By Jackie Wattles, CNN

(CNN) — The Artemis II astronauts have faced down numerous dangers on their historic moon mission — including white-knuckling through liftoff on April 1 as their rocket burned through millions of gallons of fuel and braving perilous fields of radiation en route to the moon.

But perhaps the most daunting milestone lies ahead: reentry.

During this phase of flight, the astronauts’ spacecraft comes roaring toward Earth and dips back into the thick inner band of our planet’s atmosphere while still traveling more than 30 times the speed of sound. The process causes a violent compression of air molecules that can heat the capsule’s exterior to more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).

“I’ll be honest and say, I’ve actually been thinking about entry since April 3, 2023, when we got assigned to this mission,” Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover said of reentry during an event with media Wednesday. “One of the first press conferences, we were asked, what are we looking forward to? And I said, splashdown. And it’s kind of humorous, but it’s literal as well — that we have to get back. There’s so much data that you’ve seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us. There’s so many more pictures, so many more stories.”

Reentry is considered one of the most — if not the most — precarious steps of any flight to space. And Artemis II will be going through it with a known issue mission controllers are tracking.

The problem came to light after the uncrewed Artemis I mission around the moon in 2022, after which mission teams found that the capsule’s heat shield had returned with concerning pockmarks and cracking. A heat shield is a crucial piece of hardware designed to protect a spacecraft and its astronauts from extreme temperatures as they’re descending back to Earth.

The Artemis I Orion spacecraft still returned home safely and in one piece, but the damage raised questions about how well engineers understand the material used to create this hardware, called Avcoat, and how it behaves during the dangerous and dynamic final phase of flight.

If the heat shield becomes damaged or cracks in a particular way, it could lead to catastrophic failure. And there is no escape mechanism that could save the astronauts during at this point in the journey. If the heat shield fails, the mission and crew would be lost.

The Artemis II Orion spacecraft has a heat shield that’s nearly identical to the one that flew on Artemis I. And NASA officials have acknowledged that it is less than ideal. But the agency maintains that it can bring the astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — home safely, due to some changes made to the mission’s reentry strategy.

Mission managers say they are confident they have done their homework and understand the heat shield’s limitations and how to protect the crew, said Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, during a Thursday news briefing. And “the crew is going to put their lives behind that confidence,” he said.

But he acknowledged the stakes are high.

“The Orion spacecraft will enter the Earth’s atmosphere at approximately 25,000 miles per hour. That heat shield … will bear the full force of that reentry,” he said. “Every system we’ve demonstrated over the past nine days — life support, navigation, propulsion, communications — all of it depends on the final minutes of flight.”

Artemis I’s heat shield problem

The issues seen on Artemis I prompted more than a year of investigations, analysis and ground tests as NASA tried to understand the heat shield’s unexpected behavior.

Crucially, however, by the time Artemis I came back, the heat shield was alread

By Don Riddell, CNN

Augusta, Georgia (CNN) — It took some time, but Rory McIlroy realized there are more mountains left to conquer.

“Honestly, I felt like the career grand slam was my destination, and I got there, and then I realized it wasn’t the destination,” he told CNN Sports on Tuesday. “You think every time you achieve something or have success that you’ll be happy, but then the goalposts move, and they just keep nudging a little bit further and further out of reach.”

He’s playing like a man who’s figured out what that next step looks like.

On Thursday, McIlroy embarked on the next leg of a journey to further cement his legacy, opening the defense of his Masters title with an impressive 5-under-par round of 67 for a share of the lead with Sam Burns; they are two strokes clear of a trio including the 2018 champion Patrick Reed.

The Northern Irishman is already one of just six players to win all four major tournaments, and he’s now in the hunt to join only three men who have won back-to-back titles at Augusta National. The search for the first green jacket is over and so, seemingly, is the valley that followed that highest peak.

The rest of the season, after winning the green jacket, revealed a man unmoored. For so long, the quest for a Masters championship and the green jacket had defined McIlroy’s goals. Afterward, McIlroy cut a sharp figure, seemingly malcontented about something that no one could quite put their finger on.

Returning to Augusta this week now shows a man with a weight off his shoulders and an idea of what the next stages of his career look like. However, he denied to CNN that emulating Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods in receiving a green jacket from the club chairman is a goal he’s been aiming for.

“Not really,” he said, “But obviously it would be nice. Certainly wasn’t the forefront of my mind when I started 2026.”

Ever since blowing a four-stroke lead on Sunday at the 2011 Masters, McIlroy had endured a nerve-shredding relationship with Augusta National. After securing The Open Championship in 2014, the Masters was the only major that he needed to conclude his quest, but the closer he inched towards golfing immortality, the further away he seemed to be.

His pursuit of a green jacket became a tortured odyssey, which at times seemed destined to end in heartbreak.

Before the Masters last year, he pulled up to the clubhouse for dinner with Justin Rose and agonized over where to park his car – he revealed that he didn’t want the champions attending their annual dinner to see him from the second-floor veranda.

Now, he’s a bona fide member of that club, and his demeanor this week is of a liberated man, no longer shackled by the weight of expectation.

“For the past 17 years, I just could not wait for the tournament to start,” he said, and this year, “I wouldn’t care if the tournament never started,” he joked.

Patience is a virtue that helped secure the green jacket in 2025 and it was the story of his round again on Thursday. A birdie on the second hole was quickly negated by a bogey on the third, but he bided his time until back-to- back birdies at 8 and 9. He safely navigated his way through Amen Corner and hit the gas on the way out, making three consecutive birdies

Por Federico Leiva, CNN en Español

El “seleccionado” número 49 confirmó su lista de convocados para la Copa Mundial de la FIFA de 2026. La que será la primera edición del torneo con 48 participantes tiene ya a los 52 árbitros principales y sus asistentes llamados a impartir justicia en el certamen. Y hay algunas sorpresas.

Lo primero que se destaca es la gran presencia del continente americano: entre la Concacaf (Caribe, Norteamérica y Centroamérica) y la Conmebol (Sudamérica) son 20, apenas menos de la mitad. El número se destaca principalmente porque, en el caso de Sudamérica, hay seis selecciones clasificadas, pero el doble de árbitros, doce.
Un número que contrasta notoriamente con el de Europa, que solo tendrá 16, el mismo número de equipos clasificados por la UEFA.

Además, habrá ocho de Asia, solo seis de África (menos de uno por cada selección clasificada) y dos de Oceanía, aunque uno es de Australia, que participó de las eliminatorias asiáticas.

Argentina y Brasil son los países que tendrán más representación entre los colegiados: tres cada uno. Yael Falcón Pérez, Darío Herrera y Facundo Tello irán por Argentina, y Raphael Claus, Ramon Abatti y Wilton Sampaio por Brasil.

El caso albiceleste es curioso, porque, puertas adentro, los jueces son duramente castigados por los aficionados, jugadores y entrenadores semana a semana, principalmente por actuaciones en partidos donde participa alguno de los equipos vinculados a los hombres de poder dentro de la Asociación de Fútbol Argentino (AFA), Claudio Tapia, su presidente, y Pablo Toviggino, el tesorero.

La Asociación Argentina de Árbitros sacó pecho por la decisión de la FIFA, sin dejar pasar la oportunidad de apuntar contra los críticos. “Lograr que tres colegiados de nuestra AFA estén en la máxima cita es un reconocimiento explícito a la calidad, la formación y el presente del arbitraje en nuestro país”, afirmó la AAA en su cuenta de X (antes Twitter).

“Mientras a nivel local el arbitraje suele ser el centro de las críticas, el mundo mira a Argentina como una verdadera escuela de jueces de élite. Estas nominaciones marcan un antes y un después en la valoración de su profesionalismo”, agregó.

El “reconocimiento” al que hace alusión la AAA tiene ya amplio registro en el Mundial. De hecho, hubo participación argentina en cuatro de las últimas cinco ediciones de la Copa del Mundo: dos de la selección y dos del arbitraje.

En Alemania 2006, la final Italia-Francia la comandó Horacio Elizondo (expulsó correctamente a Zidane en su último partido como profesional); en Brasil 2014, la Albiceleste jugó la final (nunca hay árbitros de un país finalista); en Rusia 2018 la definición Francia-Croacia la dirigió Néstor Pitana; y en 2022 la Albiceleste volvió a jugar el partido más importante. La excepción es Sudáfrica 2010, cuando España y Países Bajos definieron al campeón con el inglés Howard Webb como juez principal.

Por detrás de Argentina y Brasil, la nota la dieron México y Estados Unidos, dos de los pocos países que aportarán un binomio de árbitros principales. El bonus de estas selecciones por sobre Francia e Inglaterra (también con dos) es que aportarán una mujer como jueza principal.

En el caso de México es Katia Itzel García, quien ya tiene experiencia en el fútbol varonil, dirigiendo varios partidos en la Liga MX, la primera división del fútbol mexicano. Además, es internacional desde 2019 y ya dirigió en el Mundial femenino y otras competencias de la Concacaf. César Ramos será el otro silbato principal que tendrá México en el torneo.

Por el lado de Estados Unidos, la mujer representante es Mary Victoria Penso, conocida como Tori. Ya dirigió en la MLS (primera división del fútbol estadounidense) y también en el Mundial de mujeres, donde impartió justicia en la final del certamen en 2023.

No es la primera vez que una mujer dirige en el Mundial masculino.

By Deblina Chakraborty, Ashley Strickland, CNN

(CNN) — Before four Artemis II astronauts strapped into their Orion capsule to soar toward the moon, a tiny bit of each of them was already on board.

Incubated in a small triangular container stowed on the spacecraft just before launch were four USB-size “avatars,” which rode along with the history-making moon mission. But in many ways, their journey is just beginning.

Known as organ chips, the avatar crewmates are made with bone marrow tissue derived from cells donated by their full-size counterparts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — and researchers believe the experiment could soon unlock unprecedented insights about the effects of space on human health.

The AVATAR, or A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response, study essentially allows scientists to simulate what happens to astronauts’ organs in deep space.

It offers a more granular look at where and when changes in the body begin, compared to traditional post-flight medical testing, according to Lisa Carnell, Director of NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division. “We’ve never done this before,” she said.

Because researchers chose to focus on bone marrow for this organ chip experiment, Carnell expects to gather data on the crew’s immune responses to traveling through the deep space and the higher-radiation levels associated with such endeavors. Those insights could lead to individualized treatments that ease the way for the astronauts to embark on longer missions — perhaps deeper into the cosmos.

“When we send these alongside Christina, Victor, Reid, Jeremy, they all may respond different to the deep space radiation environment. Somebody may be radio resistant and will learn something new, and you know, or maybe somebody is more extremely susceptible to radiation,” Carnell said before the mission began. “Well, now we can tailor medical kits that we can make personal lives for them on their journey. They go to Mars, they go to the moon, to live for long duration. We can send the right therapeutics with them to make sure they stay healthy and that they can thrive in those environments.”

The goal, Carnell said, is to one day be able to send up avatars of astronauts selected for deep space and long-duration missions ahead of time, so crews can prepare for potential health concerns before they become an issue far from home.

“In the Apollo days, it was just a few days on the surface. If we’re literally going to have people on the surface for a long period of time, even 30 days or longer, I mean, we don’t have data on that at all, right?” Carnell said. “We like to say, ‘Know before we go.’ It’s that simple. Like, how do we know before we send them to ensure that we bring them back healthy and that they’re as safe as can be? And this is such a simple … eloquent way to do that.”

As AVATAR quietly careens along in a corner of the spacecraft, the Artemis II astronauts are also actively working to collect data that could inform the future of human spaceflight — and that job doesn’t end once they splashdown.

The 5 hazards of space travel

Space is a stressful place for the human body, said Dr. Steven Platts, chief scientist for human research at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The agency has an acronym for the overarching hazards that humans face in space: RIDGE, which stands for radiation, isolation, distance from Earth, gravity (or the lack thereof) and environment (which can be hostile both inside and outside of the spacecraft), Platts said.

Any time humans venture to space, but especially on the rare occasion that they journey beyond Earth orbit, researchers want to monitor as much as they can about the effects of the harsh environment on the body — even if it’s just for 10 days.

There ar

By Brenda Goodman, CNN

(CNN) — US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has approved changes to rules that govern an expert group that advises the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its vaccine recommendations.

The move, part of Kennedy’s latest effort to reshape the country’s vaccine policy, follows a March court order that temporarily blocked the work of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, and put some of its previous moves on hold.

The revisions significantly broaden the scope of the work that falls under the purview of the committee, which had previously limited its focus to making recommendations on the use of vaccines in the United States.

In a statement Thursday, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon described the renewal of the committee’s charter as “routine statutory requirements” that “do not signal any broader policy shift.”

“Unless officially announced by HHS, any assertions about next steps are speculation,” Nixon added.

Additions to the committee’s charter, or rulebook, include several points that have long been priorities of groups that advocate against the use of vaccines. The charter now puts a focus on “identifying gaps in vaccine safety research, including adverse effects following vaccination.”

The committee has also been directed to consider the “cumulative effects” of giving all recommended childhood vaccines and considering ingredients in vaccines, such as aluminum, which is added to vaccines in tiny amounts to boost the body’s immune response to them. Some vaccine skeptics believe that aluminum in vaccines may be tied to neurodevelopment problems in children, such as autism, although large studies investigating the issue have found no link.

Additionally, ACIP is now specifically tasked with considering “novel vaccine platforms such as mRNA vaccines” – the technology behind two of the Covid-19 vaccines available in the US – and reviewing the vaccine schedules used by other countries.

In August, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was winding down its mRNA vaccine development activities and canceled nearly $500 million in federal funding for mRNA research and development projects, saying it was pivoting to “safer, broader” platforms “that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”

In January, HHS said it was updating the childhood immunization schedule to more closely resemble the vaccination schedules of European nations like Denmark.

“The new charter seems to try to codify the RFK vision of ACIP as a committee focused on risk only and not balance or risk and benefit,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned as director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases last year over changes to vaccine policy at the agency. He is now chief medical officer of Callen-Lorde Community Health Center.

Daskalakis also noted that the charter gives non-voting memberships to some medical organizations that have expressed skepticism of vaccines, saying it would give them a new platform from which to further destabilize trust in vaccines “without basis.”

Among the new non-voting liaison members are the Independent Medical Alliance, Physicians for Informed Consent and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, groups that maintain that vaccine risks are underreported or hidden from the public and that vaccine benefits may not outweigh their harms.

Richard Hughes, a lawyer who is representing the Ameri