NASA Launches New Missions, Saturn Gains Some Moons, and Whale Urine Balances Marine Ecosystems

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.3 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

The new Environmental Protection Agency administrator plans to get rid of or weaken critical environmental rules and policies, such as regulations around greenhouse gases and clean water protections. The deregulation effort follows the recent cancellation of hundreds of grants. NASA launched two missions last week. The first, SPHEREx, will make a three-dimensional map of the sky. The second, PUNCH, is a collection of satellites meant to study solar wind. Plus, Saturn gains some moons, and whale urine balances ecosystems. Recommended reading: Trump EPA Unveils Aggressive Plans to Dismantle Climate Regulation New NASA Space Telescope Will See the Universe in 102 Colors Heliophysics Is Set to Shine in 2025 E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:35.0	Happy Monday listeners. For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.
0:39.3	Let's get this week started with our usual science news roundup.
0:43.3	First, unfortunately, I need to update you on some troubling environmental news.
0:57.8	Last Wednesday, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin,
1:02.0	announced that the agency plans to get rid of or weaken many environmental rules and policies.
1:07.8	Zeldon said the EPA could even pivot away from officially recognizing that greenhouse gases are bad for us.
1:14.2	Back in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases are pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act.
1:20.2	That meant that the EPA needed to determine whether these emissions by new motor vehicles were tied to air pollution that could harm the public, or if the science
1:28.2	was too uncertain.
1:29.7	Well, the science was certain.
1:31.8	In 2009, the EPA officially determined that greenhouse gases threatened public health.
1:37.2	Zeldin announced that the administration plans to reconsider these findings.
1:41.8	In a video Zeldon posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, about the plans,
1:45.7	he referred to the determination as the holy grail of the climate change religion.
1:51.8	It's important to note that since 2009, the evidence that greenhouse gas emissions put human
1:57.0	lives in danger has only grown. According to Zeldin, the EPA plans to take a series of 31 actions to change or eliminate
2:05.2	environmental regulations.
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