CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A new crew rocketed toward the International Space Station on Friday to replace the astronauts who returned to Earth early in NASA’s first medical evacuation.

SpaceX launched the replacements as soon as possible at NASA’s request, sending the U.S., French and Russian astronauts on an expected eight- to nine-month mission stretching until fall. The four should arrive at the orbiting lab on Saturday, filling the vacancies left by their evacuated colleagues last month and bringing the space station back to full staff.

“It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the astronauts reached orbit. “That was quite a ride,” replied the crew’s commander, Jessica Meir.

NASA had to put spacewalks on hold and deferred other duties while awaiting the arrival of Americans Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. They’ll join three other astronauts — one American and two Russians — who kept the space station running the past month.

Satisfied with medical procedures already in place, NASA ordered no extra checkups for the crew ahead of liftoff and no new diagnostic equipment was packed. An ultrasound machine already up there for research went into overdrive on Jan. 7 when used on the ailing crew member. NASA has not revealed the ill astronaut’s identity or health issue. All four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after splashing down in the Pacific near San Diego.

It was the first time in 65 years of human spaceflight that NASA cut short a mission for medical reasons.

With missions becoming longer, NASA is constantly looking at upgrades to the space station’s medical gear, said deputy program manager Dina Contella. “But there are a lot of things that are just not practical and so that’s when you need to bring astronauts home from space,” she said earlier this week.

In preparation for moon and Mars trips where health care will be even more challenging, the new arrivals will test a filter designed to turn drinking water into emergency IV fluid, try out an ultrasound system that relies on artificial intelligence and augmented reality instead of experts on the ground, and perform ultrasound scans on their jugular veins in a blood clot study.

They also will demonstrate their moon-landing skills in a simulated test.

Adenot is only the second French woman to launch to space. She was 14 when Claudie Haignere flew to Russia’s space station Mir in 1996, inspiring her to become an astronaut. Haignere cheered her on from the Florida launch site, wishing her “Bon vol,” French for “Have a good flight,” and “Ad astra,” Latin for “To the stars.”

“I thought it would have been a quiet joy with pride for Sophie, but it was so hugely emotional to see her with a successful launch,” Haignere said.

Hathaway, like Adenot, is new to space, while Meir and Fedyaev are making their second station trip. Just before liftoff, Fedyaev led the crew in a cry of “Poyekhali” — Russian for “Let’s Go” — the word uttered at liftoff by the world’s first person in space, the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin, in 1961.

On her first mission in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk. The other half of that spacewalk, Christina Koch, is among the four Artemis II astronauts waiting to fly around the moon as early as March. A ship-to-ship radio linkup is planned between the two crews.

Meir wasn’t sure astronauts would return to the moon during her career. “Now we’re right here on the precipice of the Artemis II mission,” she said ahead of liftoff. “The fact that they will be in space at the same time as us … it’s so cool to be an astronaut now, it’s so exciting.”

SpaceX launched the latest crew from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Elon Musk’s company is preparing its neighboring Kennedy Space Center launch pad for the super-sized Starships, which NASA needs to land astronauts on the moon.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram, testified Wednesday during a landmark social media trial in Los Angeles that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms.

The question of addiction is a key pillar of the case, where plaintiffs seek to hold social media companies responsible for harms to children who use their platforms. Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled.

At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose lawsuit could determine how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies would play out. She and two other plaintiffs have been selected for bellwether trials — essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury.

Mosseri, who’s headed Instagram since 2018 said it’s important to differentiate between clinical addiction and what he called problematic use. The plaintiff’s lawyer, however, presented quotes directly from Mosseri in a podcast interview a few years ago where he used the term addiction in relation to social media use, but he clarified that he was probably using the term “too casually,” as people tend to do.

Mosseri said he was not claiming to be a medical expert when questioned about his qualifications to comment on the legitimacy of social media addiction, but said someone “very close” to him has experienced serious clinical addiction, which is why he said he was “being careful with my words.”

He said he and his colleagues use the term “problematic use” to refer to “someone spending more time on Instagram than they feel good about, and that definitely happens.”

It’s “not good for the company, over the long run, to make decisions that profit for us but are poor for people’s well-being,” Mosseri said.

Mosseri and the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth about cosmetic filters on Instagram that changed people’s appearance in a way that seemed to promote plastic surgery.

“We are trying to be as safe as possible but also censor as little as possible,” Mosseri said.

In the courtroom, bereaved parents of children who have had social media struggles seemed visibly upset during a discussion around body dysmorphia and cosmetic filters. Meta shut down all third-party augmented reality filters in January 2025. The judge made an announcement to members of the public on Wednesday after the displays of emotion, reminding them not to make any indication of agreement or disagreement with testimony, saying that it would be “improper to indicate some position.”

During cross examination, Mosseri and Meta lawyer Phyllis Jones tried to reframe the idea that Lanier was suggesting in his questioning that the company is looking to profit off of teens specifically.

Mosseri said Instagram makes “less money from teens than from any other demographic on the app,” noting that teens don’t tend to click on ads and many don’t have disposable income that they spend on products from ads they receive. During his opportunity to question Mosseri for a second time, Lanier was quick to point to research that shows people who join social media platforms at a young age are more likely to stay on the platforms longer, which he said makes teen users prime for meaningful long-term profit.

“Often people try to frame things as you either prioritize safety or you prioritize revenue,” Mosseri said. “It’s really hard to imagine any instance where prioritizing safety isn’t good for revenue.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to take the stand next week.

In recent years, Instagram has added a slew of features and tools it says have made the platform safer for young people. But this does not always work. A report last year, for instance, found that teen accounts researchers created were recommended age-inappropriate sexual content, including “graphic sexual descriptions, the use of cartoons to describe demeaning sexual acts, and brief displays of nudity.”

In addition, Instagram also recommended a “range of self-harm, self-injury, and body image content” on teen accounts that the report says “would be reasonably likely to result in adverse impacts for young people, including teenagers experiencing poor mental health, or self-harm and suicidal ideation and behaviors.” Meta called the report “misleading, dangerously speculative” and said it misrepresents its efforts on teen safety.

Meta is also facing a separate trial in New Mexico that began this week.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is refusing to consider Moderna’s application for a new flu vaccine made with Nobel Prize-winning mRNA technology, the company announced Tuesday.

The news is the latest sign of the FDA’s heightened scrutiny of vaccines under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., particularly those using mRNA technology, which he has criticized before and after becoming the nation’s top health official.

Moderna received what’s called a “refusal-to-file” letter from the FDA that objected to how it conducted a 40,000-person clinical trial comparing its new vaccine to one of the standard flu shots used today. That trial concluded the new vaccine was somewhat more effective in adults 50 and older than that standard shot.

The letter from FDA vaccine director Dr. Vinay Prasad said the agency doesn’t consider the application to contain an “adequate and well-controlled trial” because it didn’t compare the new shot to “the best-available standard of care in the United States at the time of the study.” Prasad’s letter pointed to some advice FDA officials gave Moderna in 2024, under the Biden administration, which Moderna didn’t follow.

According to Moderna, that feedback said it was acceptable to use the standard-dose flu shot the company had chosen — but that another brand specifically recommended for seniors would be preferred for anyone 65 and older in the study. Still, Moderna said, the FDA did agree to let the study proceed as originally planned.

The company said it also had shared with FDA additional data from a separate trial comparing the new vaccine against a licensed high-dose shot used for seniors.

The FDA “did not identify any safety or efficacy concerns with our product” and “does not further our shared goal of enhancing America’s leadership in developing innovative medicines,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

It’s rare that FDA refuses to file an application, particularly for a new vaccine, which requires companies and FDA staff to engage in months or years of discussions.

Moderna has requested an urgent meeting with FDA, and noted that it has applied for the vaccine’s approval in Europe, Canada and Australia.

In the last year, FDA officials working under Kennedy have rolled back recommendations around COVID-19 shots, added extra warnings to the two leading COVID vaccines — which are made with mRNA technology — and removed critics of the administration’s approach from an FDA advisory panel.

Kennedy announced last year that his department would cancel more than $500 million in contracts and funding for the development of vaccines using mRNA.

FDA for decades has allowed vaccine makers to quickly update their annual flu shots to target the latest strains by showing that they trigger an immune response in patients. That’s a far more efficient approach than running long-term studies tracking whether patients get the flu and how they fare. In an internal memo last year, Prasad wrote that the streamlined method would no longer be permitted – leading more than a dozen former FDA commissioners to pen an editorial condemning the statements.