A.M. ATL: To the moon and back

Morning, y’all! I hope this Thursday is a good one. May you find $5 on the ground and get a sweet text from a friend you haven’t talked to in a while.

Let’s get to it.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

It's a loblolly pine, obviously. (Fletcher Page/AJC)

On a trip around the moon in 1971, an astronaut carried with him hundreds of seeds. When they made their way back to Earth, the seeds were planted all over the U.S. and grew into “Moon Trees.”

Now the one in Athens is slated to be cut down.

• Bringing the seeds to space and finding places to plant them wasn’t an official part of the Apollo 14 mission, Fletcher Page reports. But astronaut Stu Roosa started a friendly collaboration that spanned the country and continues today.
• More tree seeds have been sent to the moon since 1971, but only about 70 from the original mission are still alive.
• The tree in Athens isn’t likely to make it through the construction of a new $225 million courthouse, despite some interest in preserving the piece of history hiding in plain sight.
• “This is so rare,” Roosa’s daughter said. “It’s been to the moon and back.”

Why am I tearing up?

🔎 READ MORE: Tree seeds circled the moon. Then were planted here. Now they’re endangered.

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VOTE OF CONFIDENCE

I spy ... no evidence of voter fraud. (Broly Su/AJC)

State election officials are promoting a new tool to identify suspicious voter registrations ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Too bad it doesn’t seem to work.

• Conservative activists are pitching a program called ELLY as a tool to identify discrepancies in voter rolls.
• But one elections official found the software to be “consistently incorrect.” It draws its data from more than 20 sources, but it’s missing key data like driver’s license and Social Security numbers.
• Still, an investigator for the State Election Board told a Georgia county to investigate more than 200 voter registrations identified by the system to be “questionable.”
• Analyzing voter registrations and filing challenges has become a common move by conservative activists (like the guy who created ELLY) after the 2020 election.

Just a reminder: Voter fraud is rare in Georgia, and allegations of ballot-stuffing, dead voters and underage voters have been dismissed by state investigations.

🔎 READ MORE: Georgia election board promotes new voter-roll tool ahead of midterms

QUALITY CONTROL

Remember the 2024 chemical plant fire in Rockdale County that prompted the evacuation of 17,000 residents and caused a cloud of smoke to drift over Atlanta? It was preventable, the feds say.

• A final report from the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said the fire was caused by a leaking sprinkler system, which set off a chain reaction.
• The agency blamed BioLab for a wide range of “completely unacceptable” safety issues related to maintenance and chemical storage.
• What’s more, there were earlier fires at two other locations owned by BioLab’s parent company. It could have taken steps to prevent the Rockdale County disaster, the report said.

BioLab announced more than a year ago that it would not restart operations.

🔎 READ MORE: BioLab fire caused by sprinkler leak was likely avoidable, says final report

MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS

🎤 President Donald Trump’s appearance in Cobb County turned into a campaign rally. In a freewheeling political performance, the president covered Iran, immigration, the stock market and the “fake news” before getting to what was ostensibly the purpose of the event: to promote Trump Accounts.

🐔 Some Chick-fil-A accounts were hacked last month, exposing the personal information of an undisclosed number of customers, the company said. It’s unclear if any Georgia residents were part of the breach.

🗨️ It could be a landmark free-speech ruling. Leaders of two radical Atlanta political groups say the Biden administration unconstitutionally targeted them for protected speech. They’re asking federal judges to overturn their 2024 convictions.

WATCH THIS SPACE

Data center coming soon. (Adam Van Brimmer/AJC)

In what will be one of the most expensive development projects in Georgia’s history, tech giant OpenAI is planning to build a data center about 30 minutes outside of Savannah.

Here are a few more numbers that tell the story:

• $20 billion - The estimated cost of the project.
• 50% - The property tax cut the company will get for 15 years.
• 400 - The number of workers the plant will employ when it opens in 2028.
• 24% - The portion of Americans who support a data center being built within 3 miles of where they live.

As for the question of whether the data center will be a drain on resources, reporter (and recent A.M. ATL writer) Adam Van Brimmer has answers: The company said it will reduce its power usage during peak hours and only use as much water as a similarly sized office building to lessen the impacts on the community.

🔎 READ MORE: Tech giant OpenAI plans to build $20 billion data center near Georgia coast

NEWS BITES

VIDEO: A robot dog patrols an Atlanta apartment instead of a human security guard