NASA’s $100 billion bet on the moon is about to launch

Good morning. The countdown is on. Tomorrow NASA launches a groundbreaking lunar mission.

It's definitely a huge moment. This is the first time that we are going back to the moon

since the Apollo era. Trump makes new threats to Iran as it refuses to open up oil routes.

And her heart will go on. Celine Dion announces a comeback.

It's Tuesday, March 31st. I'm Cecilia Lay, and this is Apple News today.

Excessive, unrealistic, and irrational. That was the verdict from Iran yesterday on President

Trump's 15-point proposal to bring an end to the war. On the same day Trump hailed what he called

great progress in the negotiations. He also made new threats to target Iran's power plants,

oil production facilities, and key civilian infrastructure. A move that would mark a dramatic

escalation in the conflict. According to some human rights groups, this would be a war crime.

NBC's Garrett Hake asked White House press secretary Caroline Levitt about that yesterday.

The president has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time as evidence

by the statement that you just read that their best move is to make a deal. Or else the United

States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination, and the president is not

afraid to use that. That's not what I said, Garrett. Of course, this administration in the United

States Armed Forces will always act within the confines of the law.

Trump has also repeated his threat to attack Harg Island. There's a huge Iranian oil facility

there, so any attempt to take it over would be met with fierce resistance. Iran's parliament speaker

said as much when he warned that his country would quote rain down fire on any invading force.

The island is a major source of Iran's oil exports, so seizing it could not only hurt Iran's

economy, but also put even more strains on the global oil market. The Wall Street Journal reports

that Trump is also weighing other possible moves, like an operation to extract Iran's uranium.

But this kind of escalation would be complex and risky, likely putting U.S. forces inside Iran

for the first time in the war. Speaking to Al Jazeera yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio

emphasized that diplomacy was still active despite Iran's denials.

There's messages and some direct talks going on between some inside of Iran and the United States,

primarily through intermediaries, but there's been some conversation, and I think the president

always prefers diplomacy. But the country still appear far apart. Rubio outright dismissed

Iran's claims to sovereignty of the state of Harmuz. He also called the country's new plan to

impose tolls on the strait illegal. Rubio also said Iran would need to stop building missiles

capable of attacking Gulf neighbors. And even though Gulf nations are taking Iranian fire for a war

they didn't start, there are some indications they don't want it to end right now either.

AP reports that nearby countries are privately urging Trump to continue fighting

until Iran's regime is weakened further. The BBC's Frank Gardner, a longtime expert on the region,

told the network he'd heard something similar from his sources on a recent visit.

Gulf states continue to absorb drone and missile attacks last night.

Kuwait reported an attack on one of its oil tankers at a port in Dubai. Meanwhile Israel said

it destroyed more than 100 high-rise buildings in Lebanon's capital Beirut, claiming they were

being used by Iran-backed Hezbollah. NASA astronauts are getting ready for their first moon mission

in over 50 years. The last time NASA went to the moon was the Apollo 17 mission which landed

on its surface back in 1972. But tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, a group of four astronauts

will leave on a 10-day lunar fly-by mission. They'll go around the moon this time without landing

and splash back into the Pacific Ocean. One of the crew members, Reed Wiseman, hyped up a crowd

at a press conference last week. Hey, let's go to the moon! I think the nation and the world has

been waiting a long time to do this again and behalf of myself, Victor, Christina, Jeremy,

we're really pumped to go do this for this entire team. To get a better sense of the why and why

now with mission, we spoke to Lauren Grush, a space reporter with Bloomberg. It's meant to serve as

something of an elaborate dress rehearsal for the moon landing which NASA is targeting in 2028.

She said the four-person crew is notable in a few ways. Victor Glover will be the first

black man to travel to deep space into the moon's vicinity. Christina Cook will also be the first

woman to do so. And then Jeremy Hansen will be the first Canadian to do the same. So they'll be

making a lot of firsts on this mission. Also, the crew will be flying deeper into space than any

astronauts have ever gone before. So they'll break that record. During a part of the mission,

they're going to swing behind the moon where they'll briefly lose contact with mission controllers.

The closest they'll actually get to the lunar surface is about four to six thousand miles.

They've likened it to if you look out the window of the capsule, it'll look like the size of a

basketball at your outstretched hand. The mission is just one part of NASA's ambitious and

expensive plan to build out a moon base and launch multiple landing missions each year.

Ultimately, NASA hopes it can explore the potential presence of water on the moon,

develop technology for more ambitious space travel, and simply develop a greater understanding

about the Earth's history. In the past, the US was in competition with the Soviet Union for

space dominance. Now the race seems to be with China, which has its own plans to get its astronauts

to the moon before the end of the decade. Trump kicked off the Artemis program in his first term,

and later it was endorsed by the Biden administration. Last week, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman

talked about the program's trajectory. This revised step-by-step approach to learn,

to build muscle memory, to bring down risk and gain confidence is exactly how NASA achieved

the near impossible in the 1960s. But this time, the goal is not flags and footprints,

this time the goal is to stay. The moon base will cost an estimated 20 billion dollars over

the next seven years, and the Artemis program overall has already cost nearly a hundred billion dollars.

Grash said that there are still some questions about why Congress is willing to spend 20 billion

dollars, and implement moon landers that are built by the private companies SpaceX and Blue Origin.

There's a lot of concerns about what the state of the hardware that needs to be developed

when it comes to the landers, right? So SpaceX and Blue Origin are developing their lunar landers,

and they are very complex, and they have a lot to do before they're actually ready.

And Isaacman has also said that whoever is ready first will be the ones to fly first,

so he's kind of started a bit of a space race between the two companies that were already rivals

to begin with. Artemis II is scheduled to launch tomorrow at 6.24 pm eastern time.

There's a little known immigration court that's become increasingly important under the Trump

administration, and as MPR has been reporting, it could be quietly reshaping policy in some dramatic

ways. Under the U.S. Constitution, non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants, are guaranteed

due process rights. That means the government is expected to take steps to ensure fairness and

deportation proceedings, including providing a right to a hearing. When an immigrant is going

through immigration court, that is their chance, typically, to argue why they should get to stay

in the United States, while there's an immigration and customs attorney arguing why they should be

removed. He menabustio covers immigration policy for MPR. After the hearing process concludes,

a judge makes their ruling which immigrants could appeal. After that, the case would go to an

obscure administrative court. The board of immigration appeals is this tiny corner of the justice

department. So, immigration courts generally are not like other courts that you might think of.

They are housed all within the justice department, which means that they're under the executive

branch of government. They are not independent judiciary courts. Because of that, the Trump

administration has been able to reshape the board of immigration appeals, and it's helping them

execute its mass deportation campaign and set immigration policy across the country.

For one thing, the size of the board has shrunk from 28 judges to 15. Most of them were selected

by Trump. There is one Obama pointee, and there's one Bush appointee, the rest were either

appointed during Trump 1 or the second Trump administration. This board also makes decisions which

set presidents for how immigration law gets interpreted. Bushio told us that it's in these

decisions where she saw the impact of how the administration has changed the board's makeup.

In 2025, it put out a significantly higher number of these decisions than in years past,

and a vast majority of them cited with the DHS. Last year, there were 70 president decisions,

and of those 70, 97 percent, so all but essentially about two, cited with DHS.

And in one of the two cases where the board did not cite with DHS, it was because DHS didn't

even show up to the initial hearing. Some examples of the rulings include making it harder for

immigration courts to release individuals on bond instead of detaining them, and making it easier

to deport immigrants to countries that they're not from. Recently, the Trump administration has

also tried to dramatically streamline this appeal process in order to deport more immigrants,

but a federal judge temporarily put a halt to that. Changing the board of immigration appeals

is just one of the ways the administration is reshaping the executive branch's immigration court

system. According to NPR, at least 100 judges were fired in the last year, and others have

resigned or retired. The overall loss in judges has led to a big backlog in cases, and with the

appeals board reduced in size, it could make it harder to catch issues in legal proceedings.

Speaking with people who have sat on the board, who have litigated in front of the board,

and are familiar with the inner workings of the board, say that the reason this appeals process

exists is simply because even the best immigration judges can make a mistake. And this is

mistakes on all sides, mistakes that could grant permissions to stay in the country or could

deny permissions to stay in the country. And so it is only fairer into process that both sides

get the chance to challenge that and to appeal that. In response, a DOJ spokesperson told NPR that

the current appeals board decisions, quote, reflect straightforward interpretations of clear statutory language.

And here's a few other stories we're following. The attack on a Michigan synagogue earlier this month

was an act of terror inspired by the Iran-backed group, Hezbollah, according to the FBI.

On March 12, a man who was a naturalized US citizen from Lebanon, rammed a truck full of explosives

into Temple, Israel, just outside of Detroit. No one was killed in the attack, but the man behind

the wheel later took his own life during an exchange of fire with synagogue security. CBS News reports

that members of the man's family were killed on March 5, when Israel attacked Hezbollah outposts

in Lebanon, which two of his brothers were reportedly a part of. Air Canada CEO will retire later this

year after being criticized for failing to speak French in a condolence video. Michael Russo was

responding to the March 22nd fatal collision at LaGuardia Airport in New York, a killed two pilots.

But he had to apologize for being unable to express himself adequately in French, an official

language in Canada. The country's prime minister, Mark Carney, said Russo had a responsibility

to express himself in both languages. I'm very disappointed, as others are, rightly so,

in this, you know, a lingual message of the CEO of Air Canada. It doesn't matter,

the circumstances, but particularly in these circumstances, lack of judgment and lack of compassion.

And finally, there were some hints when mysterious banners appeared across Paris,

bearing song titles like The Power of Love, and my heart will go on. Well, yesterday,

the reason was confirmed. Celine Dion is returning to the stage three years after being diagnosed

with a rare neurological disorder known as stiff-person syndrome. She will perform 10 concerts in Paris

during September and October. The city marked the occasion by lighting up the Eiffel Tower

with the sign, Paris I'm Ready. Dion has strong ties to the French capital and performed the song

Im à la mort, at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics.

You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening

in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. Popular Mechanics reports

on a legendary stash of gold that was lost during the Civil War in Pennsylvania, and whether they

FBI secretly dug it all up. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus

narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.