By KENNETH CHANG A day after passing over the far side of the moon, the crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission is now on the return leg of its journey, and the pace of activity has slowed. The spacecraft carrying the astronauts, which they had named Integrity, left the sphere of lunar influence at 1:23 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday. That meant that the attraction of Earth’s gravity was stronger than the moon’s, accelerating them toward a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Friday. A

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House in Washington, April 6, 2026. President Trump, in vowing to systematically destroy civilian infrastructure and annihilate Iran’s entire civilization, appears to be creating evidence about his intentions. (Tom Brenner/The New York Times) By CHARLIE SAVAGE President Donald Trump’s threat earlier this week to wipe out Iran’s entire civilization escalated days of bellicose rhetoric in which he has made what

An Artemis II crew selfie midway through their lunar observation period on Monday, April 6, 2026. Clockwise from bottom, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen and Christina Koch. While science can seem colorless and plain, NASA personnel have brought expressiveness and emotion about their journey to mission control and the public. (NASA via The New York Times) By KATRINA MILLER During their historic lunar flyby Monday, the astronauts of the NASA mission Artemis II were w

Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank embraces Annie Ramos, his newlywed wife and an undocumented immigrant who arrived as a toddler, after her release from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, La., on Tuesday, April 7, 2026. Blank’s mother, Jen Rickling, looks on. Ramos, who was detained last week at her husband’s Army base, was released on Tuesday after spending five days at the detention center with hundreds of other women facing deportation as part of the Trump adminis

In a video still from NASA, the crew of Artemis II celebrates Easter Sunday by presenting Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency with golden astronaut wings. Hansen is the one member of the crew who had not been to space before. (NASA via The New York Times) By KENNETH CHANG The Artemis II astronauts have now ventured farther from Earth than anyone else in the history of humanity. At 1:56 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, their distance from Earth passed 248,655 miles, the rec

Staff Sergeant Matthew Blank and his mother, Jen Rickling, outside the detention center in Basile, La., where his wife is being held, on Aprl 5, 2026. The 22-year-old wife of an Army staff sergeant came to the U.S. as a toddler. She was taken from a military base where the couple planned to live. (Lily Brooks/The New York Times) By MIRIAM JORDAN A U.S. Army staff sergeant and his wife arrived at his base in Louisiana last week, expecting to begin their life together as newlyw

Attorney General Pam Bondi makes remarks in the briefing room at the White House in Washington, June 27, 2025. The name atop the Justice Department’s organizational chart matters less than the presence of a president whose demands for revenge have become so extreme that even his most obsequious appointees have fallen short. (Pete Marovich/The New York Times) By ALAN FEUER and GLENN THRUSH President Donald Trump’s pick to replace Pam Bondi will face the same conundrum that eve

A photo provided by NASA shows astronaut Christina Koch illuminated by a screen inside the darkened Orion spacecraft on the third day of the agency’s Artemis II mission, April 3, 2026. The astronauts said they had lost track of which day it is on Earth on their transit to the moon. (NASA via The New York Times) By KATRINA MILLER As Day 4 dawned on the Artemis II mission, the astronauts were closer to the moon than to Earth, after crossing the halfway point between the two bod

An attendee waits for former President Donald Trump to arrive at a religious gathering in Washington, Sept. 15, 2023. A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday, March 31, 2026, dismissed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 70-year-old ban on political activity by churches, abruptly ending a case that conservative Christian groups had hoped could free pastors to endorse candidates from the pulpit. (Kenny Holston/The New York Times) By DAVID A. FAHRENTHOLD and ELIZABETH DIAS A federal

The University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia, March 13, 2025. Some Jewish students and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania have expressed concern about the Trump administration’s tactics. (Rachel Wisniewski/The New York Times) By MICHAEL C. BENDER and ALAN BLINDER The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the sc