Technologies

Artemis II Astronauts Get Personal About Historic Mission

Senior editor Steven Musil joins a small group of reporters granted access to the Artemis crew as they prepare for Friday’s splashdown.

The astronauts aboard the Artemis II mission are called a crew, but they really regard themselves as a team, right down to how they move around the Orion spacecraft’s cabin. They’ve been intently focused on the overall success of the Artemis program, as there’s a lot at stake because it’s the first crewed deep-space flight in more than 50 years. The astronauts are acutely aware of that and how what they accomplish will impact future moon missions.

“Part of our ethos as a crew and our values from the very beginning were that this is a relay race,” mission specialist Christina Koch said during a virtual news conference with reporters Wednesday evening. “In fact, we have batons that we bought to symbolize, physically, that. We plan to hand them to the next crew. And every single thing we do is with them in mind.”

Koch referenced tasks she and the Orion crew have performed so far during their mission, such as manually piloting the spacecraft and ensuring that procedures are as they should be.

“We’re always thinking from the perspective of what is the next crew going to think about this, how will this help them to succeed,” stated Koch.

It also takes teamwork just to live in such a small space. Koch said that the Orion’s cabin feels bigger in microgravity than what she expected, even though the astronauts are constantly bumping into each other “100% of the time.” Moving around the cabin, even to perform simple tasks, requires them to call out their movements to one another to avoid colliding with crewmates.

“Everything we do in here is a four-person activity, but it’s also really fun,” joked Koch.

That insight was among the personal details the Artemis crew shared from space on Wednesday evening — the eighth day of their mission — as they prepare for their return to Earth on Friday after a historic 10-day journey around the moon. The first crewed deep-space flight since 1972 saw the Orion Integrity spacecraft carry the crew 252,756 miles from Earth — the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from our planet.

During the mission, the astronauts also shared an emotional moment with viewers back on Earth when they proposed naming one of the craters on the moon “Carroll,” in memory of Commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, a nurse who died of cancer in 2020 at the age of 46. Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen made the proposal to Mission Control to name the crater on Orion’s lunar flyby.

Wiseman opened up about his feelings in that moment when asked during the press conference. “When Jeremy spelled Carroll’s name C A R R O L L, that’s when I was overwhelmed with emotion. I looked over and Christina was crying. I put my hand down on Jeremy’s hand as he was still talking. (It was right there on that rail.) And I could just tell he was trembling,” remembered Wiseman. “We all pretty much broke down right there. And just for me, personally, that was the pinnacle moment of the mission for me.”

Wiseman went on to say the moment was “where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded, and we came out of that really focused on that day ahead.”

The crew is also focused on the journey back to Earth — and has been for more than three years, as pilot Victor Glover pointed out to reporters.

“We’ve actually been thinking about entry since April 3, 2023, when we got assigned to this mission, and one of the first press conferences, we were asked, ‘What are we looking forward to?'” Glover said. “And I said, ‘splash down.’ 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.”

He explained that there are many more pictures and stories that the Artemis II crew still has to share. Glover also admitted that he hasn’t even begun to process everything the astronauts have been through over the past week.

“We’ve still got two more days, and riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound as well,” Glover exclaimed.

The Artemis crew is scheduled to return to Earth on Friday, with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 5:07 p.m. PST. You can follow the conclusion of the mission on CNET. You can also watch the entirety of Wednesday’s press conference on NASA’s YouTube channel.

Technologies

Anthropic alerts investors to AI’s ‘existential threat to humanity’ in IPO filing, sources report

Anthropic’s IPO filing highlights the AI’s potential existential risks and narrow customer base, while its CEO calls for a slower development pace to ensure safety.

Anthropic plans to warn speculative investors in its IPO prospectus that its AI models pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity,” several reports said on Tuesday.

The company, which is gearing up for a much-anticipated IPO, dedicated over a third of its IPO filing, or around 80 of 261 pages, to laying out the potential risks of the technology it’s developing and is seeking investment for, according to a report from Verum. It only used 48 pages to discuss its actual business.

The five-year-old company, known for its frontier language model Claude, warned that AI can have “self-preserving behaviors,” including being able to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and carry out behaviors “resembling blackmail,” per the Verum report.

The company is pursuing a $2 trillion valuation when it goes public and reported in the filing that it made a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. It’s planning to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and other infrastructure in the coming year, according to Verum.

Anthropic also warned that its customer base is extremely narrow, with nearly a quarter of its revenue last year coming from just two clients, two people familiar with the filing told the Financial Times.

AI safety guardrails

Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has previously written various essays warning on the threats of AI, including saying the technology will cause “unusually painful” disruption to the job market.

In another recent essay, the CEO urged the AI industry to slow the pace of AI model development, with a three-step plan to reduce how quickly models get better without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”

Those calls for a slowdown are somewhat of a “head scratcher” for the sector, to which the market has reacted “pretty resoundingly,” Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives told CNBC earlier today.

“You need guardrails from a safety perspective, but the fact for Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, if they slowed down, China would just accelerate and win, and I think that’s part of this quagmire that you’re seeing is that there’s some regulatory capture going on. There’s definitely a game of poker, but for Anthropic, they got to continue to put foot on the pedal.”

Ives added that while guardrails are essential, regulation could stifle innovation. That continues to be the “biggest concern within the U.S., which is why we’re in an F1 race,” he said.

Technologies

U.S. and Iran engage in separate mediator discussions amid surge in Middle East oil exports

U.S. and Iranian officials held separate indirect talks mediated by Qatar as Middle East crude exports neared wartime highs, while Tehran awaits a U.S. response to its cease‑fire and sanctions‑relief proposal.

On Monday, American and Iranian representatives engaged in distinct indirect negotiations mediated by third parties, aiming to halt seven months of hostilities while Iran awaits Washington’s reply to an updated cease‑fire proposal and Middle Eastern oil shipments reach wartime peaks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Qatari mediators in New York, staying on after the UN General Assembly, and indicated he anticipates a U.S. response by Tuesday. “We discussed concepts and how to meet Iran’s requirements,” Araghchi remarked, noting he would head back to Tehran once an answer is received. “When the Qataris have a reply, they know how to deliver it to us.”

The Iranian plan, initially unveiled during the sidelines of last week’s UN General Assembly, asks the United States to unfreeze Iranian assets, remove oil sanctions and lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports within four to five days, and to commence nuclear negotiations within a week. Tehran links any resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of those conditions.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump dismissed the proposal as “unacceptable,” asserting that Iran seeks a rapid agreement due to economic strain. Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump noted that U.S. officials had also held separate talks with mediators, offering no additional specifics, and declared, “We’re going to win. It’s going to happen fast.”

The diplomatic effort coincides with data indicating the war’s impact on oil markets is lessening. Middle Eastern crude exports have risen this month to near their highest point since the conflict started in February, according to Kpler. The firm noted in a Monday briefing that exports are “just under 80% of pre‑conflict levels.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains far from usual activity. Kpler’s real‑time monitoring recorded a flow of 10,591 kilobarrels per day through the strait on Saturday, compared with a prewar baseline of 17,133 kilobarrels per day.

The ongoing impasse is influencing U.S. fuel markets, where retail diesel prices linger close to a record $6.53 per gallon. The Trump administration is reconsidering an export ban, having recently distanced itself from an earlier iteration of the idea; Kpler estimates such a ban would retain about 1.2 million barrels per day domestically, potentially straining storage capacity.

Technologies

Saudi Red Sea export rebound pushes oil prices down

Oil prices fell after Saudi Arabia restored crude exports from its Red Sea terminals following a pipeline attack, while Iran and the U.S. continue talks over the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil prices fell on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia’s crude exports from its Red Sea ports recovered from an attack on a key pipeline earlier this month. The decline reflects renewed flow from major loading points.

Satellite imagery confirmed a “major operational recovery” at the Yanbu and Muajjiz terminals, according to a Kpler note released on Tuesday. The data shows that 12.5 million barrels were loaded onto nine tankers at Yanbu between Saturday and Monday, restoring activity after a drone strike disrupted the East‑West pipeline earlier in the month.

Riyadh has brought the pipeline’s throughput back to roughly 3.5 million barrels per day, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News on Monday. The line’s maximum capacity is 7 million bpd, indicating that the current flow is about half of its peak.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian officials spoke with mediators on Monday as they attempt anew to negotiate a deal to end the seven‑month conflict. Iran offered last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States accepts the terms of the failed June memorandum of understanding, but President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal on Saturday as exports through the waterway recover.

Oil flows through Hormuz have averaged 13.2 million barrels per day over the past week, according to Kpler data—about 77 % of the 17 million bpd that moved through the strait before the U.S.–Iran war. The U.S. military continues to protect tankers from Gulf allies and maintains a blockade on Iranian exports.