An influential panel of scholars suggested planets Americans in a new report, to send NASA Space ship To Uranus, to study composition planet Wilderness.
This comes from a process known as the “decadal survey”, in which NASA provides annual recommendations and guidelines for prioritizing scientific goals.
In a recommendation published by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, DC, the scientists suggested the importance of sending NASA for a major mission to Uranus.
says a planetary scientist at the Goddard Journey Center The space NASA Administrator in Greenbelt, Maryland, Amy Simon: “This mission will be absolutely transformative.”
The “ice giant” Uranus is located 1.925 billion miles from Earth, and has not been a significant planet since 1986, when Voyager 2 flew close to it.
Many experts say this seems like an oversight on the part NASA Given that Uranus is a scientific mystery waiting to be revealed, as it rotates almost completely on its side and following it has developed a complex magnetic field are things we do not yet understand regarding the planet.
Scientists believe that Uranus might provide insight into exoplanets outside our solar system because many of them are of similar size and composition, according to Scientific American.
Simone said the most obvious reason for NASA to go to Uranus is that it is technically feasible right now.
The report suggested that a mission to Uranus be launched aboard a commercial “Falcon Heavy” rocket as early as 2031, if fully funded, and the mission might then launch a probe toward Uranus to explore its winds, atmosphere and composition.
Meanwhile, the main spacecraft will make flights to collect data on the magnetic field of Uranus, and some of its 27 likely known moons, Titania and Oberon, which may host water.
“We’re talking regarding a mission to study the entire Uranus system,” Mark Hofstadter, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told Scientific American.
Experts estimated that a mission to Uranus would cost NASA up to $4.2 billion, and some scientists suggested the “New Frontier” mission, which usually costs regarding $900 million, and the problem with this budget is that it may not yield adequate results.
Fletcher told me, a scientist planets At the University of Leicester who participated in the decadal survey: “To fully explore Uranus, we need to be in orbit and explore the interior, the atmosphere, the magnetosphere, tour the moons and countless ice rings. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing. it properly.”
