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Science In Action: 17/11/2011

17/11/2011

BBC World Service - Science In Action, 17/11/2011

A report by the UN warns of the environmental impact of coastal development in the Gulf

A new report by the UN warns of the environmental impact of coastal development in the Gulf; A new global engineering prize worth £1m; More on the Phobos-Grunt mission and the biggest rover to Mars

Gulf Coastal development
A new report is warning that the large scale development of coastal areas in the Middle East needs to be better planned and managed, to make sure that irreversible damage is not being done to the marine ecosystems.  That is the view of the United Nations University, International Network on Water, Environment and Health.  The gulf shared by Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates is undergoing an unprecedented transformation, with the construction of now world famous man-made islands.  Dr Peter Sale from the United Nations University is co-author of this new report warning that more needs to be done to understand and control the consequences of that type of development on the marine ecosystem.  He spoke to us from the UN in New York.


Engineering Prize
Engineering achievements are to be recognised in a new one million pound prize announced by the British Prime Minister David Cameron.  The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering will be announced in 2013 and is open to engineering innovations from all over the world.  


SPACE: Good news, bad news and more to come
Russia's Soyuz spacecraft has just safely docked with the International Space Station, and delivered a US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts.  It is a relief because the launch of the Soyuz rocket was a nervous moment for everyone, after the failure of a cargo rocket back in August led to the grounding of the fleet, and of course since the end of the Space Shuttle this is now the only way we have of getting people to the Space Station. 

That is the good news for the Russian Space Agency – the bad news is that their probe that was bound for one of Mars' moons is still stuck circling the earth.  Phobos-Grunt, as we reported on last week, survived lift off, but the next stage of departure for the unmanned probe did not work properly, and it is still in orbit, despite the best efforts of engineers to remotely fix the software on the craft.  For an update, we turned to Dr Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist from University College London, who told us what is happening with the mission.

But the focus is now moving onto another Mars mission – NASA's Mars Science Laboratory is due to launch next week.  Dr Dartnell tells Science in Action more about the most ambitious mission to the Red Planet to date.

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