686: NASA Delays Crewed Moon Missions | Top Technologies To Watch In 2024

With this week’s delays to Artemis II and III, astronauts likely won’t walk on the moon until 2026 at the earliest. Also, weight-loss drugs, AI, clean-energy tech and more: digging into MIT Technology Review’s annual list with executive editor Amy Nordrum.

NASA Once Again Delays Artemis Crewed Missions To the Moon

This week, NASA announced that it was delaying two of its planned crewed missions to the moon. Artemis II, which was scheduled to launch in November 2024, was pushed to September 2025. And Artemis III, originally planned for late 2025, is now looking at a September 2026 launch date. The Artemis campaign has faced challenges with its lunar landers, spacesuits, life-support systems, and the Orion capsule’s heat shield, according to NASA. When launched, Artemis II will swing around the moon and return to Earth, while Artemis III will land on the south pole of the moon, and will mark the first time humans have walked on the moon since 1972.

Joining Ira to talk about this and other top science stories in the news this week is Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review. They talk about challenges facing the offshore wind industry, a Hawai‘i coal plant that was replaced by a battery farm, why AI weather forecasting is not ready for primetime, and a new discovery that giant apes went extinct earlier than we thought—and for a different reason.

Top Technologies To Watch In 2024

The technology world moves so fast, it can be hard to know what to pay attention to. Sometimes it’s helpful for someone to tell you straight up who the big players are, and what technologies really could change the world.

Luckily for us, MIT Technology Review compiles an annual list of the 10 breakthrough technologies they say matter most. This year, that list ranges from super-efficient solar panels to weight-loss drugs, and AI in just about everything.

Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to discuss this year’s list is Amy Nordrum, executive editor at MIT Technology Review based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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