Their dramatic grand finale fast approaching, Artemis II’s astronauts aimed for a splashdown in the Pacific on Friday to close out humanity’s first voyage to the moon in more than half a century.
The tension in Mission Control mounted as the miles melted away between the four returning astronauts and Earth.
All eyes were on the capsule’s life-protecting heat shield that has to withstand thousands of degrees during reentry. On the only other test flight of the spacecraft — in 2022, with no one on board — the shield’s charred exterior came back looking as pockmarked as the moon.
With the ceasefire in Iran still shaky, U.S. Vice President JD Vance headed Friday to Pakistan for high-level talks with Iranian officials, as Israel and Hezbollah traded fire and Tehran maintained its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
Many issues could derail the truce and the negotiations aimed at making a broader deal to stop the fighting permanently.
Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency, close to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, claimed that the talks set for Saturday would not happen unless Israel stopped its attacks in Lebanon. And U.S. President Donald Trump complained that Iran was “doing a very poor job” by not allowing the free flow of ships through the strait, through which 20% of the world’s traded oil once passed.
Claudia Ferreiro can be reached at ferr1664@stthomas.edu.
