The irony is that ice giants are extremely common in the universe. Neither Uranus or Neptune has ever had a dedicated mission, which is why these ice giants are such an enigma. "How the system obtained this state is unclear." "It orbits essentially on its side, with a north pole that lies nearly in the plane of its orbit around the Sun, yet its rings and satellites orbit neatly within its equatorial plane," she said. "Uranus has a very bizarre system," she said. Voyager 2 was able to tell that some of these hunks of ice and rock were geologically active - maybe there are cryovolcanoes. This is one reason Canup wants to probe it up close. It could possibly answer the question of whether its strange tilt, and possibly its rings and moons, arose in the aftermath of a massive impact billions of years ago. The Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) is the proposed mission that will, if NASA decides to take it on, orbit the planet for years to find out more about what goes on its its atmosphere, magnetic field, and interior.
Those that ultimately made it to the top could answer some of our most pressing questions. Jets of water venting from the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus.įactors taken under consideration for missions proposed in the decadal survey included their potential to make scientific breakthroughs (obviously), technical risk, programming, cost (unfortunately), and viability of actually launching any of these missions within the next decade. "Conditions at Enceladus are thus ideal to allow for direct investigation of the habitability of an ocean world and assessment of whether or not it is inhabited." “A mission to one of the ice giant planets was judged to be the top priority, primarily for its ability to produce transformative, breakthrough science,” she told SYFY WIRE. Planetary scientist Robin Canup, the assistant vice president of the Planetary Sciences Directorate at the Southwest Research Institute, is the decadal survey committee steering committee co-chair. A recent briefing led by scientists on the NASEM (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) committee highlighted priorities, strategies, and questions. National Research Council (NRC), this compilation includes 522 reports from NASA-affiliated universities and research institutes from all over the planet, including Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), CalTech, the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Arizona State University, and Johns Hopkins University. Origins, Worlds and Life is the third decadal survey ever. This water world could be the frozen version of Hyneria from Farscape, but even if hypothetical aliens in its fathomless depths aren’t nearly as intelligent as Rygel, who swears he knows frelling everything, it would change our ideas about what can survive out there. Enceladus could be crawling with life-forms. There are still many unknowns hiding where we haven’t yet probed them. Methane gives it its eerie color, and hydrogen and helium are also in its atmosphere, which swirls above a core of iron and magnesium silicate. Now that the third decadal survey (which recommends potential missions every decade) has made them a priority, we could see something taking off in the future. Saturn's moon Enceladus had been eyed by Cassini, and plumes of water vapor gave Earthlings a glimpse of what might be an ocean world swarming with life beneath all that ice, but it was not explored nearly enough. Anything else we know about this secretive ice giant comes from Hubble and a few telescopes on terra firma. Nothing has visited Uranus since the Voyager 2 flyby in 1986. While Mars continues making headlines, nothing has ever seen Uranus up close or probed Enceladus for signs of life, but they are about to be in the cosmic spotlight.