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Space

The Case for Exploring the Planet Uranus (bgr.com) 72

Once every 10 years there's a report released by America's National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Released this year, the report recommends prioritizing a mission to the planet Uranus to map its gravitational and magnetic fields and study how the planet's internal heat moves to the surface.

BGR reports: Despite being the seventh planet in our solar system, there's very little we know about Uranus as a whole. In fact, one of the best images we have of the planet was captured in 1986 by the Voyager 2... Additionally, scientists want to learn more about the various moons that surround the planet. We also know very little about the ring system that surrounds the blue planet. A team led by Mark Hofstadter, a planetary scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab wrote a white paper on their goals....

We currently already have the tech we need to get a spacecraft there that can orbit the planet. Additionally, scientists have found that launching a mission in 2031 would allow us to capitalize on gravity assistance from Jupiter.

The report also recommends studying Enceladus, an icy moon orbiting Saturn which has shown signs it could sustain microbial life.

Thanks to Slashdot reader alaskana98 for submitting the story.
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The Case for Exploring the Planet Uranus

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  • You could be 1 or 100, you'll probably still get a kick out of Uranus.
    • I am deeply offended that the title includes the words 'the Planet' and doesn't just read "The case for exploring Uranus."

      The fact that someone with a stick up their ass prevented a truly fantastic headline makes me wonder where this society is headed.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 )

      Do Japanese joke about Europa (your oppai? boobs, heheh )

  • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Sunday April 24, 2022 @09:42AM (#62473844)

    This is one of the most exciting prospects I have about the development of the Starship system. Having that kind of cheap and powerful launch capacity means perhaps we can develop some more standardized modern platforms for interplanetary probes and have the lift capability to launch them with plenty of fuel and kick stages to get them into orbit around many of the planet with longer mission lengths and less transit time.

    I know a lot more work goes into it than that but how great would it be to have years long orbiter missions around Uranus, Neptune, Titan and anyplace else we find interesting. With NASA now on board with Starship via the HLS program i hope the smarty-pants over at JPL are allowed to start working on spacecraft that can launch on it.

    • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

      If you want to let Elon Musk probe Uranus, I won't stand in your way, but I don't suppose Starship will make the slightest difference to the feasibility of missions to the outer planets. You don't use massive rockets to get to the outer planets. What you do is slingshot around some of the other planets on the way.

      • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Sunday April 24, 2022 @10:29AM (#62473910)

        I don't want Elon Musk to do it, I want JPL to do it just buy a launch on Starship.

        Why do you think interplanetary probes use such long and winding slignshot manuevers? It's because propellant capacity is the limiting factor for every spacecraft. In order to build the velocity to get to the outer planets you can either do direct transit which requires a lot of fuel or you can slingshot, and NASA would rather take an extra year to get out there and preserve fuel to extend mission length.

        The Cassini orbiter mission ended because it ran out of fuel to stay in orbit. It launched on a TitanIV with a capacity of 22T to LEO. If Starship can put 100T to LEO do you think having 4x the weight capacity for kick stages and stationkeeping won't make a huge difference?

  • by ickleberry ( 864871 ) <web@pineapple.vg> on Sunday April 24, 2022 @09:43AM (#62473848) Homepage
    Don't they mean hole?
  • US science advisors desperately want to probe Uranus. The cheers when that article was approved must have been deafening.
  • ... only resulted in more tittering.
    • I am sad that we always have such serious topics. Just once we should have a story we can make fun of!

      • No, not even on April fools day. The editors make less than minimum wage, and due to malnutrition they do not have the strength to stand up to the corporate lawyers.

  • Can we call it something else?

  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday April 24, 2022 @11:50AM (#62474100) Homepage

    Our solar system contains one (Earth) of eight planets clearly in the habital zone. We have over 200 moons near enough to a giant planet that they could theoretically sustain life.

    We know that life exists near undersea volcanoes, living off the energy and chemicals the volcanoes bring to the bottom of the ocean.

    We know that Enceladus has geysers that break through the ice crust of the moon. The ice is known to be contaminated with methane and ammonia. That means it has liquid water underneath the ice crust, probably heated by volcanoes powered by a molten core kept warm from tidal forces.

    The biggest question in the universe is the Fermi Paradox - is there life out there?

    If we can confirm that there is life inside an ice moon, that means:

    1) With two separate examples, we can conclude that Life is common and forms wherever the conditions are right.
    2) Given the huge number of giant exoplanets we have detected, and the huge number of moons our own gas giants have, that life is almost certainly common throughout the universe.

    This is far more important than learning about Uranus. I still want to learn more about the planet, if only for all the new Uranus jokes, but Enceladus is the main topic we need to explore.

  • I have a feeling Tim Cook will be the one to explore Uranus.
  • The powers that be intentionally picked the least funny submission. Wow.

  • Considering the time a mission plan could be put together, funding obtained, the spacecraft(s) being built it may take decades before we're ever able to see anything up close. While I think it would be great for mankind, I just think that we need focus on a low cost "get it done" model. A lot of what we have learned over the past 40 years was triggered by Voyager I and II, The Mariner program etc. I think given the distances and monies involved we should focus on Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

  • Nanowar of Steel did a videoclip on it

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Farnsworth: "Because of jokes the 7th planets name was changed years ago" Fry: "What to?" Farnsworth: "Urectum"
  • I'm always telling my girlfriend this, but she won't listen.

  • I get that "there's very little we understand" about several things here, but are these academies going to fund the research?

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