Global News Podcast - Reach for the Moon

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Nasa has said it's back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon, after the Artemis II mission successfully blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. It said there had been a temporary loss of communications but all was now well, and the four astronauts on board were safe, secure and in great spirits. The spacecraft is expected to circle the far side of the Moon and eventually return to earth. In other news, in a TV address President Trump has said the US is close to meeting its objectives in the war against Iran. And police in the Chinese city of Wuhan are investigating a malfunction which led to at least 100 self-driving cars stopping in the middle of the road.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Tristan Redmond, one of the hosts of the global story podcast from the BBC. How would the US invade Iran? Different options are on the table, but the Pentagon has wargamed this for years, and our guest today was in the room for many of them. What are Donald Trump's remaining military options? Listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Thursday, the 2nd of April, these are our main stories. NASA's Artemis II mission successfully blasts off for its historic trip into deep space and around the moon. Donald Trump tries to convince America's TV viewers that the U.S. is close to, as he puts it, finishing the job in Iran. Also in this podcast. One thing we should be worried about is that because these things operate as fleets, that that presents an additional risk, a cyber security risk. Traffic chaos in the Chinese city of Wuhan as more than 100 self-driving robotaxis suddenly stop. At Cape Canaveral in Florida at 6.35pm local time on Wednesday,

there was a roar that reverberated far beyond the launch pad. And here we go. 10, 9, 8, 7, R.S. 25 engines, lit. 4, 3, 2, 1, booster ignition, and lift off. The crew of Artemis 2 now bound for the moon. Humanity's next great voyage begins. And so, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Cook from the United States,

and Canadian Jeremy Hansen blasted off on an historical. mission, which will see them travel further from Earth than any human before, 406,000 kilometres. It's the first time NASA, the U.S. Space Agency, has sent anyone around the moon in more than 50 years. NASA's Artemis program has been years in the making, struggled with repeated setbacks and huge financial overruns. Its estimated cost over the last 14 years has been at least $93 billion. But for the National Aeronautics and Space administration, it was worth it. Three minutes, 50 seconds into the flight of Artemis II, Wiseman, Glover, Cook, and Hansen

cross the boundary to space with good comchecks. Outstanding stand, we see the same, and we have a beautiful moon rise. We're headed right at it. Approaching five minutes into the flight, Commander Reid Wiseman confirms he has visuals of his destination. GPS guidance navigation and control software finishes internal checks and sends to navigation channels. The mission will last 10 days, during which time the spacecraft, Orion, which the

crew are traveling in will swing around the moon but not land on Earth's natural satellite. The main aim is to make sure that this capsule and the new rocket which launched it can be used again, paving the way for a NASA moon landing in 2008. The US is in a race with China which wants to land humans on the moon by 2030. For these people watching close to Cape Canaveral, there was euphoria. To hear that rocket engine war, all of from Cape Canaveral Wash Complex. I just have emotions running down to my spine. A female astronaut going up, and it is just really incredible to see, just to see the diversity,

just going up into space and even having someone from Canada. I drove eight hours from Carolina to be here with all of you. It's such a beautiful event, and this event can bring this beautiful country together. NASA said there'd been a temporary loss of communications after liftoff, but all was now well, and the four astronauts on board were safe, secure and in great spirits. In the moments before take-off, they said they were going for their families, for their teammates, and for all humanity. Jonathan Amos was for many years the BBC's science correspondent.

I asked him what he made of the launch. Spectacular. Fire and fury. The noise, the light, just amazing. And we were expecting that from this rocket. I mean, it's so big. You know, it's 98 metres tall. It's full of cryogenic fuel, something like an Olympic-sized swimming pool full. Two and a half million litres of liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, then supplemented by these crazy solid fuel boosters.

And it was an amazing sight watching it go up into a blue sky. And it just went up and up and up and up. And eight minutes later, they were in a stable orbit moving at, I don't know, 17,000 miles an hour, 27,000 kilometres an hour. I mean, the sheer power of it all. I mean, this rocket that NASA has procured produces 39 mega-neutons of thrust at liftoff, which will mean absolutely nothing to you, right? But imagine, you've flown on an A320, Airbus A320. Imagine 160 of them, all thundering down the runway to take you on holiday, all at full power. That is the equivalent thrust of this rocket. Yeah, it was spectacular. There were some issues.

though in the last few hours running up to the launch. Were they expected and how worried was mission control? Well, any new rocket, and this is only the second time this type of rocket has launched, any new rocket can be a bit finicky. This design as well has proven to be very finicky. It's had leaks and all sorts going on. And we were all quite surprised, I think, that it went through the fueling process without any issue at all. And then one or two sensors started playing up and we thought, oh dear, we're going to be held. are we going to miss today and have to come back tomorrow? There was one extraordinary moment where they had an issue with the flight termination system. This is a system that blows the rocket up if it veers off course. They've got a system to take the astronauts off the top before that happens. But if the rocket veers off course, they have to destroy it, you know, in case it comes down on a populated area.

And the piece of equipment that they needed to check this issue was an old piece of shuttle hardware, space shuttle hardware. And somebody had to run off and get this. piece of hardware from a building behind the launch control centre to check that everything was all right and it was all right and the count proceeded. So when can we expect Orion to reach the moon and presumably we're going to see some extraordinary footage? Yeah, you're right. We've now got 4K video cameras and we can stream all of that back. They'll be back on the 10th. Let's call it a 10-day mission. So within about sort of four or five days they'll be getting very close to the

moon, they'll go around the back, they'll see the far side, they'll see places that no human eyes have ever seen before. And so there's about 60% of the back side of the moon that has never been seen by human eyes. For sure, we've had robot spacecraft taking pictures of the backside of the moon, but human eyes have never, have never seen it. And, you know, they'll enjoy that, and then they'll gently swing back to Earth, and we'll see them on the 10th. It's a lovely thing to do. It's terribly exciting. But what's the point of it? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, right? Yeah. 50 years ago. I'm 62. I can just remember the latter stages of Apollo as a very small boy,

but I'm not the Apollo generation. Every new generation needs its own narrative. We're making that narrative now, and it's a different one to the Apollo one, because back then it was all about footprints and flags. Now it's about settling further out into space, taking the human species beyond, not just the moon, but to Mars and maybe even deeper into space. And Artemis is trying to set up that trajectory, right? It's trying to do it in a sustainable way so that we go to the moon and we stay there, build a moon base, build the technology then to go to Mars. You know, who knows, have cities on Mars one day. You know, we've been to the moon before, but there's newer things and better things that we can be doing if we get this program right. Jonathan Amos. Now to the

war with Iran. President Trump has given a televised address to justify his decision to start the conflict. During the course of the fighting, Mr. Trump has, on many occasions, confusingly suggested the war was nearing its end, before going on to say it could last for some time. He did that again on Wednesday, firstly saying it was nearly completed. I've made clear from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury that we will continue until our objectives are fully achieved. Thanks to the progress we've made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly. But immediately afterwards, the President threatened to escalate the conflict. If during this period of time no deal is made, we have our rise on key targets.

If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. we have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding. But we could hit it and it would be gone, and there's not a thing they could do about it. Our correspondent in Washington, Simi Jolla Oshow, listened to the address. What did she make of it? It's kind of what we expected him to talk about, basically to tout the U.S. military efforts in Iran. to talk about the objectives that the administration has in this war,

which is degrading Iran's military, degrading their nuclear capabilities, as well as destroying Iran's relationships with their proxies. And then spoke about how the U.S. isn't dependent on the Strait of Hormuz and urged other countries to take it, he said, to take it and to cherish it or to buy oil from the U.S. And then he spoke about the state of the U.S. saying that it was a dead and crippled country, but now it's the hottest country in the world. And then he said there's no inflation and that the U.S. is experiencing its highest stock market ever. But I think that's something that a lot of the public would disagree with, especially with the increase in gas prices.

This could have been an opportunity for President Trump to speak to the American public who are feeling the increase in gas prices, who are. are kind of wary of this war and wondering when it would end. And it doesn't feel like he truly did that, truly gave an idea of what victory would be and when this war would end. I thought it was interesting how he compared the timeline of this war to the Korean War, the war with Iraq, saying this is only 32 days and calling this war a little journey to Iran. So it feels like he's basically saying, look, things are going to continue.

The US has yet to achieve all its military objectives. in Iran unless a deal is reached and kind of just wait and see what happens. And I don't think that's what people would have wanted from this address. Yeah, this address was heavily telegraphed. Was there anything in this that we didn't know already? No. That's the short answer. No, not at all.

It feels like a sort of repeat from what we've been hearing from President Trump and members of his cabinet for the last few weeks, boasting about the US military destroying Iran's navy and killing their leaders, trying to justify this war by going on about the core objectives of the war and saying how Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon, close to building a huge stockpile of missiles that could have soon reached, he said, anywhere on earth. It doesn't feel like we've learned anything new.

This is what we've been hearing for the past two weeks. Simi Jolla Oshow in Washington. To China, where an incident involving robotaxis has sparked debate about the safety of driverless vehicles. On Tuesday, about 100 self-driving Apollo go-taxies suddenly stopped where they were in the road in the city of Wuhan, following what's thought to be a system malfunction. Police said there'd been no reports of injuries, although one video on social media appeared to show at least one collision. The taxes are owned by Chinese firm Baidu.

James Menendez spoke to Jack Stilgo, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at University College London. He gave his take on the incident. The first thing to say is that we don't know exactly what's gone on here, and whenever a technology like this goes wrong, there is a real need for these incidents to be investigated and done so in a transparent way. And I think incidents like this show you quite how dependent the technologies are on a sort of behind-the-scenes infrastructure, a sort of support network that keeps the whole thing functioning.

And when that goes down, we see moments like this. Is it your best guess that this was some kind of software failure, then? I think it's impossible to say. It could have been a connectivity failure. It could have been a software failure, a bug in the system. It could have been a failure of the power system that supports the whole fleet. But what it tells you is that the connectivity

between these vehicles and the base back home matters. Yes, and you mentioned the word transparency at the beginning. Will we ever know what went wrong here? We can first of all recognise that there are all sorts of competitive pressures with all of these companies that might lead to them being a bit cagey about what's going on. They want to preserve the magic. They want to give the impression that there's some sort of magical AI driving the cars. There have been lots of examples of where companies,

haven't been totally forthcoming about how the cars really work, so how much they depend on people behind the scenes able to take control if things go wrong. And I think it's the job of regulators to demand more from those companies, to say, actually, tell us more about how these things work so that we can work out what the risks really are. And then when they go wrong, we need to understand exactly how they went wrong. I think there is a temptation to compare the technology of a computer-driven car to a conventional human driven car. And I think if we do that, there might be a trap and that

we'll miss the new possible risks presented with this technology. There might be other either cyber security risks or risks that come from these technologies being decked in dozens of cameras. They are sort of CCTV on wheels, which does raise some serious privacy risks as well. Jack still goes speaking to James Menendez. Still to come in this podcast. There were fears that if they were forced to send these papers, the diaries back to China. Like what happened to other documents like in the Foreign Ministry documents in China, 90% of them vanished. A US court rules Stanford University can keep the controversial diaries of the Secretary to former Chinese leader, Chairman Mao.

I'm Tristan Redmond, one of the hosts of the Global Story Podcasts from the BBC. How would the US invade Iran? Different options are on the table, but the Pentagon has wargamed this for years, and our guest today was in the room for many of them. What are Donald Trump's remaining military options? Listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast. President Trump has ignited debate around whether someone born in the United States

should automatically become an American citizen, On his first day back in the White House last year, he signed an executive order banning birthright citizenship for children born to parents in the US illegally or on temporary visas. It was a key part of his tough new immigration policy, but was immediately challenged as a violation of the US Constitution. The US Supreme Court has begun hearing legal arguments in the case while Mr Trump was sitting in the audience.

Oliver Conway spoke to our Washington correspondent Ionee Wells. She was outside the court and took us through the case. The Trump administration argued that despite this having been in the Constitution for hundreds of years, they feel that this has been interpreted incorrectly, that this was put in the Constitution, essentially to protect, for example, the children of people who had been formally enslaved. They argue that it doesn't say explicitly in the Constitution that this should apply to people who came to the US illegally or who are here temporarily. They feel that in order to be eligible, people,

should prove that their parents are domiciled here at the moment and that they have what the lawyer described as allegiance to the United States. Now, interestingly, that was something which some of the judges picked up on, questioning whether allegiance is really something that comes with permanent residence and questioning whether it was fair to suggest that undocumented migrants or those who may be here on a more temporary basis couldn't still have that kind of allegiance. Yeah, interesting that some of the conservative justices seemed skeptical. But what are the overall counter-arguments? Yeah, that's right. One conservative, Justice even picked up on this point about slavery and said that some of those who came to the

United States as slaves came at a time when it wasn't legal for slavery to exist. Outside the court, though, I spoke to many people who were in a big crowd of protesters. A lot of them were concerned about what this would mean for people, given that many of them were first, second, third generation immigrants and said that the point of the Constitution is to ingrain these rights, arguing that Donald Trump didn't have the authority to just rip that up without a robust procedure through Congress. I think it would create two different classes of citizens. I feel really scared about what that might mean for children in the future.

This particular case attacks the very Constitution itself. And it is so completely illegal that if the Supreme Court find this not part of the constitution, they're effectively saying that the Constitution is unconstitutional. My grandfather is a birthright citizen. My mother was able to immigrate to the United States because of my grandfather. The only reason that I was able to serve in the United States Air Force was because of my grandfather. That diversity, that's what makes America what it is. Now, I only, President Trump has already lost one major case at the Supreme Court this year.

How important is this one? Well, it is important because he's made it a really flagship part of his immigration policies. He posted on truth social after we heard the oral arguments lashing out essentially. saying that the United States is stupid to allow birthright citizenship. So for him, this is a really important part of reducing immigration in the United States. Ione Wells. A week has passed since Metta and Google lost their court battle in Los Angeles against a young woman who claimed they had harmed her mental health with their social media platforms.

She argued they had failed to protect her from becoming addicted. Gideon Long asks if social media companies will now change. This is a landmark moment. It will reverberate. I'll tell you this. If the jury had returned to know, the champagne corks would be popping in the boardrooms of Google and Meta. Lawyer Mark Lanier talking outside the courthouse following last week's verdict in the case involving Kaylee, a 20-year-old woman, and Meta and Google. It's been described as a tobacco moment for big tech, similar to when cigarette companies were forced to acknowledge their products were harmful. Meta and Google deny the accusations against them and have said they will appeal. The court case dealt specifically with Kaylee, who said that she became addicted to social media platforms as a child

and that it seriously impacted her mental health. But hers is just one case, and it's still not clear that social media impacts all young people negatively, or that the negatives aren't outweighed by positives. After all, some young people say social media platforms help them find like-minded souls online, or discover communities where they belong. Victoria Goodyear is a professor of physical activity, health and wellbeing

at the University of Birmingham in the UK. It's not clear-cut. So we don't have a consistent pattern in the evidence that basically says that it causes harm or it promotes benefits. At a population level, the evidence doesn't support that there is definite or definitive harm. But individual-level cases, there is some evidence, and the challenges, if we wait for better evidence,

this could also cause harm. So it's a real challenge for decision makers. And we've seen countries around the world starting with Australia, but many other countries are now following suit, saying that they are going to ban social media platforms for young people. Blanket bans of some of these apps, do you think the evidence is there to support that kind of policy? Not yet. I don't think the evidence is there yet. If blanket bans aren't the answer, then what is? Clara Chappas is France's ambassador for tech and artificial intelligence. She's working closely with President Emmanuel Macron on implementing a French social media ban for under 15s,

but also on encouraging companies to make practical changes to their platforms. The European Commission has started an inquiry on TikTok Infinite Scroll, saying that this fails to protect minors as a result of that TikTok is acting and changing their functionalities. So each company needs to go and assess what are the risks that I'm causing to underage kids. And what are the specific reform? and regulations that you think are needed to bring Big Tech into line? Well, I think the first thing is the below 15 ban. Why? Because that gives everyone families, children themselves, teachers,

a simple rule whereby they can say, okay, I know this product is bad for a kid under a certain age. And then, I mean, there's a ton of things that also need to change. And if everyone pushes in the same direction, we can make the Internet a safe space for children. With thousands of cases against Big Tech already filed in US courts and at least 30 countries considering bans on social media for teenagers, like Australia's, it does seem that change is coming. And parents say they're willing to work with tech companies. Laurie Schott's 18-year-old daughter, Anna Lee, took her own life in 2020,

and Laurie blames social media for making her daughter feel inadequate about the way she looked. When the verdict came out in Kaylee's case, Laurie was outside the court and had this message. for everyone involved. Let's fix it. Big Tech, us. Let's make this world a better place. But parents, we need you to join in with us because it stops today.

Big Tech, your gig is over. Parent, Laurie Schott, ending that report by Gideon Long. One of the most important insider accounts of elite politics in modern China, including details of the Tiananan Square massacre, comes from a series of diaries written by a former senior official called Lee Ray, who was once Mao Zedong's secretary. The diaries were donated to Stanford University in the United States. Following legal arguments in a US court,

a judge has now ruled it can keep them. Our global affairs reporter and Barrison Etirajan told us more about Lee Ray and his diaries. He was a top official from the Chinese Communist Party. He was also a critic. He was more of a reformist. At one point, he became a personal secretary to Chairman Mao. So, you know, if you can reach that level, you can as well imagine his growing influence in the party.

What he did was he was meticulously noting down what was happening around him about his meetings, what was happening within the Communist Party. He was a first-hand witness to what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989 because he was standing in a balcony and we was writing down what he saw. What he was explaining was how the soldiers were firing in the air on the ground. I mean, this is one event, you know, with Shook China and no one in China now wants to talk about it because it is a kind of a taboo subject where thousands of people were killed.

So he was an eyewitness account and that's why he was one of those who wanted to bring in more reforms into the Chinese Communist Party. So his diaries proved valuable. insight into what was happening in China at that time. How did they come to be in the US and tell us about this court case, the dispute over who should actually have them? According to his daughter, Lee Nan Yang, he wanted these documents, his diaries and notes, should be donated to somebody. He was always worried that all his accounts would be taken out, redacted or completely disappeared from any of the archives. So his daughter,

She began donating his papers to Stanford in 2014 when he was still alive. But he didn't leave any will or note giving her the full authority. After he died, his Lee Ruiz's second wife, Zhang Yu Shen. She filed a lawsuit against Li Nan Yang, the stepdaughter in China, saying these diaries consist of some personal intimate accounts between them. So she wanted those papers to be brought back. And she filed this case in China. and the court ruled in her favor.

So that's when the Stanford University filed this lawsuit in California. Now, this ruling affirms that they are the rightful owners of this document. There were fears that if they were forced to send these papers, the diaries back to China, like what happened to other documents like in the foreign ministry documents in China, 90% of them vanished because China doesn't want any of the records during the Cultural Revolution

or the Great leap forward to come to life. because of what happened during that time. So because these documents were given by Lee Ruiz's daughter and they wanted to have some legal sanctity saying they are the rightful owners of these documents. And Barra San Etirajan speaking to Oliver Conway. Back to our top story, the Artemis Mission. Its crew will circle the moon rather than land on it. The BBC has spoken to one of the four astronauts still alive

who have walked on the moon, 90-year-old child. Charlie Duke was part of the Apollo 16 moon mission. On April the 21st, 1972, he became the youngest man to walk on the moon, a title he still holds. Jamie Kumasami asked Charlie if he could recall how he was feeling just before liftoff. We were getting suited up and very excited. And then we got out to the launch pad and got into spacecraft and strapped to him, lay there, ready to go.

and what we were thinking about was we're going to be on our way. Keep counting. Keep counting. Keep counting. Let's don't scrub this. And you didn't. And you didn't. We didn't. And what sort of conversations that you had with your family just before then? Because, I mean, sometimes, you know, those must have been quite poignant, quite tricky perhaps. Well, we were in quarantine as they've been. and we could only see our spouses.

My kids could come, but they had to talk to me through a window. And so we had a short visit with the boys. They were very young at the time, five and seven, so they don't remember very much. But Doddy and I had some very poignant conversations, and we were both very excited about it. I had my twin brother and my mom and dad,

and her mom and dad. We had half of South Carolina showed up for the launch. So it was exciting, really. We were so excited to get going. And then off you went. And what do you recall of the journey, first of all? The liftoff got your attention. You had seven and a half million pounds,

pushing six and a half million. And the rocket was shaking like crazy. from side to side. And I didn't remember anybody tell him I was supposed to shake that hard, so I got a little nervous. Later on, I found out my heartbeat was way up, like 140. And John Young, the commander on the left side, his was 70. So he was the cool one, and I was excited, but ready to do my job if we had an emergency. But things went really smoothly as we lifted off right on the second. So you are on the moon. You step up. on the moon. What is that experience like? There aren't many people I can ask that to, and you're

one of the few. Well, it was a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. I felt right at home. We recognized the landing area from when we stepped out. You could see the main objective to the south was Stone Mountain. On the other side, on the north side was the smoky mountains, we called them. We are really going up a hill, I'll tell you. What a few, isn't it, John? Absolutely unreal. I have never seen... All I can say is spectacular, and I know y'all is sick of that word. And so we knew where we were, and we recognized the craters as the main craters as we came in. And the surprise was there were a lot more craters than we expected,

because of our photographs only had 40 feet resolution, so we didn't see the smaller craters until we got close. Charlie Duke, one of the last surviving astronauts, to walk on the moon. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at global podcast at BBC.co.com.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. Don't forget our sister podcast, a global story which goes in-depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Holly Smith, and the producer was Daniel Mann. The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time, goodbye. I'm Tristan Redmond, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. How would the US invade Iran? Different options are on the table, but the Pentagon has wargamed this for years, and our guest today was in the room for many of them. What are Donald Trump's remaining military options? Listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.