Where no man has gone before.
Scientists are recommending that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration eye the seventh planet for future extraterrestrial endeavors, according to a new report published by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
“We are extremely excited to recommend that the highest priority new flagship should be a Uranus orbiter and probe,” said Dr. Robin Canup, the co-chair of the Academies’ Steering Committee, according to a report.
“This will be a fantastic multi-year mission with the probe dropping into the planet at the beginning of the mission, followed by an extended orbital tour investigating the satellites, their interiors, the magnetosphere, the rings, and the atmosphere.”
Part of what influenced the recommendation were preferred launch opportunities in the near future that would shorten the journey to Uranus. According to the report, a gravity slingshot could be used to shorten the trip by slinging it around Jupiter. The trip would take 13 years in this case.
“We think we understand how something gets as big as Jupiter, and we think we understand how something gets to be the size of Earth and Venus. But in the middle, in that kind of sweet spot between those end-members — we don’t fully understand how a world can start to grow and grow and not just carry on to become Jupiter-mass in size. A mission to Uranus could help us answer that,” Professor Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester told the BBC.
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Another point of interest for scientists is the planet’s axis of rotation, which sits parallel to its plane of orbit about the sun. This could indicate a large impact early in Uranus’s history.
“It was the only one to receive a low-medium rating for its risk,” Canup said of the trip.
She recommended initiating the voyage in financial year 2024, according to the report. The trip would likely be the most expensive endeavor to date.
Jonathan Fortney, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, released a report on the subject years earlier and echoes the recommendation.
He told the Verge that a mission could reveal more about the planet’s makeup. According to him, it is suspected to be made of rock, ices, and hydrogen and helium, but it is not clear.
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“Our understanding of the interior structure of the planet is so poor that we really have very little idea what the ratio of those three things are to each other,” he said. “And so there’s been a long assumption that it’s mostly these ices but that’s that’s literally an assumption. We don’t really know that.”
