Image of Uranus taken by NASA.NASA’s Chandra Space Telescope
The scientific community agrees: the largest space exploration mission of this decade must begin now; and their destination can be none other than Uranus, the strangest and most unknown planet in the solar system.
Most of what we know about this world, four times the size of Earth, comes from photos taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which passed the planet more than 30 years ago on its way to the edge of the solar system. The images showed a deep blue world that rotates on itself relative to the rest of the planets – as if it were a sphere rolling on the ground instead of on itself – and in which a year lasts 84 Earth years. Winter on Uranus means 21 Earth years of darkness at and about 220 degrees below zero. Within hours, Voyager was able to observe some of the planet’s 27 moons and spot some of the 13 near-vertical rings that surround it. There were fresh scars on Ariel’s surface, suggesting there was an ocean of liquid water beneath the ice where life could exist.
Now a grand panel of scientists, assembled by the US National Academy of Sciences, has assembled to determine the scientific priorities for this decade. And it has concluded that the next big mission the US space agency must approve in 2024 is to send a probe to Uranus that will penetrate its unfamiliar atmosphere and another ship that will take it at least five Orbited for years (terrestrially, of course). No other robotic mission, they argue, will be able to generate more scientific knowledge. The budget could exceed 2,000 million euros.
probe duo
Kathleen Mandt of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory states in an article in Science magazine that this mission “will be able to elucidate the origin and evolution of the solar system and explain the phenomena unique to mysterious Uranus . ‘ The probe duo could tell us how the seventh planet formed, when it migrated to its current position and why it rotates the way it does. It’s possible that the planet started around 4,000 million years ago with another Earth-sized world collided The cataclysm literally turned it upside down but failed to resolve it, and that would explain its current rotation.
Uranus may seem like a weird planet, but the truth is that the weird thing is Earth. The vast majority of the 5,000 planets beyond the solar system discovered so far are “super-Earths” the size of Uranus and Neptune. To understand them is to understand a good part of the universe.
Surface of Ariel, one of Uranus’ moons, photographed by ‘Voyager 2’.NASA
4.5 billion years ago, the gas and rocky giant planets formed in the planetary nebula that surrounds the sun. The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn formed mostly from the lighter elements hydrogen and helium. The ice giants Uranus and Neptune also hosted heavier compounds such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and sulfur. All the giants moved from the center to their current position. The rocky planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars – were formed from the remains of the giants. Knowing the abundance of chemical elements in Uranus’ atmosphere is essential to knowing how it all happened over a period of billions of years; especially the chapter where water and the vital connections reached Earth and other planets aboard distant asteroids and comets.
In recent years, neither Jupiter nor Saturn has been found to harbor a solid interior with a defined boundary. They’re more diffuse and mix with the gaseous atmosphere outside, Mandt explains. The future atmosphere probe and Uranus orbiter will be able to determine whether or not there is a hard heart of rock and ice inside.
The mission will also be key to mapping Ariel, Miranda, Titania, Oberon and Umbriel, the planet’s five main moons, which could be ocean worlds with large amounts of liquid water. Another mystery of the planet is why nine of its very thin rings have not disintegrated. The possible answer is that there are still undiscovered shepherd moons whose gravity holds the herd of rock and ice together.
15 years to arrive
With current technology, it would take a spacecraft 12 to 15 years to travel about 3 billion kilometers to reach Uranus; as long as it can use Jupiter’s gravitational pull. This limits the starting options. If humanity is to reach this planet before 2050, when the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere may complicate full visibility of its moons, we must get to work now. Ideally, NASA would approve the mission in 2024 and it would launch in 2032, Mandt argues. That leaves just enough time to design such an ambitious project.
Fabio Favata, coordinator of scientific programs at the European Space Agency, tells this newspaper that European cooperation will be essential for this mission. The European agency has been studying possible trips to Uranus for years and has mastered key technologies for use there, such as magnetometers that can study the planet’s magnetic field and reveal its interior. “One of the big challenges is that we can’t use solar panels on Uranus because it’s too far from the sun. New nuclear fuel reactors will probably have to be developed,” he explains. According to the astrophysicist, “NASA still has a lot of different options on the table.” “A decision must be made by 2024 at the latest in order to be able to start by the middle of the next decade at the latest,” he demands.
Beyond, perhaps for the next big mission in two decades, lies Neptune, the other icy giant that is an equally uncharted world. Pluto, on the other hand, which is even further away but is no longer a planet, is much better known thanks to the visit of the New Horizons probe.
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