Humans are finally heading back to the moon; Cheaper weight loss drugs are coming; Milestone for LSD trials; Promise of new carbon tax

0:005am, I'm up with a crisp Celsius energy drink. Running 12 miles today. Grab a green juice, quick change and head to work. Meetings. Workshops. One more Celsius. No slowing down. Working late, but obviously still meeting the girls for a little dancing. Celsius. Live. Fit. Go. Grab a cold, refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com. At the end of each year, we ask our reporters to come up with their big science news predictions for the year ahead. And for this podcast, the first podcast of 2026, we thought we'd talk about them. With the caveat that it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future.

0:38But we can, with confidence, predict some of them, can't we? We certainly can, especially things like space missions to Mars and the Moon. If Artemis 2 is successful, it is going to be an important shift in human spaceflight. This will set the stage to put boots on the lunar surface once again in future. What we can expect to hear about weightless drugs like a Zempic, only some cheaper and maybe more effective alternatives. Lots of people hate injecting themselves with these drugs and this can just be taken as a pill. We're also going to be talking about the legal use of LSD in medicine. We did a study in rats last year that showed that just one dose can rewire the brain.

1:14So it's really quite extraordinary. A carbon border tax in Europe. Imposing a penalty on countries that aren't doing anything. There's lots to give you a head start on the year ahead. This is The World, The Universe and us from New Scientist. I'm Dr Penny Sarsha. And I'm Dr. Rowan Hooper and we're going to start with space missions. It is a big one this year for missions to the Moon and to Mars. And I think and hope that we're going to look back in a few years to 2026 and say that's when we really started to get off the planet properly. And I say that because there are missions that we have got planned this year to the Moon and to Mars that are aimed, at least aimed, to get a permanent base on both those places.

1:58Yeah, so shall we start with the Moon? It's close to time and it's likely where we'll settle first. Jacob Aaron is here to tell us about the Artemis mission. Jacob, it feels like we've been talking about it for years, but it is finally happening? We definitely have been talking about it for years, yes. But the Artemis 2 mission is due to take place in April this year and it will see four astronauts blast off a loop around the Moon and this will set the stage to put boots on the lunar surface once again in future. but you know as you said the mission has faced repeated delays from its original planned launch time in 2019 some time ago now but it's looking hopeful that the major delays are over in September last year NASA said that its space launch system the SLS rocket is ready to fly crew and in November the Orion crew capsule which will take the astronauts to the moon was stacked atop the rocket for a final series of tests.

2:54NASA has even sort of dropped hints that it might move the launch up to February, although it seems to have gone quiet about that. So I think April's a better bet. Yeah, moving things earlier is kind of unheard of. And to be clear, at this point, we're not actually talking about landing on the Moon, but it's still a big deal, isn't it? Yes. So this will be a mission lasting about 10 days. And it'll begin with two days orbiting Earth before heading off to the moon and so for two days the astronauts will test out the life support systems and test other things and then it'll fire off its main thruster and do a figure eight loop around the moon so it won't enter lunar orbit but it will just do a circle around the moon once before heading back home and its closest approach to the moon will be about 7400 kilometers from the surface and at the end it will splash down back in the Pacific Ocean and this is actually a fairly similar mission profile to the Artemis 1 mission which you might remember circled the moon in November 2022.

3:56That was the first flight test of SLS and Orion together but crucially it didn't have a crew aboard and if you cast your minds back even further this is actually a repeat of the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 almost 60 years ago now which also saw astronauts loop around the moon ahead of the Apollo 11 landing. But what's going to be different with this mission besides obviously testing out a new spacecraft are the photos and the videos that we're going to get back in high definition. You know the photos from the Artemis 1 were pretty striking seeing the craft looming above the moon and I think having astronauts in the mix is only going to make it more exciting.

4:38And obviously you know that excitement then continues with the possibility of Artemis 3, which is going to be the mission where astronauts do actually finally set foot back on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. Although this is when I start to be a bit doubtful. So Artemis 3 is scheduled for 2027, but I can't see it happening that quickly, to be honest. The mission depends on SpaceX's Starship lander, which is meant to ferry the crew to the lunar surface. But to achieve this involves launching 14 Starship rockets into Earth orbit to refuel a 15th one that will eventually go to the moon.

5:16But SpaceX is just nowhere near that yet. Jacob, the Starship, we've seen launches over the last couple of years and they've been quite exciting, some of them. We've reported on them, you know, catching in the chopsticks catcher and stuff like that. I haven't seen as much about the SLS. Is that just because it's been going on over a longer period and has less song and dance about it well it's because you know spacex and elon must take a very different approach to the development of their rockets so you know their um whole ethos is to launch as many times as possible don't mind if you blow it up uh it's all getting in the right direction whereas sls is kind of the old model of uh space rocket development uh it costs billions of dollars for each launch the entire thing can only be used once and to be honest after this artemis 2 mission it is questionable how many more launches we'll see from it yeah okay because they might end up switching to starship or or you know perhaps a blue origin rocket or something like that uh you know a lot of people are gunning to to get rid of sls yeah regardless though artemis there is a lot resting on this because if it goes to plan you can imagine then there'll be it would start to sort of snowball some more funding for it.

6:33And you might end up with this where they are. The stated aim is to have a permanent human presence on the lunar surface. And then they've even said that this is a stepping stone to Mars. So that certainly is something that NASA has said is a goal. But honestly, I think we're still so, so far away from getting to Mars. You know, we've got a US election coming up in 2028. And you can see a new administration coming in. Maybe we've had the success of Artemis 2 and maybe even 3 of actually landing back on the Moon, at that point they might decide, okay, you know, we're just going to bank the Moon, we're going to work towards that permanent lunar presence and push Mars off to the future.

7:14But, you know, nevertheless, if Artemis 2 is successful, it is going to be an important shift in human spaceflight compared to what we've seen in the past decades. It's going to be the return of astronauts going beyond low Earth orbit and so perhaps a sign of bigger things to come. Yeah and so we've mentioned SpaceX it is a big year for them as well because this year is one of those alignments that you get every 26 months between Earth and Mars called the Hohmann Transfer Orbit. That's when they come close together and you can do the special transfer very fuel efficient way of getting there. So SpaceX are planning to send at least one Starship to Mars this year.

7:53They say they want to do two. if they miss it they've got to wait another 18 months so they do want to do that those will be uncrewed but that will be another that will be a big deal if that does happen. Yeah again I think that's going to be extremely unlikely because to do it they've got to pull off this in orbit refueling which they still haven't done and you know they might try and work towards the the Mars mission to capture the launch window, as you say. But I imagine NASA is going to be pretty heavily breathing down SpaceX's neck to get on with the Artemis 3 mission. But Jacob, why do they have to refuel?

8:31They only have enough to get out of orbit, and then they need to top up to get to Mars? Essentially, yes. If you want to get a decent amount of payload to Mars, you need a rocket that's got enough fuel. And obviously, the more fuel you put in your rocket, the more fuel you need to get that fuel up into orbit. So the approach that SpaceX is taking is we'll do multiple launches again it's this sort of quick that SpaceX is known for will fuel up in orbit and then we're not going to be wasting fuel for the final rocket launch but they've yet to actually do it and and when they do do it it's going to be a big milestone yeah but but that said with this close alignment between Earth and Mars we do have a mission blasting off so Japan is sending a mission to Phobos which is one of the the moons of Mars and that's actually going to be a sample return mission so we will eventually get rocks back from Phobos although that's not going to happen until 2031.

9:27That's very exciting I get excited anytime we're bringing rocks back from somewhere have we ever had any rocks back from anywhere near Mars before? No so we had the Perseverance rover was designed to collect rocks on the surface of Mars and then be picked up by a future Mars sample return mission it looks like the Trump administration has killed that mission off so that these rocks are there on Mars waiting to be picked up. But they haven't got a ride back yet. I do think that if there's a billionaire listening who wants to go down in history, fund that sample return mission. Get us those Mars rocks.

10:00Put your name on it. You could potentially find signs of ancient life on Mars and, you know, put your name on it and be famous. Just putting that out there. One for any rich listeners out there. One more thing to say in the space segment. We might see the launch of a new American space station this year. The International Space Station is slowly coming to the end of its life. I think it's going to be phased out in 2030 now. So we need a new U.S. or the U.S. need a new space station up there. There is a Chinese one up there, but U.S. astronauts aren't allowed to. But it's likely we're going to get a commercial space station.

10:35Or is it likely, Jacob? Yes, a number of companies have promised a commercial space station or worked towards one. But in May this year, there's a startup called Vast, which is planning to actually launch its commercial space station on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. So this space station, if you're thinking ISS, you need to scale way down. It's called Haven 1 and it has a habitable volume of 45 cubic meters. That's about a tenth of the ISS. and so it's a bed sit in space exactly yeah a bed sit in space but um it doesn't have its own long-term life support system like the iss so it's not designed for continuous occupation instead uh four astronauts are going to go up on a crew dragon spacecraft and stay there for a couple of weeks and actually the crew dragon spacecraft is going to help with the the life support system whilst they're there.

11:31If that is successful, you know, again, that's going to be a major achievement, the first commercial space station, but it's also going to set vast sights on what they're doing next, which is the Haven 2 module. And they say this is going to be a much larger module and they plan to stick a whole bunch of these together to form something, you know, approaching the ISS perhaps. That's penciled in for 2030 but you know as with everything related to spaceflight I would expect that to come a bit later. Well you're not coming on again until 2030 Jacob. Thanks Jacob. Bye. As you know the World, the Universe and Us is a podcast that's all about science and technology which is why we're big fans of Nick Gray and G-Tech.

12:16Nick is the founder of G-Tech, the British design company that took on some giant global brands and he He first built a cordless sweeper in his garage back in 2001, which is still going strong today. GTEC is all about making life easier with things people love to use, which is why they're the UK's most trusted home and garden brand. So whether it's an air ram vacuum, a nifty garden tool, or just something that gets rid of all those pet hairs on your sofa, GTEC have got you covered. Plus if you're like us and care about the planet, you'll love all their interchangeable components and batteries.

12:48GTEC stands for Innovation, Simplicity and Engineered Perfection. Find out more at gtech.co.uk. Over the last few years, the GLP-1 weight loss drugs have been huge news. They've had a massive impact. They're better known by brand names like Asempic, Wigovi, Munjaro, and they've transformed the lives of millions of people and made a lot of money for their manufacturers. They've been in such demand that there's even been big shortages until quite recently. but this year in 2026 we could actually finally start to see prices coming down a lot. Yeah which is so important isn't it because it's really only you know rich people who can afford it at the moment and to put it into context figures from the World Obesity Federation show that 40 % of the world's adult adult population in 2025 were overweight and that could be up to half by 2030 which would be three billion people.

13:41So a cheap way of tackling this problem is you know desperately needed michael a page is here to tell us more about it michael what's the what is happening this year well there's an awful lot happening but i think the single biggest thing for me could be the approval of a new drug called awful glipron now this works in exactly the same way as semaglutide by targeting the glp1 hormone but unlike semaglutide it's what's called a small molecule drug now that means it can be absorbed through the gut and it can be taken as a pill and it's also easy to manufacture. So there are two big advantages here.

14:19So first of all, lots of people hate injecting themselves with these drugs and this can just be taken as a pill. But also because it's cheaper to manufacture, it should be cheaper. Now, we're not going to know the final pricing until after it's approved and the manufacturer announces it. But obviously they're competing with other drugs and they've already said they're going to sort of price it lower. So it could be significantly cheaper and easier to take and that's really going to extend the availability of these GRP1 drugs. Because small molecule drugs are generally the holy grail, aren't they?

14:49They are just much easier to use, much cheaper to make. It would be huge if this comes through. Exactly, yes. It would be a big step forward. And Orphaglipron, is that the generic name? Orphaglipron, I think... I mean, they're going to make brand names of that base drug. I think so. You'd hope so, with a name like that. Orphaglipron. Yeah. Yeah, it may have a different brand name when it comes out. But the big question is, does it work as well as semaglutide? Are people going to lose weight as much? Well, in sort of phase three trials, people lost around 10 % of their weight after 72 weeks. Now, that's a bit less effective than semaglutide.

15:29I think the comparable figure is around 14%, though they weren't head-to-head trials, so we've got to be a bit careful about those numbers. So it looks like it's going to be a little bit less effective. but if it's cheaper and people can afford it and they're happy taking it, then that makes it. I mean, the thing with these drugs is it looks like people may need to be on them for a very long time, you know, potentially the rest of their lives. And so it's very important that these are drugs that people are able to take easily and also that they can afford to take. So, you know, a less effective drug that you can afford to take is better than a more expensive one that you can't afford, obviously.

16:04I guess it might be too early to say, but is there any hope that side effects might be less for this kind of formulation? I don't think that's clear yet. Yeah, because that's one of the main obstacles. It obviously depends on the dose as well. So we know the higher dose ramps up. But that's still a big issue with these drugs that many people have some very nasty side effects. So then the game changing thing here really is you don't have to inject yourself. It's a pill that can be swallowed. But aren't there already pill forms of semaglutide? Yeah. So this gets really complicated. There is, there's a diabetes drugs called ribosus, which is just semaglutide.

16:39And the manufacturer has applied for this to be approved for weight loss as well. So the thing about that, because semaglutide, it's a small protein, you often hear it called a peptide, but that's just means small protein. That means it can't normally get through the gut into the bloodstream. So in ribosus, it's put together with a substance called sulcoprosate sodium. and this basically first of all it neutralizes stomach acid but it also fluidizes the cell membranes and so the peptide can actually this sort of uh the semaglutide can pass through the lining of the gut and get into the bloodstream now obviously you don't want if you're eating food you don't want your food undigested bits of food getting through into your bloodstream so the thing with ribos is you have to not eat for at least eight hours before you take it and then you've got to sort of for another half an hour you got to wait another half an hour later after after taking it so there are a lot of special requirements with these ones.

17:35Seriously cuts into your meal plans. Yeah exactly. And for the snappily named Orphaglipron it will bring the prices down but what is there something about the patent expiring this year on semaglutides and that's what that's another factor. Yes so but they they're expiring in some countries but not all so I think the list includes China, India, Brazil, Canada and Turkey. So that's a big chunk of the global population. And in those countries, they should be able to start selling generic versions, which should bring the price down. So that's going to be another thing that's going to expand access to the drugs this year.

18:09And there's loads of research going on in this space. So beyond this small molecule that you can swallow as a pill and the patent expiring, what other developments might we expect this year? Well, I think there are more than 100 sort of GLP-1 type drugs in development now. So it is a huge amount. Now, most of those are still some way off. I think in terms of the immediate future, the one that people are probably most excited about is one called retitutride. Now, this is one, it's basically got a triple action. It mimics three different hormones. So you may say semaglutide, mimics GLP-1, and terzapatide, or manjaro, as it's better known, that mimics two hormones.

18:52And retitutride is known as triple three because it mimics three now in early tests in the sort of people on the highest dose lost around 24 of their weight that's a lot isn't that's a lot but we've got to be cautious here that's that's an early trial we don't know how tolerable that dose is going to be so we need really need to wait for the phase three trials of your weight in 50 odd weeks in a year basically yeah yeah 48 weeks it was yeah um wow so but we're gonna have to wait and see for we're gonna have wait for those sort of larger longer trials to finish to be sure of this. But generally all of this research that's coming through it sounds like it should be a good thing.

19:32Yeah I mean I think the picture is so positive at the moment and we've already got these two drugs which are working really well for some people at least so there are these side effects but we've also seen that there are these other health benefits in terms of sort of the sort of heart reducing the prospects of heart disease. We've also seen that they seem to help people who have problems with alcohol or drug abuse. And now we've got hopefully lots of cheaper versions coming out and also more effective versions. So there's going to be more choice. So the future is looking really, really bright.

20:05Now we're going to stay with drugs, but completely different kind, older drug. In 2026, there's going to be the first phase three trial of LSD, which I think is really extraordinary because, you know, we're talking about the long view with space travel. If you take the same long view with LSD in the 60s. Back to the 60s again. Well, in the 60s, it was legal. It was initially used to treat alcoholism and even schizophrenia. And there was a lot of hope that it could be used to a whole range of different treatments. But then, of course, it became emblematic of counterculture. And then the authorities clamped down on it, clamped down on Timothy Leary and people who championed it.

20:46Timothy Leary got called the most dangerous man in America by Nixon and then LSD was banned. So no one could research any of the possible good things that it could do. So to see it come back now 55 years later is amazing. Alexandra Thompson is here to tell us about it. What's the story, Alex? The story is that there are two major trials investigating LSD for reducing anxiety. So the first trial we should hear about in the first half of 2026. and the second trial in the second half. And the proof will be in the pudding, but based on the trials that have been done already, scientists are pretty optimistic about this.

21:25It does seem to really help. So we know that anxiety, it's a very common condition. People feel very anxious about lots of different things and a lot of them don't respond to the standard treatment, which is the talking therapies and the antidepressants. So other psychedelic drugs like MDMA are already used to treat particularly severe cases of depression or PTSD in some parts of the world. And LSD might have potential as well because we know it can trigger profound emotional experiences in some people and it even seems to enhance the brain's ability to rewire itself and then form new thought patterns.

22:00Yeah, and that's the difference between other psychedelic drugs, isn't it? The rewiring. Because it is counterintuitive. You think if someone's really anxious, you're going to give them a dose of LSD. like won't that make it worse? Sounds like a recipe for a bad trip yeah. Well but it well it may be a bad trip yeah but they just got to get through that few hours of rewiring and then they might be in a much better place and that's what these studies are aiming to sort of find out right? Yeah so there's got to be a balance between the tolerable side effects for the greater good I suppose and that's what this trial will help us to learn.

22:36So in 2025 there was a pretty landmark trial that showed that just one dose of LSD could relieve moderate to severe anxiety for at least three months. We did a study in rats last year and they showed that just one dose can rewire the brain. So it's really quite extraordinary. The trials are both made up of about 200 people with moderate to severe anxiety and they're going to take several LSD tablets, so it's tablet form, and collectively those tablets will add up to a 100 microgram dose. And then other people will have placebo pills and then their anxiety levels will be tracked for up to three months after the dosing days but then there's the second phase of the study which is 10 months long and in that the participants even who are on the placebo pills will be offered LSD when they self-report their anxiety is reaching a certain threshold and that will help us to determine how long the effects really last but the key difference between these two trials is that the second has a third group of participants who will take a 50 microgram dose and the reason being is that often in these trials it's actually quite easy to suss out whether or not you've been given the drug or the placebo because you experience sort of hallucinations and things so that sort of voids the placebo effect so the reason why they're giving the 50 microgram dose is because the 2025 trial showed that that did have mind-altering effects such as hallucinations but it didn't reduce anxiety beyond the placebo.

24:02So hopefully that will help to disentangle that. Yeah that's a great addition to the experimental setup isn't it? And because LSD is so potent it has all these different effects at different levels. So if people microdose it you can just do 10 micrograms or 20 micrograms you can start to notice something and 50 but it seems like 100 is where you might start to get this rewiring thing and by the way if you take 200 micrograms um it's when they they call it um ego dissolution experience where you completely lose sense of yourself um and so you could get some really major impacts there but they're not going that high when we talk about rewiring i can see the benefits of that but obviously we can't fine-tune it um do we know you know why does it necessarily work the way that you want it to rather than in a bad way do we do Do we know that yet?

24:53I don't think we know that. I don't think we know why it works for some people and it doesn't for others. These are just things like normally they just see, does it work before we get into the mechanisms of how it works? Because, I mean, I guess rewiring can have bad effects as well as good effects. Yeah, and you probably do want to follow up with these people for years. It's really interesting. Although, as you say, this is probably be used in people who've not been susceptible to any other treatment. So you're kind of at the end of the line. So in a way, you might as well rewire and see where you go.

25:22Well, I mean, I guess it's no different to some extent to antidepressants where you're just messing with brain chemistry and seeing if it has a difference. What about side effects with LSD? I mean, people, when they take it, they can be quite heavy going. They can be. And that's always sort of a balancing act that they have to take into account. What's tolerable, what isn't. If it causes sort of short term psychological distress, maybe like the FDA in the States might say that that's acceptable. longer term distress probably not but that wasn't seen in the 2025 trial and when we've covered trials before of things like psilocybin very often people will sort of take that in a controlled safe environment there'll be someone there to essentially hold their hand is that the kind of thing when they take these doses or people going off to take these at home well that's the thing even if this gets approved yeah there probably will be quite a lot of caution yeah so it's not going to replace talking therapies you know that's always going to be the go-to yeah and then also there's a slightly more practical difficulty that clinicians will have to keep an eye on these on these people right so that's an additional during the time that you're yeah activated yes yeah i do given all those caveats though i do think this is a great story and i'm not being an old hippie here but to have this story come back it's a great story of redemption for something that was really showing promise so i'm looking forward to this this year yeah me too

26:442025 was the second hottest year on record after 2024 and we saw an almost constant stream of climate influenced disasters around the world so this year is sure to continue that trend but we want to look forward to some good news it's the start of the year and we have something on this here we've got a carbon border tariff being imposed in the eu and michael you've written about this for us. Let's start with what actually is a carbon border tariff. Yeah, so the basic idea is simple. It's if you've got countries that aren't doing anything to try and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, you don't want to be able to outcompete industries in the countries that are.

27:22And so the way you solve that is to introduce a carbon border tariff, or as it's known in a jargon, a sort of carbon border adjustment mechanism. So let's start with steel making so steel making produces lots of carbon dioxide when you produce steel and a moment in the eu uh sort of factories that produce steel have to sort of buy uh an allowance a carbon allowance in order to produce that carbon i think that i checked the price in december and it's about 80 euros a ton or something like that so they paying that extra price but they also competing against steel makers outside of the eu who are importing and not paying the that carbon price so the basic idea of the carbon border tariff is even even a playing field so sort of if you if you're exporting into the eu and you don't have carbon price in your country you then have to pay that sort of price that will level it up and besides uh steel making so we're talking about things like iron aluminium cement fertilizers hydrogen and even electricity so this isn't about um getting all of the constituents of the eu lined up this is about exporting from the world over into the EU.

28:30Exactly. It's a way of protecting a European industry that is trying to sort of decarbonise and is paying this sort of carbon price. So it's very much like a trade policy, isn't it? And it's quite hard to make this sexy. Well, I think there's another way of looking at it, which is this is a way for countries that are doing something to try and tackle or try and limit their emissions to force other countries that aren't doing anything to take action as well. So for me, it's actually a really positive step forward. So just to take a step back, if we think about all these international climate agreements we have, they're all effectively voluntary.

29:04Like the Paris Climate Agreement, you decide how much you want to do. There's no penalty if you don't do it. It's completely voluntary. There's no sort of penalty. And so we see, you know, like the U.S. now pulling out of the Paris Agreement and tearing up everything it said it would do. And there's no sort of penalty for that. But with these carbon border tariffs, that's effectively imposing a penalty on countries that aren't doing anything. And hopefully it's sort of going to expand and get to the point where it becomes really meaningful. Yeah, a lot of policy wonks have said that a tax is always going to be the way that you have to make change by making people pay for it.