BERLIN (AP) — More goalkeeping heroics from Bosnia-Herzegovina's World Cup qualification star Nikola Vasilj meant St. Pauli held on for a 1-1 draw with Union Berlin on Sunday as it struggles to avoid relegation from the Bundesliga.
In his first game since his saves helped see the Bosnian team past Italy in the World Cup qualifying playoffs, Vasilj faced eight shots on target and stood out with a double save, though it came after he'd given the ball away. The only one that went in was a towering header from Union striker Andrej Ilic at a corner.
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Cologne's Sebastian Sebulonsen, right, and Frankfurt's Nathaniel Brown, left, and Arnaud Kalimuendo battle for the ball during the German Bundesliga soccer match between Eintracht Frankfurt and 1. FC Cologne in Frankfurt, Germany, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (Uwe Anspach/dpa via AP)
Cologne's Alessio Castro-Montes, center, celebrates with teammates after scoring during the German Bundesliga soccer match between Eintracht Frankfurt and 1. FC Cologne in Frankfurt, Germany, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (Uwe Anspach/dpa via AP)
St. Pauli's Joel Chima Fujita, right, and Union Berlin's Andras Schäfer in action during the Bundesliga soccer match between Union Berlin and St. Pauli, in Berlin, Sunday April 5, 2026. (Andreas Gora/dpa via AP)
Union Berlin's Andrej Ilic, center right, scores during the Bundesliga soccer match between Union Berlin and St. Pauli, in Berlin, Sunday April 5, 2026. (Andreas Gora/dpa via AP)
St. Pauli had earlier taken the lead when Mathias Pereira Lage delivered a fierce long-distance volley to open the scoring, and created little after that.
St. Pauli held on for the final three minutes with 10 men after its Australian captain Jackson Irvine was sent off for two yellow cards in the space of eight minutes, both for late tackles.
Even a point for St. Pauli was bad news for Wolfsburg, which is on course for an historic first relegation from the Bundesliga after losing 6-3 to Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday. A fixture in the Bundesliga since 1997, Wolfsburg is now four points adrift of any chance of safety.
The bottom two teams, Wolfsburg and Heidenheim, are relegated directly to the second division. The team in 16th, currently St. Pauli, goes into a two-leg playoff against the third-place team from the second tier.
Union stays 10th.
Cologne interim coach René Wagner oversaw a comeback to salvage a point in his first game but couldn't end the team's winless run, now at eight Bundesliga games.
Three goals in four minutes lit up the game, but Cologne's Alessio Castro-Montes had the last word in a 2-2 draw with Eintracht Frankfurt.
Frankfurt seemed in full control after Jonathan Burkardt opened the scoring in the 66th and his teammate Arnaud Kalimuendo added a second in the 69th, but Jakub Kaminski scored a smart solo goal seconds after the game resumed to revive Cologne.
Straight after coming off the bench, Castro-Montes bundled the ball into the net from close range to level the score in the 83rd.
The draw is more helpful to 15th-place Cologne, which ends the day having preserved a two-point gap to St. Pauli. Seventh-place Frankfurt is 10 points off Bayer Leverkusen in sixth.
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Cologne's Sebastian Sebulonsen, right, and Frankfurt's Nathaniel Brown, left, and Arnaud Kalimuendo battle for the ball during the German Bundesliga soccer match between Eintracht Frankfurt and 1. FC Cologne in Frankfurt, Germany, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (Uwe Anspach/dpa via AP)
Cologne's Alessio Castro-Montes, center, celebrates with teammates after scoring during the German Bundesliga soccer match between Eintracht Frankfurt and 1. FC Cologne in Frankfurt, Germany, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (Uwe Anspach/dpa via AP)
St. Pauli's Joel Chima Fujita, right, and Union Berlin's Andras Schäfer in action during the Bundesliga soccer match between Union Berlin and St. Pauli, in Berlin, Sunday April 5, 2026. (Andreas Gora/dpa via AP)
Union Berlin's Andrej Ilic, center right, scores during the Bundesliga soccer match between Union Berlin and St. Pauli, in Berlin, Sunday April 5, 2026. (Andreas Gora/dpa via AP)
HOUSTON (AP) — The Artemis II astronauts are already the champions of a fresh new era of lunar exploration. Now it’s time to set a new distance record.
Launched last week on humanity’s first trip to the moon since 1972, the three Americans and one Canadian are chasing after Apollo 13’s maximum range from Earth. That will make them our planet’s farthest emissaries as they swing around the moon without stopping on Monday and then hightail it back home.
Their roughly six-hour lunar flyby promises views of the moon’s far side that were too dark or too difficult to see by the 24 Apollo astronauts who preceded them. A total solar eclipse also awaits them as the moon blocks the sun, exposing snippets of shimmering corona.
“We’ll get eyes on the moon, kind of map it out and then continue to go back in force,” said flight director Judd Frieling. The goal is a moon base replete with landers, rovers, drones and habitats.
A look at Artemis II's up-close and personal brush with another world — our constant companion, the moon.
Apollo 13’s astronauts missed out on a moon landing when one of their oxygen tanks ruptured on the way there in 1970.
With the three lives in jeopardy, Mission Control pivoted to a free-return lunar trajectory to get them home as fast and efficiently as possible. This routing relies on the gravity of Earth and the moon, and minimal fuel.
It worked for Apollo 13, turning it into NASA’s greatest “successful failure.” (For the record, flight director Gene Kranz never uttered “Failure is not an option.” The line is pure Hollywood, originating with the 1995 biopic starring Tom Hanks.)
Commander Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert reached a maximum 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from Earth before making their life-saving U-turn on Apollo 13.
Artemis II’s astronauts are following the same figure-eight path since they are neither orbiting the moon nor landing on it. But their distance from Earth should exceed Apollo 13’s by nearly 3,400 miles (5,400 kilometers).
Artemis II’s Christina Koch said late last week that she and her crewmates don’t live on superlatives, but it’s an important milestone “that people can understand and wrap their heads around,” merging the past with the present and even the future when new records are set.
During the flyby, the astronauts will split into pairs and take turns capturing the lunar views out their windows with cameras. At closest approach, they will come within 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) of the moon.
Because they launched on April 1, the rendezvous won’t have as much of the far lunar side illuminated as other dates would have. But the crew still will be able make out “definite chunks of the far side that have never been seen” by humans, said NASA geologist Kelsey Young, including a good portion of Orientale Basin.
They’ll call down their observations as they photograph the gray, pockmarked scenes. There's a suite of professional-quality cameras on board, and each astronaut also has an iPhone for more informal, spur-of-the-minute picture-taking.
Young’s team made lunar geography flashcards for the astronauts to study before the flight.
“They’ve practiced for many, many, many months on visualizations of the moon,” she said over the weekend, “and getting their eyes on the real thing, I’m really, really looking forward to them bringing the moon a little closer to home on Monday.”
The upside of the April 1 launch is a total solar eclipse. The eclipse won’t be visible from Earth — only from the Orion capsule — treating the astronauts to several minutes’ worth of views of the sun's outermost, radiating atmosphere, the corona.
The astronauts will be on the lookout for any unusual solar activity during the eclipse, Young said, and will use their “unique vantage point” to describe the features of the solar corona, or crown.
All four astronauts packed eclipse glasses to protect their eyes.
Orion will be out of contact with Mission Control for nearly an hour when it’s behind the moon. The same thing happened during the Apollo moonshots.
NASA is relying on its Deep Space Network to communicate with the crew, but the giant antennas in California, Spain and Australia won’t have a direct line of sight when Orion disappears behind the moon for approximately 40 minutes.
These communication blackouts were always a tense time during Apollo although, as Frieling points out, “physics takes over and physics will absolutely get us back to the front side of the moon.”
Once Artemis II departs the lunar neighborhood, it will take four days to return home. The capsule will aim for a splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego on April 10, nine days after its Florida launch.
During the flight back, the astronauts will link up via radio with the crew of the orbiting International Space Station. This is the first time that a moon crew has colleagues in space at the same time and NASA can’t pass up the opportunity for a cosmic chitchat. The conversation will include both members of the first all-female spacewalk in 2019: Koch aboard Orion and Jessica Meir, on the station.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This image provided by NASA, astronaut Christina Koch is illuminated by a screen inside the darkened Orion spacecraft on the third day of the agency's Artemis II mission on Friday, April 3, 2026. (NASA via AP)
This image provided by NASA, astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels towards the Moon on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (NASA via AP)
This image provided by NASA, astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels towards the Moon on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (NASA via AP)
Astronauts, from left, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, pilot Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialist, Christina Koch leave the Operations and Checkout building on their way to Launch Pad 39B for a planned liftoff on NASA's Artemis II moon rocket at the Kennedy Space Center, Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
In this photo provided by NASA, Commander Reid Wiseman looks at the Earth from a window aboard the Orion spacecraft Integrity during the Artemis II mission en route to the moon on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (NASA via AP)
This photo provided by NASA shows the moon seen from a window on the Orion spacecraft Integrity during the Artemis II mission on Friday, April 3, 2026. (NASA via AP)
