This June 1, 2020, rendering provided by Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre shows the Hope probe. The U.S., China and the United Arab Emirates are sending spacecraft to Mars in quick succession beginning this week. (MBRSC via AP)
By Mari Yamaguchi
The liftoff of the United Arab Emirates' Mars orbiter was postponed until Friday due to bad weather at the Japanese launch site.
The orbiter named Amal, or Hope, is the Arab world's first interplanetary mission. The launch was scheduled for Wednesday from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, but the UAE mission team announced the rescheduled date on Twitter.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' H-IIA rocket will carry UAE's craft into space. Mitsubishi launch official Keiji Suzuki had said on Monday a postponement was possible as intermittent lightning and rain were forecast over the next few days.
Heavy rain has fallen for more than a week in large areas of Japan, triggering mudslides and floods and killing more than 70 people, most of them on the southern main island of Kyushu.
Hope is set to reach Mars in February 2021, the year the UAE celebrates 50 years since its formation. A successful Hope mission would be a major step for the oil-dependent economy seeking a future in space.
Hope carries three instruments to study the upper atmosphere and monitor climate change and is scheduled to circle the red planet for at least two years.
Emirates Mars Mission Project Director Omran Sharaf, who joined Monday’s briefing from Dubai, said the mission will provide a complete view of the Martian atmosphere during different seasons for the first time.
Two other Mars missions are planned in the coming days by the U.S. and China. Japan has its own Martian moon mission planned in 2024.
A new study shows that Americans feel record levels of stress amid inflation and global uncertainty about the war in Ukraine. Cheddar News speaks with Lynn Bufka of the American Psychological Association about how to best put your worries aside.
Colgate-Palmolive is shedding light on the little-known fact that oral health is integral to overall health. The consumer products company will commit $100 million over five years to transform the way the world thinks about and addresses oral health. Maria Ryan, Chief Clinical Officer at Colgate-Palmolive, discusses why oral health is so vital to our physical and mental well-being.
Scientists say they have found the sunken wreck of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, more than a century after it was lost to the Antarctic ice.
Researchers say a large spider native to East Asia that proliferated in Georgia last year could spread to much of the East Coast. The Joro spider’s golden web took over yards all over north Georgia in 2021, unnerving some residents.
News of Russian forces taking control of a Ukrainian after artillery bombardment of a nuclear power plant raised concerns this week. Nuclear policy expert and Quincy Institute Distinguished Fellow Joe Cirincione joined Cheddar News to discuss the implications for a potential disaster. “I’m with the director general of the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency. He says that he is extremely concerned, and that this Russian attack is a severe risk and that Russia clearly violated the fundamental principle of preserving the integrity of nuclear power plants," Cirincione said.
Adam Battle, research assistant at University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, joins Cheddar News to discuss space junk heading to the moon and if more should be done to prevent space junk in the future.
UN and Ukrainian officials say no radiation was released from a Russian attack at Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and firefighters have extinguished a blaze at the facility..
Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), corn-based ethanol has been mixed into gasoline sold at pumps in the U.S. since 2005, when a policy was enacted aimed at reducing emissions. Corn-based ethanol had been thought to be a relatively greener energy source compared to other biofuels, but now, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports it may be actually worse for the climate than straight gasoline. Tyler Lark, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Sustainability, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell and discussed the pushback against the study. "Essentially when you need to produce more corn to meet the demand for use as ethanol as fuel, farmers respond and they switch more crops like soybeans and wheat into corn," Lark said. "They also bring more land into production, so things that used to be pasture grassland, and both those activities are associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions."
Caroline Hickman, lecturer at University of Bath and psychosocial researcher on climate change, joins Cheddar News to discuss climate change's impact on mental health.
