have no pope. after eight years, benedict xvi stepped down thursday with tearftear ful fare wells and a flying off into the sunset. the 85-year-old says he s beginning the final stages of his life as simply a pilgrim. on monday, cardinals will gather to make plans for electing a new pope. a new law is now in effect in arkansas banning most abortions starting the 20th week of pregnancy. a veto of the law was overridden thursday after the house did the same on wednesday. the state senate also proved a more restrictive ban that could ban abortions even earlier, after 12 weeks of pregnancy. the governor declined whether to say he would veto the 12-week ban. okay. so you may not have noticed, but last year there was an extra ring of radiation that was circling the earth. twin nasa space probes made the surprising discovery. it was a new radiation belt that joined two known belts, seen here in yellow. nasa scientists say the new
international space station is right now. research is being done there. about 150 miles off the earth. but if you want to go anywhere else, you need a different kind of spacecraft. this is the new ride being tested today. this looks a lot like apollo. it s on that massive rocket stack. the capsule itself almost looks like apollo. within the next hour it s going to pass through this critical radiation belt. a high radiation impact zone. why do we care? what matters? if you were on the spacecraft now, for anybody who s going to go on it you have to be very concerned about radiation in your body. just like if you get a if you get an x-ray at the dentist or at the doctors, you have to concerned about how much x-ray you re going to get. so this is very important for astronauts. we need to measure how well the shielding is working so we can plan for future missions. because eventually if they go to mars there s going to be a lot of radiation exposure.