Episode description

The SpaceX rocket carries lunar landers from companies based in Texas and Japan. They could arrive at the moon in the coming months. HPV can cause a variety of cancers, including cervical. New mortality data for women under 25 point to the success of the HPV vaccine.

On Wednesday, a SpaceX rocket launched carrying payloads from two separate private companies hoping to achieve lunar landings. The pair of landers—one from Japanese company ispace, and one from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace—will take months to reach the moon. Firefly’s lander is scheduled to arrive first, in March, with ispace’s lander planned for a touchdown in late May or early June.

Another SpaceX launch on Thursday, a test flight of the company’s Starship system, had mixed results. The booster returned to earth and was successfully “caught,” but the spacecraft exploded over the Caribbean shortly after launch. That explosion is under investigation.

Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos in Washington, D.C., joins Ira to talk about the Wednesday launch and plans for private lunar exploration. They also discuss other stories from the week in science, including the ban of Red Dye #3 an AI approach to snake antivenom, and a study predicting a rise in US dementia cases by 2060.

In 2006, a vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV) became widely available to adolescents. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection, and it can cause cancers of the mouth, throat, and sexual organs. It’s also the cause of nearly every case of cervical cancer.

Now, almost 20 years after the HPV vaccine was introduced, a study published in JAMA noted a 62% drop in deaths due to cervical cancer in women under 25 in the US: from 50 or 60 deaths per year to 13. This follows earlier research that noted a decrease in cervical precancer and cancer since the introduction of the vaccine.

With HPV vaccine uptake at about 60% for adolescents aged 13-15, a higher uptake could virtually eliminate cervical cancer, experts say. However, childhood vaccination rates have dwindled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, sparking concerns about the spread of preventable disease.

Joining Flora Lichtman to talk about this latest study is lead author Dr. Ashish Deshmukh, professor of public health sciences and co-leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina.

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

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