In all space missions, there is an evident risk to the lives of astronauts. And the most delicate moments are always takeoff and landing. But in Artemis II, NASA's mission that concludes this Friday after ten days of travel, the return to Earth is undoubtedly the most risky moment. To begin with, because during takeoff the astronauts had an ejection system in case of emergency (which would have expelled them to save them in case of an explosion), but above all because the re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere this time presents some extra challenges compared to previous missions.

Mission accomplished. The four Artemis II astronauts are back on Earth, after going to the Moon and returning. This historic mission, which lasted 10 days, is the first in over 50 years to take humans to the Moon, and it has made them the people who have traveled farthest from Earth in the history of humanity. At 1:53 AM, Catalan time, the Orion capsule carrying the astronauts re-entered Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 km per hour, faster than any other spacecraft before. A particularly risky maneuver, but one that has been successfully overcome.

The day after the four astronauts of the Artemis II mission have made history by becoming the humans who have traveled farthest into space —406,771 kilometers from Earth—, ARA interviews Josep Maria Trigo, principal investigator of the Asteroids, Comets, Meteorites and Planetary Sciences group at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) and the Institute of Catalan Studies for Space (IEEC).

1. “It’s a 3D view accompanied by personal experience, which gives us a much better interpretation than many images obtained by robotic probes”. I found it gratifying that a NASA administrator, Lori Glaze, recognized the human gaze, at a time when AI seems poised to overwhelm natural intelligence, risking domination over collective experience, ridiculing our condition. Victor Glover, one of the four astronauts who orbited the Moon, said during the eclipse: “It’s the strangest and most surreal sight we’ve had today, with the Earth’s glow illuminating the Moon”. And the spacecraft continues its adventure, which no one can explain better than the four people who have lived it. Without them, there would have been events but not an experience. That is, a lived reality transmitted by beings of flesh, bone, blood, and natural intelligence, who will be able to explain it to us (with the limitations imposed by the relevant authorities, it must be said, which is also a human condition) with the intensity of the lived experience. That is, a perception, from reason, accompanied by sensations, feelings, strengths, and weaknesses, that shape our species and that AI, capable of generating infinite accumulation and combination of data, will never be able to transmit with the singularity and sensitivity that, for better or worse, constitutes the human condition.

Today is one of those days when you don't even have time to get your bearings. We are waiting for Iran, because Trump seems determined not to give any more ultimatums. Yesterday he said: "We can destroy Iran in one night, and that night could be tomorrow," meaning, this coming dawn. This time it could be for real, because these extended ultimatums are starting to be a joke and because the crude language Trump has used these days shows more desperation than ability to intimidate the ayatollahs' regime, and that makes it even more dangerous. If his threat is fulfilled, the consequences could be catastrophic, almost unimaginable, beyond the deaths, the war crimes he will commit, and the world economy also going up in smoke.To understand how erratic and neronian Trump is, we only need to think that he has the world admiring the NASA trip to the Moon: human beings had never been so far from Earth, and this is extraordinary news and of national and almost worldwide unity, but Trump himself has counter-programmed himself with a war whose meaning he does not know and from which he does not know how to get out. He only knows how to boast about the rescue of the shot-down pilot (a meritorious operation, yes, because if the Iranians had taken a prisoner the political cost for Trump would have been very high), but when you look at it, Iran already has a great hostage, which is the Strait of Hormuz, on which we all depend.Speaking of Hormuz, we highly recommend the reports that our Head of International, Francesc Millan, is currently filing from the Middle East. Yesterday we read about him sailing through the Strait, and today we find him in the ultra-modern and very exposed Dubai.Not everything is misfortune: unemployment has fallen in Catalonia and the number of people who have jobs and are affiliated with Social Security is nearing records. It is good news, which unfortunately does not prevent people from working and not escaping poverty.And yesterday an old acquaintance, Jorge Fernández Díaz, went to trial accused of having participated in the theft of information from Luis Bárcenas that compromised the PP. The Kitchen plot allegedly paid bribes to Bárcenas' driver with money from reserved police funds. On the defendants' bench are one who was a minister, one who was a secretary of state, five commissioners, two inspectors, and two police officers. Rot to the bone of the State, a type of rot we know well, because some of these, starting with Fernández Díaz, appear in all the photos of the patriotic police.And today begins the Koldo case, which affects the PSOE: purchase of masks, contracts, cronyism and favors. Do these two trials have anything in common? Yes, that Fernández Díaz was of Rajoy's utmost trust and Ábalos was of Pedro Sánchez's utmost trust.And we end with a page that makes us think that the nightmare will continue in Rodalies. It is this one signed by Natàlia Vila. As you know, the service is provided with trains from 1990, and now the new ones were supposed to arrive. First they were supposed to arrive last year, then at the beginning of the year, and now they say "in the autumn", and most will be for Rodalies and few will come to Regionals, and they will be delivered over the next 4 years, until 2030. On top of that, some new trains that are already in the testing phase are already covered in graffiti. No further questions, your honor.Good morning.

There are images that have a symbolic weight that endures over time. It was inevitable to think about them during the launch of Artemis II, especially from the CNN broadcast. A little over forty years ago, in January 1986, the American news channel was only six years old and the 24-hour continuous information model still raised doubts. The explosion of the Challenger shuttle just 73 seconds after launch was explained live and overturned the journalistic narrative they had planned. The tragedy – with the death of the seven crew members – happened in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers, and with the bewilderment and doubts of the reporters themselves.

Our parents or your grandparents followed, in the old way, the arrival of man on the Moon, on television, that July of 1969. We called him “man”, because we used the generic to mean “humanity” or “human being”, but also because the astronauts who stepped on it were men. We remember their names and their words. Those of Neil Armstrong: “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. The rocket was called Apollo 11 (the name of the god of medicine and masculine beauty).

NASA's Artemis II mission rocket is already halfway to the Moon, after leaving Earth's orbit, and is advancing at 5,632 kilometers per hour to become the first mission to carry humans to the satellite in more than 50 years. The objective in this case is not to land on the Moon but to orbit it and return to Earth, to test the technology that should finally allow a lunar landing in 2028. The four astronauts of the mission - who are bringing their own mobile phones on board - have already sent the first spectacular images of Earth from their perspective, and they are expected to reach the Moon on Monday night. By Saturday, the spacecraft was already more than 219,000 kilometers away, closer to the Moon than to our planet.

The first crewed mission to the Moon in more than half a century begins its countdown with maximum expectation. If all goes according to plan, NASA will launch the rocket – with three astronauts from the United States and one from Canada on board – on Wednesday, April 1 (in Catalonia, it will already be Thursday morning). The Orion spacecraft will only orbit the Moon and return without landing on it, with the aim of testing the capsule where the crew will travel and preparing NASA for its next lunar landing in subsequent missions. The Artemis II mission marks the return of humans to the Moon after the Apollo 17 journey (the sixth mission and last moon landing) in 1972. This is everything you need to know about this extraordinary mission and the astronauts making the journey.

After announcing a few weeks ago that the Artemis III mission would not take humans to the lunar surface as planned, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the agency's new plans on Tuesday to fulfill President Donald Trump's promise to reach our satellite before its Chinese rivals. The new plans involve delaying the lunar landing by a year from the initial forecast: the Artemis IV mission will now launch in 2028. Later, he announced, a permanent U.S. base will be built on the lunar surface. "Our goal this time is not flags or footprints, but to stay on the Moon," Isaacman stated during the public presentation of NASA's plan, which took place on Tuesday under the evocative title of Ignition (ignition). "We will not let go of the Moon again," he asserted.

NASA restarts the clock for the launch of the first manned mission to the Moon After more than 50 years since the last trip, the return flight is scheduled for Friday, March 6 (Saturday, March 7, Catalan time), following the successful completion of the second full fuel test. It was "a very successful day," the US space agency announced, following the satisfactory test results. Weather permitting, NASA hopes to take advantage of a launch window in two weeks to launch the Artemis II mission, with four astronauts on board, who will spend ten days in space on the far side of the Moon. The mission's objective is to prepare for a future mission that will explore the Moon further. The launch will take place from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Miami, from where the future crew monitored the fuel tests.

NASA's Artemis II mission, which was scheduled to launch next weekend to a manned mission around the MoonThe launch of the Artemis II spacecraft has been postponed until at least March after a fuel leak was detected during test flights on Tuesday. NASA announced the postponement through its official channels, now indicating March as "the earliest possible launch opportunity for the Artemis II mission," which will carry four astronauts. The plan is for them to orbit the Moon before returning to Earth.

The Universe is expanding faster and faster. But astronomers still don't know exactly why. Now the DES (Dark Energy Survey) collaboration has taken another step towards solving this enigma. For the first time have published results These measurements combine data from the two main sources available for measuring the expansion of the Universe: the clustering of galaxies and how they deflect light through gravitational lensing. The analysis provides more precise estimates of the Universe's composition and brings scientists closer to solving this puzzle.

A tweet from Elon Musk has brought to light a long-simmering leadership dispute at NASA. “The person in charge of America’s space program cannot have a double-digit IQ,” he wrote to X on Tuesday, in a dig at Transportation Secretary and acting NASA chief Sean Duffy. “Should the US space program be run by someone whose primary objective is to climb trees?” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO pressed X, mocking Duffy’s past as a tree-climbing competition champion.

NASA announced Tuesday that it plans to launch its first crewed mission to the Moon in fifty years between February and April 2026. The flight will be a round trip around the satellite, and the US space agency views it as a safety and endurance test, as the goal is to confirm its viability, explained Lakiesha Hawkins, acting associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, in a press conference.

"This exciting discovery is the closest we've come to discovering ancient life on Mars and answering one of humanity's deepest questions: Are we truly alone in the universe?" said NASA's Chief Scientist, Nicola Fox, on Wednesday. The representative of the US space agency enthusiastically outlined the results of the analysis of the samples taken by the rover. Perseverance collected last year on the red planet, in an area where a river flowed 3.8 billion years ago and emptied into a lake. The minerals found by the "six-wheeled geologist" then opened a window of optimism about the possibility of proving that microbial life could have existed outside of Earth billions of years ago. "And after a year of review, scientists told us, 'We can't find any other explanation,'" said NASA Director Sean Duffy.

For the first time, there is scientific evidence that Mars hides a solid inner core about 600 kilometers across, surrounded by a liquid core. Thus, the red planet is, in this respect, more similar to Earth than previously thought, although they have evolved very differently. The discovery was made from tests sent three years ago by NASA's InSight mission, in which Chinese and American researchers observed the behavior of Martian earthquakes between 2018 and 2022. Through comparisons with data from Earth, we can begin to decipher the evolution of Mars and how it lost its ancient magnetic field. It will also be used to analyze its thermal and chemical state.

Elon Musk's massive Starship has successfully completed its tenth test launch. The SpaceX rocket landed its booster, dubbed Super Heavy, softly in the Gulf of Mexico, and its upper body, the Starship, reached the Indian Ocean as planned.

Don Pettit He recently spent seven months aboard the International Space Station. During his stay, Pettit contributed to research for future space missions. Pettit also shared what he calls "opportunity science" to demonstrate how experimenting with our environment can help us better understand how things work. In his understanding of science, this understanding is enhanced when art and science come together.

Before Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, plenty of creatures orbited above human heads. During the 1950s, the Soviets and Americans took their rivalry beyond our planet, starting a space race that would immortalize names like Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, Aleksei Leonov, Buzz Aldrin, and Valentina Tereshkova. But before them, there were Laika, Baker, Belka, Ham, and Strelka. The first animals in space, but not the first to fly, since in 1783 the Montgolfier brothers had placed a sheep, a duck, and a rooster inside a hot-air balloon to see what would happen if they flew.