Mission to Uranus may leave in 2032, but will only arrive there in 2050 – 02/19/2023 – Sidereal Messenger

It’s not hard to understand why it took so long for discussion of a mission to Uranus to heat up. Suffice it to mention that, currently, the aspiration is to launch it in 2032 to take advantage of Jupiter’s gravity as a slingshot on the way and get there faster – in 2050.

Like Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are fascinating destinations, which hold clues to fundamental scientific mysteries, such as the potential elucidation of the migratory dance that the giant planets performed during and shortly after their formation, giving our planetary system its current configuration.

It is also expected to find moons with subsurface oceans of water on Uranus and Neptune, similar to what is seen on Jupiter and Saturn. But none of this compensates for the fact that they are very distant worlds, which explains the low frequency of visits by terrestrial spacecraft, as well as the scarcity of information we have about the pair. Both have only been visited once, by the historic Voyager-2, which visited Uranus in 1986 and Neptune three years later – in both cases “overwhelming”, in a single flyby.

For two decades now, planetary scientists have been clamoring for a mission dedicated to them, as Kathleen Mandt, a researcher at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University (USA), recalled in an article in the latest issue of Science magazine. In the decennial survey for the period 2003-2013, a mission to Uranus was identified as a priority. In the following edition, 2013-2023, it appeared as the third most important to be conducted, after the return of samples from Mars and the mission to Europa (both at an advanced stage now). And in the 2023-2033, released last year, it appeared as the highest priority.

NASA usually follows these recommendations, so it looks like the time has come to have a big mission dedicated to Uranus. It should be composed of an orbiter and an atmospheric probe, which together could reveal several mysteries specific to Uranus: why, for example, it has its axis of rotation “lying down” (98 degrees of inclination), with the poles occasionally pointed towards the sun. It is assumed that a large collision in the early days of the formation of the Solar System could have left it that way.

It will also be important to investigate its internal structure, which will give clues to its formation process, and explore its moons and rings, only seen at a glance by Voyager-2 (there are certainly many moons yet to be discovered, by the way).

In his article, Mandt highlights the importance of engaging the international community and highlights that the ESA (European Space Agency) can be a partner in the project, as has already happened with the Cassini-Huygens mission, destined for Saturn.

Expected to arrive in 2050 and last for at least five years, we are talking about a transgenerational mission: whoever starts working on it may retire before completion, and whoever studies the data collected on Uranus may not even have been born yet. There is something beautiful about waiting: it is a reminder that humanity, despite its ills, knows how to make commitments to the future.

This column is published on Mondays in Folha Corrida.

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