Liftoff. At 6:35 pm ET on April 2, a Space Launch System rocket lifted an Orion capsule from Earth. On board were Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. As of Thursday, they became the first humans to go beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

The crew will test technological systems that will be useful on subsequent missions, such as those involving radiation shielding or communication between the capsule and Earth at lunar distances. One of the most fascinating aspects is also the trajectory that Artemis II will follow during its mission.

Space Is the Place

Contrary to what intuition may suggest, the journey to the moon is not a direct, linear path connecting the Earth’s surface with the lunar surface.

After launch, the first stage of the SLS separated from the rest of the spacecraft—the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) upper stage and the Orion capsule. The ICPS carried the capsule into high Earth orbit, but the crew remained orbiting Earth for approximately 23 hours. After all the checks and verification that everything was in order, the ICPS separated from the Orion. That’s when the journey to the moon truly began.

The Lunar Flyover

The halfway point will occur on the evening of April 6. The Artemis II astronauts will travel approximately 10,300 kilometers beyond the moon, shattering all previous records for distance from Earth. The current record holder is the Apollo 13 mission, which reached approximately 400 kilometers beyond the moon.

The closest approach by Artemis II to the lunar surface will be 7,400 kilometers, which will be reached during the flyby of the far side. The spacecraft will not enter orbit around the moon but will fly past it and use a gravitational slingshot to return to Earth. The result is a figure-eight trajectory between the two celestial bodies. The orbit is optimized to ensure reentry to Earth, even in the event of engine failure.

The Reentry to Earth

Reentry will take place via a passive trajectory: After flying over the moon, Orion will essentially be in free fall toward Earth, without needing to use its engines. If there are problems with the propulsion or other systems, the capsule will return safely to Earth.

Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Reentry will take place by ditching in the Pacific Ocean on April 11, 9 days and 13 hours after the mission launch. There the astronauts will be recovered by the US Navy, thus concluding their journey home.

This story originally appeared in WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.

The Maytag Man is one of the most enduring characters in American advertising, lonely because no one needs his help repairing a Maytag appliance. The Maytag brand, too, has endured—going back to the days when Frederick Maytag’s washers involved wooden tubs and cranks. Maytag was the first company to put an agitator at the bottom of a washing machine, a design still in use today, and it was the first to stack a washer and dryer, and one of the earliest adopters on smart appliances. But mostly, the brand has eschewed novelty and staked its claim on durability and reliability for its heavy-duty dishwashers, washers, dryers, refrigerators, and ovens. This is true even as Maytag folded into ownership by former competitor Whirlpool.

Maytag remains one of the few appliance companies to offer 10-year limited warranties on essential parts. But Maytag promo codes are a bit more ephemeral, offering short-term deals on appliances that will hopefully last a decade. Here’s how to get a Maytag coupon code and Maytag promo codes, and find closeout deals on last season’s Maytag appliances to save even more.

Save Big With Maytag Appliance Closeout Deals

One of the easiest ways to find a deal on Maytag appliances is to look at the overstock and closeout deals, which offer significant markdowns on last season’s items as Maytag looks to clear out space for the new models. These deals do not require a Maytag coupon code, but they do require knowing where to look.

Go to the Maytag outlet site for appliance closeout deals. As of April 2026, this includes a $729 range with a built-in air fryer that used to sell for $1,300, and a $600 deal on a well-reviewed top-load dryer that previously sold for a thousand dollars. These deals generally last only until supplies run out.

Claim Free Delivery on Major Appliances Over $399

From now through April 8, Maytag customers can get free delivery on appliances priced $399 and above. Even better, Maytag will also haul away your old appliance for free. This deal does not require a Maytag discount code and includes standard home delivery for refrigerators, ranges, and laundry units. The discount will be applied automatically in your online shopping cart when you check out. Also, be sure to check the Maytag deals page often for current offers and rotating Maytag discounts and sales.

Select Customers Can Get a Special Maytag Promo Code

Like many big companies, Maytag offers professional discounts for military, first responders, healthcare workers, students, and teachers. To receive up to a 15% discount for active military, veterans, and spouses, you’ll need to create a Maytag account and then verify your military status using the SheerID program. Maytag first responder discounts and healthcare worker discounts also require SheerID verification. There’s also a discount program for both students and teachers, including a teacher savings program and up to 15% off sitewide. Verified students are able to access pricing unique to students, when moving into their first off-campus apartment.

Work Smarter, Not Harder With Maytag Smart Appliances

Maytag is also offering deals on select smart appliances. As of early April, this includes a somewhat unique combination toaster-microwave that’s about $100 off MSRP, and a slide-in electric range with smart connectivity that’s on a steep discount to $1,260—hundreds of dollars less than even other recent sale prices. You can check out the special Maytag deals on connected and smart appliances by scrolling down to the bottom of Maytag’s smart appliance page.

Meta has paused all its work with the data contracting firm Mercor while it investigates a major security breach that impacted the startup, two sources confirmed to WIRED. The pause is indefinite, the sources said. Other major AI labs are also reevaluating their work with Mercor as they assess the scope of the incident, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mercor is one of a few firms that OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI labs rely on to generate training data for their models. The company hires massive networks of human contractors to generate bespoke, proprietary datasets for these labs, which are typically kept highly secret as they’re a core ingredient in the recipe to generate valuable AI models that power products like ChatGPT and Claude Code. AI labs are sensitive about this data because it can reveal to competitors—including other AI labs in the US and China—key details about the ways they train AI models. It’s unclear at this time whether the data exposed in Mercor’s breach would meaningfully help a competitor.

While OpenAI has not stopped its current projects with Mercor, it is investigating the startup’s security incident to see how its proprietary training data may have been exposed, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to WIRED. The spokesperson says that the incident in no way affects OpenAI user data, however. Anthropic did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Mercor confirmed the attack in an email to staff on March 31. “There was a recent security incident that affected our systems along with thousands of other organizations worldwide,” the company wrote.

A Mercor employee echoed these points in a message to contractors on Thursday, WIRED has learned. Contractors who were staffed on Meta projects cannot log hours until—and if—the project resumes, meaning they could functionally be out of work, a source familiar claims. The company is working to find additional projects for those impacted, according to internal conversations viewed by WIRED.

Mercor contractors were not told exactly why their Meta projects were being paused. In a Slack channel related to the Chordus initiative—a Meta-specific project to teach AI models to use multiple internet sources to verify their responses to user queries—a project lead told staff that Mercor was “currently reassessing the project scope.”

An attacker known as TeamPCP appears to have recently compromised two versions of the AI API tool LiteLLM. The breach exposed companies and services that incorporate LiteLLM and installed the tainted updates. There could be thousands of victims, including other major AI companies, but the breach at Mercor illustrates the sensitivity of the compromised data.

Mercor and its competitors—such as Surge, Handshake, Turing, Labelbox, and Scale AI—have developed a reputation for being incredibly secretive about the services they offer to major AI labs. It’s rare to see the CEOs of these firms speaking publicly about the specific work they offer, and they internally use codenames to describe their projects.

Adding to the confusion around the hack, a group going by the well-known name Lapsus$ claimed this week that it had breached Mercor. In a Telegram account and on a BreachForums clone, the actor offered to sell an array of alleged Mercor data, including a 200-plus GB database, nearly 1 TB of source code, and 3 TBs of video and other information. But researchers say that many cybercriminal groups now periodically take up the Lapsus$ name and that Mercor’s confirmation of the LiteLLM connection means that the attacker is likely TeamPCP or an actor connected to the group.

TeamPCP appears to have compromised the two LiteLLM updates as part of an even larger supply chain hacking spree in recent months that has been gaining momentum, catapulting TeamPCP to prominence. And while launching data extortion attacks and working with ransomware groups, such as the group known as Vect, TeamPCP has also strayed into political territory, spreading a data wiping worm known as “CanisterWorm” through vulnerable cloud instances with Farsi as their default language or clocks set to Iran’s time zone.

“TeamPCP is definitely financially motivated,” says Allan Liska, an analyst for the security firm Recorded Future who specializes in ransomware. “There might be some geopolitical stuff as well, but it’s hard to determine what’s real and what’s bluster, especially with a group this new.”

Looking at the dark-web posts of the alleged Mercor data, Liska adds, “There is absolutely nothing that connects this to the original Lapsus$.”