is not displaying the proper temperature.

The launch team is scrambling to determine whether a sensor is at fault or whether the battery itself is faulty. NASA cannot proceed past the six-minute mark unless confident in the batteries’ operation.

How Artemis II astronauts will return to Earth

Like with Apollo, the mission will end with a splashdown homecoming into the Pacific.

Navy recovery ships will be stationed off the coast of San Diego as Orion parachutes into the ocean.

How do Artemis II astronauts get medical care in space?

There’s a medical kit aboard Orion containing basic first-aid items, common medications like antibiotics, and medical devices such as a blood pressure monitor and thermometer.

Astronauts can also have private medical consultations with flight surgeons on the ground via video, similar to a telehealth visit on Earth.

Ahead of launch, the crew was in quarantine to avoid falling ill.

Artemis program started under President Donald Trump’s first term

“President Trump is excited about the next phase with the historic upcoming Artemis II launch,” said White House spokesperson Liz Huston. “This effort will strengthen American leadership in space, usher in scientific discoveries, and serve as the proving ground for missions to Mars.”

Trump is expected to monitor Wednesday’s launch from the White House.

Technical issue resolved

An unspecified issue with the rocket’s flight-termination system, which would send a self-destruct signal to the rocket in case it veered off course and was aiming for a populated area, has been resolved, NASA said.

Spectators cheered when NASA made its announcement.

NASA is probing a technical issue

There is an unspecified issue with the rocket’s flight-termination system, which would send a self-destruct signal to the rocket in case it veered off course and was aiming for a populated area.

“Pretty unique situation here,” NASA commentator Derrol Nail explained.

One of the launch controllers has been called into service to dash over to the adjoining Vehicle Assembly Building to grab space shuttle-era equipment, he said. He stressed that it is not a problem with the rocket itself.

“At this moment the range is no-go, but that is not stopping us from moving forward in the countdown,” Nail reported.

What’s on the menu to the moon?

Forget about puree squeezed from toothpaste-style tubes.

Modern space food is more appetizing and nutritious than the meals that flew to space in the 1960s — though options are still limited.

During the Artemis II mission, astronauts can feast on mac and cheese, tortillas and vegetable quiche. Drinks include coffee, green tea and lemonade, among other beverages.

Astronauts use water to rehydrate their meals and a food warmer to heat up their food. Menus are designed to minimize crumbs, which can pose a danger if they clog spacecraft equipment or get into astronauts’ eyes.

Fresh food isn’t an option since the Orion capsule lacks refrigeration.

NASA’s lunar road map after Artemis II

The space agency recently rejiggered its Artemis moon exploration program, modeling it after fast-paced Apollo, which launched moonshots in quick succession in the 1960s and 1970s.

1. Artemis II involves a lunar fly-around by four astronauts.

2. Artemis III focuses on launching a lunar lander into orbit around Earth in 2027 for docking practice by astronauts flying in an Orion capsule.

3. Artemis IV aims to land astronauts on the moon in 2028.

Last month NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman laid out a blueprint for a moon base that, along with lunar drones and rovers, is expected to cost $20 billion over the next seven years.

▶ Read more about the retooled Artemis program

What happens if there’s a solar storm during the moon journey?

Space weather forecasters plan to closely track the sun as the Artemis II crew heads to the moon and back.

In recent months, huge eruptions on the sun’s surface have triggered solar storms that spawned colorful auroras in unexpected places on Earth.

Artemis II astronauts will wear personal dosimeters to monitor radiation levels. If there’s a sudden spike, astronauts can reconfigure the cabin into a shelter by putting barriers to shield themselves from incoming radiation.

Trump sends best wishes to Artemis II crew

President Donald Trump wished them well via social media ahead of the planned launch: “God bless our incredible Astronauts, God bless NASA and God bless the Greatest Nation ever to exist.”

Canadian Space Agency president praises Canadian Hansen

Speaking of Artemis II astronaut — and first-time space flier — Jeremy Hansen, Canadian Space Agency President Lisa Campbell told NASA on Wednesday, “We’re very proud. He’s so ready. He’s been waiting for this his whole life, preparing, training, and he’s a wonderful example of Canada.”

The Apollo generation, in their own words

Charlie Mars, 90, who worked on Apollo’s command and lunar modules: “Because it was the first time, there was an energy. There was a passion that probably is not exactly the same today and hasn’t been for a while.”

JoAnn Morgan, 85, who was the lone female engineer inside launch control during the Apollo 11 landing:

“It will be even greater when they actually have a woman who plants her boots on the moon.”

Charlie Duke, 90, Apollo 16 moonwalker: “If the first ones are successful and we start landing at the south pole, I think millions are going to be watching that. I know I will if I’m still here.”

How space toilets work

Everyone needs to go — even in space.

There were no bathrooms on the Apollo missions. Astronauts urinated into bags and diapers.

A primitive potty was aboard the U.S. space station, Skylab, in the 1970s. The International Space Station now features three bathrooms as the orbiting complex expanded.

The Orion capsule is equipped with a compact lunar loo that was tested on the space station several years ago.

Known as the universal waste management system, the titanium toilet uses air suction instead of water and gravity to remove waste, similar to earlier space commodes. It’s also designed to better accommodate female astronauts.

The system collects urine and solid waste separately — No. 1 is vented into space and No. 2 is stowed for the return trip.

8-year-old designer of ‘Rise’ toy on hand

Lucas Ye’s design for a zero gravity indicator was picked from more than 2,600 submissions to fly to the moon. It also won him a trip to watch the Artemis II launch from Kennedy Space Center.

The 8-year-old from California designed a plush toy called “Rise,” inspired by the iconic ″Earthrise’’ photo taken during Apollo 8.

Interviewed by NASA, he said he was, “Really, really, really, really, really, really, really surprised and very happy” to win and be here.

How Artemis II astronauts will stay fit in microgravity

To prevent bone and muscle loss in space, astronauts will keep in shape using a device that acts like a yo-yo.

They can do exercises such as rowing, squats and dead lifts.

Each astronaut will spend about a half hour a day exercising on the device, developed by the Canadian Space Agency.

Astronauts are in the capsule

The four Artemis astronauts have entered the Orion capsule and are in place for humanity’s first trip to the moon in 53 years.

After they arrived at the launch pad, they rode an elevator up to the capsule and signed their names to the so-called white room, where they stage for boarding.

They donned their helmets, made some final adjustments to the suits, and climbed into the capsule. If they take off as planned, they will remain in the capsule — with about as much room as a small camper van — for the next 10 days.

NASA’s liftoff lingo, defined

Watching a rocket launch can be confusing if you’re unfamiliar with the jargon, or specialized language, used by NASA.

Here’s a guide to some key terms:

4. LH2: liquid hydrogen

5. LOX: liquid oxygen

6. Go/no-go: Status check on whether to proceed.

7. Nominal: Everything is going as planned.

8. LAS: The launch abort system is the tower atop the Orion capsule designed to carry the crew to safety during an emergency.

9. Hold: A pause in the countdown clock.

10. Scrub: The launch attempt is canceled for the day. Reasons can include bad weather, technical problems or safety concerns.

Even moon launches are powered by pizza

NASA chief Jared Isaacman has had pizza delivered to the launch team in Cape Canaveral. It’s lunchtime for the team as the opening of the launch window approaches.

What is the launch abort system on Orion?

It’s an escape system designed to ferry Artemis II astronauts to safety if there’s an emergency on the pad or during initial ascent.

A tower structure mounted on top of Orion can be activated to quickly rip the capsule and astronauts away from the SLS rocket and release it for a parachute splashdown in the ocean, according to Lockheed Martin.

Meet the Artemis II astronauts: Jeremy Hansen

The Canadian fighter pilot and physicist is making his space debut and serving as his country’s first emissary to the moon.

“Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t feel a lot of personal pressure.”

Hansen, 50, grew up on a farm near London, Ontario, before moving to Ingersoll and pursuing a flying career.

He realizes only now how much effort it took to send men to the moon during Apollo.

“When I walk out and I look at the moon now, it looks and feels a little bit farther than it used to be,” he said.

Dangers still loom — something he’s shared with his college-aged son and twin daughters. “The most likely outcome is that we will come back safe. There’s a chance we won’t, and you will be able to move through life even if that happens,” he assured them.

Moon rockets: Space Launch System vs. Saturn V

The SLS rocket stands 322 feet (98 meters), shorter than the Apollo program’s Saturn V rocket. But it’s but more powerful at liftoff thanks to a pair of strap-on boosters.

Atop the rocket is the Orion capsule carrying the Artemis II crew.

The solid rocket boosters are bigger versions of the rocket motors on the space shuttles that carried up most of the parts of the International Space Station, as well as the astronaut construction crews.

The SLS uses the same fuel — liquid hydrogen — as the shuttle did.

Hydrogen leaks repeatedly grounded the shuttles as well as the SLS during testing in 2022 and again earlier this year, bumping Artemis II into April.

Meet the Artemis II astronauts: Christina Koch

The last time Koch blasted into space, she was gone almost a year so she’s not sweating a quick trip to the moon and back.

The 47-year-old electrical engineer from Jacksonville, North Carolina, holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman — 328 days. She took part in the first all-female spacewalk during her lengthy stay at the space station in 2019.

Before she got called up by NASA, Koch spent a year at a South Pole research station. Between that and her space stint, she feels she’s “inoculated” most of her family and friends.

“So far, I haven’t gotten too many nerves from folks. Maybe my dog, but I’ve reassured her that it’s only 10 days. It’s not going to be as long as last time.”

Her and her husband’s rescue pooch is named Sadie Lou.

Meet the Artemis II astronauts: Victor Glover

As one of NASA’s few Black astronauts, Glover sees his presence on the mission as “a force for good.”

The 49-year-old Navy captain and former combat pilot from Pomona, California, makes it a habit to listen to Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon” and Marvin Gaye’s “Make Me Wanna Holler” from the white-dominated Apollo era.

“I listen to those for perspective,” he said. “It captures what we did well, what we did poorly.”

The ability for him now to offer hope to others is “an amazing blessing and a privilege.”

He’s hyper-focused on running “our best race so that we can hand the baton off to the next leg” — a 2027 practice docking mission in orbit around Earth between an Orion crew capsule and one or two lunar landers.

Astronauts head to the launch pad

Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen have left the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building and are on their way to launch pad 39B.

Waving to family, colleagues and news photographers, the crew boarded the so-called astrovan for the 9-mile ride to the launch pad and their awaiting SLS rocket.

Wait what? What’s the deal with the cards?

Before their highly anticipated walkout, commander Reid Wiseman and his crew played a quick card game with NASA’s chief astronaut Scott Tingle. It’s a preflight tradition since the space shuttle era.

Losing is good: It means the astronaut has gotten rid of all bad luck before launching.

The four thanked the suit techs and posed for photos, keeping a safe distance from many of the bystanders to avoid germs. They then went down the elevator at the Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building and walk out to a barrage of cameras and cheers.

They’ll take a custom-designed astrovan for the ride to the launch pad

Meet the Artemis II astronauts: Reid Wiseman

Wiseman, 50, a retired Navy captain from Baltimore, was serving as NASA’s chief astronaut when asked three years ago to lead humanity’s first lunar trip since 1972.

His wife Carroll’s death from cancer in 2020 gave him pause.

His two teenage daughters, especially the older one, had “zero interest” in him launching again after a 2014 trip to the International Space Station.

“We talked about it and I said, ’Look, of all the people on planet Earth right now, there are four people that are in a position to go fly around the moon,” he said. “I cannot say no to that opportunity.”

The next day, homemade moon cupcakes awaited him, along with his daughters’ support.

Who are Apollo and Artemis?

Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology. They are the children of Zeus and Leto. Artemis has long been associated with the moon.

While the Artemis name builds on the Apollo program and pays homage to it, “there is no way we could be that same mission or ever hope to even be,” said NASA astronaut Christina Koch, part of the Artemis II crew.

The Apollo program was all about beating the Russians to the moon and planting the U.S. flag. NASA sent 24 astronauts to the moon between 1968 and 1972, including 12 moonwalkers. Now China is the competition.

NASA is striving for a long-term lunar presence under Artemis, with Mars to follow.

The astronauts are fitted out

The Artemis II astronauts are now in their orange Orion spacesuits that they will wear for launch and reentry. Testing these new suits is one of the main goals of the mission.

The four are expected to emerge for their trip to the pad sometime before 2 p.m.

NASA created bright orange custom spacesuits for launch and reentry. Astronauts will also use them in case of a depressurization or some other emergency.

They can survive up to six days in the suits, inserting a straw into the helmet to sip water or protein shakes and relying on undergarment bags and bladders as a built-in toilet.

Future Artemis crews to the lunar surface will wear white moonwalking suits designed by Axiom Space.

During the Apollo era, astronauts wore the same white bulky spacesuits for launch and return as well as for moonwalks because there wasn’t enough storage on board for different outfits.

The moon rocket is fueled up

The launch team has loaded more than 700,000 gallons of fuel into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket, setting the stage for the Artemis II crew to board.

Rain is coming but it’s not a threat

The wind is picking up at Cape Canaveral, more clouds are appearing and rain is expected in about two hours. But there is no lightning threat, NASA says, and there’s still an 80% chance the weather will be good enough to launch.

What’s the difference between L-minus and T-minus?

L-minus tracks the overall time to liftoff, counting down the days, hours and minutes away before the planned blastoff. It doesn’t include built-in holds, or pauses — that’s T-minus time.

The T-minus countdown in the final 10 minutes is where nerves tense up and hearts start pounding. Automated software kicks off a series of highly choreographed milestones. During this period, the clock can be stopped if a problem is spotted and restarted if it’s fixed in time.

T-0 is the moment of liftoff — zero — when the boosters ignite and the rocket begins its journey.

How launch windows work

NASA has a narrow time frame each month to fly to the moon.

The Earth and moon must be aligned just so to achieve the proper trajectory for the mission. In any given month, there’s only about a week when Artemis II astronauts can lift off.

The Orion capsule needs to get a check of its life-support and other systems in near-Earth orbit. If that goes well, Orion will fire its main engine to hurtle toward the moon, taking advantage of the moon and Earth’s gravity to get there and back in a slingshot maneuver that requires little if any fuel.

Orion also needs sunlight for power and can’t be in darkness for more than 90 minutes at a time. Plus NASA wants to minimize heating during reentry at flight’s end.

The latest launch window runs through April 6. The next opportunity opens on April 30.

Hydrogen is on board

The hydrogen tank of the rocket’s core stage is 100% filled. NASA said no significant leaks have been observed so far in fueling. It was hydrogen leaks that prevented the rocket from flying in February.

NASA controllers wear green for go

Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is wearing green as are many of the controllers alongside her in the firing room.

Green represents “go” for NASA, a color symbolizing good luck.

Moon mascot, unveiled

A plush toy named Rise will ride with the Artemis II astronauts around the moon, carrying the names of more than 5.6 million people.

Rise is what’s known as a zero gravity indicator, which gives the astronauts a visual cue of when they reach space.

The design was inspired by the iconic “Earthrise” photo during Apollo 8, showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968.

Rise was selected from more than 2,600 contest submissions. It was designed by Lucas Ye of California.

Commander Reid Wiseman and his crew tucked a small memory card into Rise before the toy was loaded into the Orion capsule. The card bears the names of all those who signed up with NASA to vicariously tag along on the nearly 10-day journey.

“Zipping that little pocket on the bottom of Rise was kind of the moment that put it all together for me,” Wiseman said. “We are going for all and by all. It’s time to fly.”

One of the first clinical trials of these custom models suggests it might improve care for ventricular tachycardia, a notoriously difficult-to-treat arrhythmia that is a major cause of sudden cardiac arrest, blamed for about 300,000 U.S. deaths a year.

The study, by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, was a small first step. The Food and Drug Administration allowed the digital twin technology to guide treatment for just 10 patients, and much larger studies will be needed.

But the results reported Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine come as doctors increasingly are exploring how a technology long used in aerospace and other industries might be harnessed for better health, too.

Dr. Jeffrey Goldberger, a heart specialist at the University of Miami who wasn’t involved with the study, experimented with more rudimentary iterations 15 years ago and praised the new findings. “This is what we envisioned,” he said.

Doctors have long used 3D models, both physical and computer-generated ones, to simulate disease and practice techniques. But Hopkins biomedical engineer Natalia Trayanova said true digital twins predict how a real organ can react to different treatments. Her lab is pioneering colorful interactive models developed with an advanced MRI scan and other data from each patient.

“We treat the twin before we treat the patient,” Trayanova said. “Did it work? And if it did, are there new things that arise” that will require more or different care?

The heart’s electrical system powers our heartbeat. Ventricular tachycardia is a super-fast heartbeat triggered when an electrical wave short-circuits in the organ’s bottom chambers, the ventricles, and prevents them from pumping blood out to the body.

“You see this heart that is basically quivering,” Trayanova said.

Medication can help but the main treatment is ablation, when doctors thread catheters to the heart to burn misfiring tissue. But it's a bit trial-and-error, as patients spend hours under anesthesia while doctors determine where to aim. Repeat ablations are common, and many patients have an implanted defibrillator as backup.

Enter Trayanova’s digital twins of patients’ ventricles. Colors swirl on a computer screen – blue, green, yellow and orange – showing how the heart’s electrical wave moves across the chamber’s healthy areas before getting stuck on damaged tissue. It’s trapped in a circular motion that she compares to the swirl of a hurricane.

“It allows me to recreate the functioning of the patient’s organ and then predict what is the best way to ablate,” she said.

The technology locates a dysfunctional region where the electrical wave repeatedly hits. Virtually ablating it will show if that solves the problem or if another arrhythmia forms that also will need zapping. “Then we poke it again,” she explained.

Trayanova’s team created customized ablation targets for each of the 10 study participants. Cardiologists transferred them to a mapping system they use as a guide and aimed just at those targets instead of hunting their own.

More than a year later, eight patients had no arrhythmias while two experienced only a single brief episode while they were healing -- better than the treatment’s typical 60% success rate, said Dr. Jonathan Chrispin, a Hopkins cardiologist and the study’s lead author. All but two also stopped their anti-arrhythmia medicine.

More importantly, cardiologists may burn away less tissue by targeting "specifically the areas that we think are critically important,” Chrispin said. “We could potentially make these procedures shorter, safer, more effective.”

The Hopkins team hopes to study the digital twin approach in a larger study with other hospitals, and has begun a trial using it to treat a more common type of irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation. Other researchers are studying digital twins for cancer care.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The nitrates come from fertilizer and pesticides that make their way into the soil and then waterways like the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. It’s not usually a problem in winter, but this year Iowa's capital had to filter in January and February — just the second time that’s happened in more than 30 years. That’s likely going to mean higher water bills for people who live in a state with some of the nation’s waterways that are most vulnerable to nitrate pollution.

Experts blame weather conditions, including warming winters, for a costly problem they say will only grow across farm country.

When it comes to winter nitrate pollution events, “We are more apt to see these in the future. Are they going to occur every year? No. But the ingredients are there for them to potentially occur more often,” said Justin Glisan, Iowa's state climatologist.

Why warmer winters lead to more water pollution

The fertilizers and pesticides that farmers use leave nitrogen and phosphorus in their fields. Rain or snowmelt then carries the chemicals into drinking water, which is dangerous. Ingesting too many nitrates can cause health issues like cancer or blue baby syndrome, low oxygen levels in infants.

As Earth warms due to human-caused climate change, the ground isn’t staying frozen as consistently in many places, and snow is often melting or falling as rain on thawed ground. That all adds up to more winter days when nitrates are likely to reach unhealthy levels.

Scientists say one effect of Earth’s warming is more frequent extreme weather events, including drought and intense bursts of rainfall from an atmosphere that now holds more moisture than in the past.

Intense dryness followed by intense wetness means massive amounts of water moving through the soil, bringing farm chemicals like nitrogen with it, Glisan said.

And a warmer atmosphere is thawing Earth's polar regions and causing more of those winter flip-flops from frigid polar air to warmer, less snowy weather, he said.

Even though some storms brought a lot of snow this winter, it didn't stay on the ground for very long. Instead, snow insulated the soil in some areas from freezing too deep, and a quick thaw let melting snow, followed by pounding rain, travel down through the soil and eventually into streams.

Where the ground isn't consistently frozen, nutrients aren't as “locked in” to the soil frost.

“In central and southern Illinois, we’ve always dealt with a sort of ephemeral freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw process. What we’re seeing is that’s really tracking farther north,” said Trent Ford, Illinois' state climatologist.

Stakes are high for low-income and rural communities

Nitrate pollution is a big problem for low-income, rural residents across the United States, said Samuel Sandoval Solis, a professor at the University of California-Davis and an extension specialist in water resources management.

While some communities already have the infrastructure to manage nitrate levels in drinking water, like filtration systems, many others don't. Around 15% of the U.S. population relies on drinking water wells that are private, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Nitrates can seep into those wells.

Testing well water regularly and correctly filtering it in a home can cost hundreds of dollars a year. Small communities whose water treatment facilities aren't yet equipped to filter nitrates will also have expensive decisions to make, Sandoval said.

More research is connecting climate change, runoff and nutrient loss

States have been wrestling with nitrate pollution for years, but they're starting to realize increasingly warm winters are making that tougher — like in Illinois, where yearly reports on the issue have started to more explicitly mention the role of climate change, said Joan Cox, program manager for the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy.

Scientists know there's more nitrogen going downstream in the winter, but they're still trying to figure out whether that means more pollution overall, said Carol Adair, a professor at the University of Vermont who has studied how rain-on-snow events could worsen nutrient pollution.

Either way, there's little known about the consequences of those changes on ecosystems, Adair said. She thinks because there's less plant life to suck up nitrogen in the winter, more could end up further downstream, like in the Gulf's “dead zone” where fertilizer pollution contributes to an area of low to no oxygen, which kills fish and marine life.

Dani Replogle, a staff attorney for Food and Water Watch, a nonprofit for sustainable food and clean water, said factory farm operators try to plan manure and fertilizer applications when precipitation is unlikely. But that is “increasingly not a successful strategy because everything is becoming so unpredictable,” she said.

Regulating nutrient pollution has proven difficult

Mandating that producers curb farm chemicals in water has proven difficult in agricultural areas, especially in Iowa, where the state’s farm lobby has opposed mandatory rules.

Trump’s EPA has delisted seven Iowa waterways from the federal Impaired Waters List, which under the Clean Water Act would have required the state to set limits on how much pollution gets into them. Food and Water Watch has announced an intent to sue.

As for Iowa's water treatment facilities, they are preparing resiliency plans for a future with more winter nutrient pollution, said Amy Kahler, CEO and general manager at Des Moines Water Works. But she thinks polluters upstream should clean up their acts.

“There really are two paths. One is conservation efforts and responsible watershed practices. And the other is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in treatment solutions,” Kahler said.

She thinks the best solution is the former, since it also has positive impacts on quality of life.

In 2015, the agency sued for the millions of dollars it was being forced to spend to filter unsafe levels from drinking water taken from the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers. A judge ultimately dismissed the lawsuit.

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Follow Melina Walling on X @MelinaWalling and Bluesky @melinawalling.bsky.social.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported.

One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed an SOS button and was told that staff were on their way. The car door could be opened, so the passenger got out on their own.

It is the first time a mass shutdown of robotaxis has been reported in China. In December, many of Waymo’s self-driving cars came to a stop in San Francisco because of a power outage.

The taxis in Wuhan are operated by Baidu, a major Chinese internet and AI company that is expanding its Apollo Go robotaxi business to overseas locations in Europe and the Mideast.

Baidu did not have any immediate comment.

Police said reports that taxis were coming to a halt started coming in around 9 p.m., while media reports said multiple people were rescued.

While some passengers were able to exit their taxis on their own, others were afraid to get out because their vehicle had stopped in the middle lane of a ring road with other vehicles passing on both sides, the reports said. Ring roads are elevated roads without traffic lights designed to move traffic quickly in urban areas.

Baidu operates hundreds of robotaxis in Wuhan, which hosted an early pilot project for the company.

The company, which operates more than 1,000 robotaxis, mostly in China, started a service in Abu Dhabi and Dubai this year and is working with partners to launch service in Britain and Switzerland.

Experts say the Australian courts could decide what steps the platforms can reasonably be expected to take under the laws that took effect on Dec. 10 banning young children from holding accounts.

Julie Inman Grant, who is Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, on Tuesday released her first compliance report since those laws took effect demanding 10 platforms remove all Australian account-holders younger than 16.

While 5 million Australian accounts had been deactivated, a substantial number of Australian children continued to retain accounts, create new accounts and pass platforms’ age assurance systems, the report said.

Inman Grant said in a statement her office had “significant concerns about the compliance” of half of those 10 platforms. Her office was gathering evidence against the five that they had not taken “reasonable steps” to prevent young children holding accounts.

Courts could order fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to comply. eSafety would decide on whether to initiate court action against any platform by midyear.

Age-restricted platforms that aren’t under investigation are Reddit, X, Kick, Threads and Twitch.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said the five criticized platforms were deliberately not complying with Australian law.

“Social media platforms are choosing to do the absolute bare minimum because they want these laws to fail,” Wells told reporters.

“This is the world-leading law. We’re the first in the world to do it. Of course they don’t want these laws to work because they want that to be a chilling effect on the dozen countries that have come out since Dec. 10 to follow Australia’s step,” she added.

eSafety had identified “poor practices” such as platforms allowing unlimited attempts for a user to pass their age assurance methods and prompting the user to try to pass the age assurance method even after they declared themselves underage.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, told The Associated Press it was committed to complying with Australia’s social media ban. “We’ve also been clear that accurately determining age online is a challenge for the whole industry,” the statement said.

Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, said it has locked 450,000 accounts in compliance with the law and continued to lock more every day.

“Snapchat remains fully committed to implementing reasonable steps under the legislation and supporting its underlying goal of improving online safety for young Australians,” a Snap statement said.

TikTok declined to comment on Tuesday and Alphabet Inc., which owns YouTube and Google, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lisa Given, an information sciences expert at RMIT University in Melbourne, said she expected the courts will decide whether platforms have taken “reasonable steps” to exclude young children.

“If a tech company has said: look, we put in age assurance, we’ve done all these steps. That’s reasonable. Even though the aged assurance technologies are flawed, whose fault is that? Should they be held accountable for a piece of technology that is not 100% and likely not going to be 100% foolproof any time soon?” Given said.

“That’s really the crux of it: what the courts will deem reasonable,” she added.

Reddit has filed one of two constitutional challenges to the social media ban in the Australian High Court. The other was filed by Digital Freedom Project, a Sydney-based rights group that did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday..

Both suits claim the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on Australia’s implied freedom of political communication.

A prelimary hearing is set for May 21 when the court will set a date for oral arguments, Reddit said Tuesday.

Critics said the move by the government's Endangered Species Committee could doom a rare whale species and harm other marine life. Nicknamed the “God Squad” by groups who say it can decide a species’ fate, the committee comprises several Trump administration officials and is chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

It met Tuesday for the first time in more than three decades amid global oil shocks and soaring energy prices brought on by the Iran war. The U.S. pumps more oil than any other nation, but that hasn’t insulated it from spiking prices: The national average for a gallon of gasoline topped $4 Tuesday.

“Disruptions to Gulf oil production doesn’t hurt just us, it benefits our adversaries,” Hegseth told the committee. “We cannot allow our own rules to weaken our standing and strengthen those who wish to harm us. When development in the Gulf is chilled, we are prevented from producing the energy we need as a country and as a department.”

The exemptions were not expected to immediately impact prices for crude or at the pump. Putting new oil wells into production takes years of planning and development.

They say it would speed the extinction of the rare Rice’s whale, which is found exclusively in the Gulf of Mexico. Government biologists say only about 50 of the animals remain.

“If Trump is successful here, he could be the first person in history to knowingly extirpate a species from the face of the earth. That’s how precarious the condition of the Rice’s whale is,” said Patrick Parenteau, emeritus professor of law at Vermont Law School. Parenteau dismissed Hegseth’s claims of a security threat, since companies have continued to look for and extract oil in the Gulf despite legal challenges over the critically endangered whale.

The Center for Biological Diversity asked U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington on Tuesday to cancel the exemption. Last week Contreras declined the environmental group's request to stop the committee from convening.

Streamlined approvals for drilling

During his last days in office, former Democratic President Joe Biden sought to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, citing the climate crisis.

President Donald Trump reversed that policy and made increased fossil fuel production a central focus of his second term. The Republican wants to open new areas of the Gulf off the Florida coast to drilling, and has proposed sweeping rollbacks of environmental regulations disliked by industry.

Hegseth told committee members Tuesday that Iran's chokehold on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, underscored the national security imperative of robust domestic oil production. He said litigation from environmental groups “threatened to halt” Gulf oil production.

Industry observers said the exemption could have significant implications for energy companies by streamlining approvals of new projects and impeding opponents’ ability to derail drilling plans.

“Serial litigation from activist groups targeting a lawful, well-regulated industry should not be allowed to indefinitely obstruct projects of clear national importance,” said Erik Milito with the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore developers.

The Gulf of Mexico produces about 2 million barrels of oil a day. It accounts for almost 15% of crude pumped annually in the U.S.

The Gulf also has been the scene of environmental disasters such as BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010 that killed 11 workers and spilled 134 million gallons (500 million liters) of oil. Rice's whale numbers dropped 22% following the accident and could take decades to recover, scientists said.

A spill in the Gulf off the Mexican coast this month spread 373 miles (600 kilometers), contaminating at least six species and polluting seven protected natural reserves.

The Trump administration in mid-March approved BP’s new $5 billion ultra-deepwater drilling project in the Gulf.

Whales, turtles and sturgeon at risk

A 2025 National Marine Fisheries Service analysis determined the Gulf oil and gas program was likely to harm several species of whales, sea turtles and Gulf sturgeon. They face potential harm from ship strikes, oil spills and other impacts.

The Gulf exemption is the first time national security has been cited to justify action by the Endangered Species Committee. Conservation groups asserted it was done illegally.

“The Endangered Species Act has not slowed an iota of oil from being extracted from the Gulf,” said Defenders of Wildlife President Andrew Bowman. “I cannot stress enough how unprecedented and unlawful this action is.”

Hegseth’s request for an exemption was unanimously supported by the committee, which included Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, White House Council of Economic Advisers Acting Chair Pierre Yared, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Neil Jacobs and Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll.

Driscoll said he could “personally attest that disruptions to oil and gas production in the Gulf would significantly impact the Army’s ability to man, train and equip combat-ready formations.”

Since 1973, the Endangered Species Act has made it illegal to harm or kill species on a protected list. The committee was formed in 1978 as a way to exempt projects if no alternative would provide comparable economic benefits or if it was in the nation’s best interest.

Before this week, the panel convened just three times and issued only two exemptions. The first was in 1979 to allow construction on a dam on the Platte River in Wyoming, home to the whooping crane. It last met in 1992, allowing logging in northern spotted owl habitats in Oregon. That exemption request was later withdrawn.

Officials reported the moon rocket was doing well on the pad, and the weather looked promising. Forecasters put the odds of favorable conditions at 80%.

“Everybody's pretty excited and understands the significance of this launch,” said senior test director Jeff Spaulding.

The four astronauts assigned to the Artemis II mission will become the first lunar visitors since Apollo 17 in 1972. They’ll zip around the moon without landing or even orbiting, and come straight back.

It's the closest NASA has come to launching Artemis II. Hydrogen fuel leaks bumped the flight from February to March, then clogged helium lines pushed it to April. The space agency has only a handful of days every month to send the three Americans and one Canadian to the moon.

Confident that all of these problems are fixed, the launch team plans to begin fueling the 32-story Space Launch System rocket on Wednesday morning for an evening send-off.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a bona fide social media star, took to the app to announce a reversal: “TikTok, we're back.”

The city will now allow agencies to start posting again on the short-form social media site as long as departments follow a set of security precautions, according to a memo from city cybersecurity officials provided by the mayor's office.

The prohibition was established by Eric Adams, Mamdani's predecessor, in 2023 as the federal government and many U.S. states restricted the app from government-owned devices over concerns that its parent company, ByteDance, could share data with the Chinese government.

TikTok had waved off the governments' worries as unfounded. Since then it has reached an agreement to spin off its U.S. operation in a move to alleviate those concerns and avoid a wider ban in the country.

In a memo Tuesday, NYC Cyber Command, which is in charge of safeguarding city systems against cyber threats, wrote that the change was about broadening the city's communications reach.

“The Mamdani administration is committed to using every tool in our toolbox to communicate with New Yorkers,” NYC Cyber Command wrote. “At a moment when people are turning to city government for information about free services, emergency situations, upcoming events, and more, we want to open up new avenues of communication with the public and help deliver the information New Yorkers need.”

The security rules: Agencies must dedicate separate devices just for using TikTok, and those devices can't contain sensitive data and can't be used for email or other internal systems; TikTok accounts have to be created using agency credentials, rather than a person's email; departments have to designated specific staffers who will use TikTok.

TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment.

Mamdani, 34, has been prolific poster as both a candidate and as mayor, with his rise to political stardom aided by sharp and informative social media videos that spread like wildfire online.

The official New York City mayor TikTok handle, dormant since the ban went into effect, now shows a small handful of new posts.

One video shows Mamdani calling city dwellers to remind them about his so-called rental rip-off hearings, where residents can air grievances about poor living conditions in their apartment buildings. Another post shows Mamdani alongside the WNBA's New York Liberty star Natasha Cloud to announce a bracket-style competition in which residents can vote to have the mayor fix a small municipal problem in their neighborhoods, such as a broken basketball rim.

Endangered Rice’s whales live their entire lives in the gulf, where they’re vulnerable to vessel strikes, noise pollution, oil spills and climate change — all of which could increase with more drilling, scientists said. Other animals, including threatened manatees and endangered sea turtles, also could be put at risk, experts said.

As the Iran war pushes energy prices sharply higher, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked national security in seeking an exemption from endangered species laws, which make it illegal to harm or kill species on a protected list. The seldom-used Endangered Species Committee granted that request on Tuesday.

What is known about the Rice's whale?

It's the only whale species that lives year-round in the Gulf of Mexico, where there are fewer than 100 — and possibly fewer than 50 — left, scientists said.

Recognized as a distinct species in 2021, the Rice's whale is usually found in a narrow area in the northeastern part of the Gulf, in waters 100 to 400 meters (328 to 1,312 feet) deep.

They're fairly picky eaters, diving to the gulf floor for fatty fish — mainly silver-rag driftfish — during the day and then resting close to the surface at night, meaning they are “quite living on the edge,” said Jeremy Kiszka, a biological sciences professor at Florida International University.

That's because they undertake strenuous dives for a specific kind of food that also might be affected by more drilling and other changes in the gulf, and they're vulnerable to vessel strikes at night, Kiszka said.

How else could oil and gas drilling put them at risk?

Noise could disrupt the whales' foraging behavior, while increased global warming — tied to the burning of fossil fuels, including oil and gas — could change where their prey fish live, Kiszka said. The whales also are susceptible to pollution, with a significant portion of an already small population believed to have been killed by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“What we see today is just a species … that is unlucky in many ways: small home, specialized diet and living in a place that is not easy in the first place,” because of human impacts, Kiszka said.

Many climate change impacts are “baked in,” meaning they will persist even if fossil fuels were eliminated today, said Letise LaFeir, chief of conservation and stewardship at the New England Aquarium.

But the Trump administration proposal “is just compounding the immediate risks locally and the longer-term risks,” LaFeir said.

What about other species?

Although a government filing specifically mentions Rice's whales, other threatened and endangered animals also could be harmed by oil spills or other dangers, scientists said.

“The ocean is connected, so when there is this kind of action somewhere else, it does have implications across the waters,” LaFeir said.

For example, hundreds of sea turtles — including endangered Kemp’s Ridley and loggerheads — are rescued and rehabilitated every year before they are released into the Atlantic Ocean and swim for their nesting grounds in the Gulf, she said.

Michael Jasny, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's marine mammal protection project, said consequences could be far-reaching.

“It's … sea turtles, it’s manatees, it's whooping cranes, it’s various seabirds, it’s Rice’s whales, it’s sperm whales, it is endangered corals,” he said. “It is every endangered or threatened species in the Gulf of Mexico.”

What is the ‘God Squad?’

It was established in 1978 as a way to exempt projects from Endangered Species Act protections if a cost-benefit analysis concluded it was the only way to achieve net economic benefits in the national or regional interest.

The seven-member committee is led by the secretary of the Interior, with five other federal officials and with affected states getting one shared vote. Five votes are required for an exemption.

Before Tuesday, the committee had only issued exemptions twice. The first was for construction of a dam on a section of the Platte River considered critical habitat for whooping cranes, though a negotiated settlement won significant protections that led to overall ecosystem improvements. The second was for logging in northern spotted owl habitat, but the request was withdrawn after environmental groups sued, arguing that the committee’s decision was political and violated legal procedures.

Jasny fears the Trump administration wants to eliminate rigorous scrutiny of future exemptions and “turn this … into a thing that could be invoked at any time, almost for any purpose.”

If it can be done for drilling in the Gulf, he said, “why not California? Why not Alaska?”

“If you can declare an emergency to just kill sea turtles and manatees and whales in the Gulf, you know no species is safe.”

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.