Get excited about Uranus (and more).
Since voyager 2 flew over Uranus in 1986, no spacecraft has visited Uranus.
There are fascinating destinations everywhere, but NASA can only perform so many missions.
As a result, every 10 years, the agency asks scientists to assess the state of planetary science and determine which issues should be the top priorities for the scientific community. Led by the National Academies of Sciences, Academies of Engineering and Medical School, this huge project is known as the Ten Years Survey — the latest such reports are now available, providing a fascinating look at what space enthusiasts can expect in the next decade.
"This report presents an ambitious but practical vision to advance the frontiers of planetary science, astrobiology and planetary defense over the next decade," Robin Canup, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Institute and co-chair of the Steering Committee of the Joint Global Commission, said in a note. "This recommended combination of missions, high-priority research activities, and technological developments will yield transformative advances in human knowledge and understanding of the origin and evolution of the solar system, life and habitability of celestial bodies other than that."
Scientists began this new decade survey in late 2019. The process consisted of six committees, each of which met at least 20 times and received information from a total of 527 white papers submitted by scientists from around the world. The resulting file is 780 pages long, just a few months after publication.
That importance means scientists and managers will spend months carefully studying its findings, but some of the report's preliminary conclusions are clear.
Flagship missions
A key responsibility of the ten-year survey is to prioritize NASA's missions, including the largest mission known as the flagship. The agency's two current flagship missions were recommended in the last ten-year survey, which cost $2.7 billion to land on Mars last year and $4.25 billion planned for launch in 2024
In the new report, the committee assesses six potential flagship projects across the solar system, from spacecraft to landings to the exploration of its largest satellite, Triton mission.
Flagship missions – this could be a $4 billion effort. A variety of factors pushed the concept of Uranus orbiters and probes to the top of the list, including eventually a closer look at the scientific potential and mission viability offered by the so-called "ice giants."
The mission, which will launch in 2031 or 2032, will take about 13 years to trudge to the target and then orbit Uranus for years, examining its atmosphere, interior, rings and moons.
"Uranus itself is one of the most interesting objects in the solar system," the committee members wrote in the document. In addition, the Committee stressed that the eventual development of a dedicated mission for one of the ice giants — Uranus or its neighbour Neptune — was a crucial priority, but noted the logistical challenges of implementing the Neptune mission in the relevant years.
If NASA gets strong enough funding to carry out a second flagship mission before releasing the next decade of investigation in 2032, the commission recommends that the mission be so-called, a spacecraft worth about $5 billion that will orbit and land on Saturn's icy little moons. The mission will orbit the moon for about 1.5 years, then work on the lunar surface for two years, analyzing spoons of icy material.
Planetary science at home and abroad
With eight planets, more than 200 moons and countless smaller objects in the solar system, planetary scientists face a wealth of opportunities to explore. But a key thread throughout the new decade is to consider planetary science not only in our own celestial neighborhoods, but also in the context of alien worlds.
This is not surprising: In the last decade of its release in 2012, scientists found fewer than 1,000 confirmed ones outside the solar system; today, that number is more than 5,000. In the years that followed, astronomers also worked to understand the ways in which our solar system might or might not represent other planetary systems.
In fact, exoplanet science is a key reason why the ten-year investigation team prioritized the Uranus flagship mission. "Exoplanets with similar masses are probably the richest class of exoplanets, essentially different from gas-rich Jupiter and Saturn," the scientists wrote. ”
The decade highlights three grand themes, as the most pressing scientific questions that planetary scientists need to address in the next decade: Origins ("How did the solar system and Earth originate, and are systems like ours common or rare in the universe?"). Worlds and processes ("How did planetary bodies evolve from their primitive state to the kinds of objects seen today?"). and life and habitability ("What conditions led to the emergence of habitable environments and life on Earth, and did life form elsewhere?"). ”） .
These issues are particularly pronounced when considering the potential destinations for intermediate mandates approved by the Commission. These options include sample return missions as well as various spacecraft traveling to or to its satellites Titan and Enceladus.
But while the ten-year survey is based on big-picture thinking, it also includes a clear focus on earth. For the first time, the document contains a section on the state of the profession, assessing the social and structural problems faced by planetary scientists, such as implicit and systemic biases and the underrepresentation of marginalized groups in the field.
Here, the Committee stresses the importance of strengthening systems for collecting and analysing evidence on the true state of these issues. Ten years has also endorsed a system called double anonymous peer review, which scientists now have. The system removes the names of the main scientists from the proposal, allowing the committee to reward observations based only on the science presented.
Philip Christensen, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University, said: "While scientific understanding is the primary motivation for the work our community does, we must also work boldly to address issues related to our community's most important resource – the people who drive its planetary science and exploration missions. The co-chair of the university and steering committee said. Ensuring broad access and participation in the field is critical to maximizing scientific excellence and maintaining the nation's continued leadership in space exploration. ”
The second, which is a growing focus area for NASA, involves identifying, tracking, and assessing the risks posed to Earth by asteroids in our vicinity. The agency has developed a survey plan to detect such asteroids and is working to build a new spacecraft called NEO Surveyor to identify such NEOs, all of which have been endorsed for a decade.
In addition, the ten-year survey asked NASA to take advantage of the 2029 overflight of the large asteroid Apophis. The asteroid would never collide with Earth in this encounter, but such a large asteroid flies so closely that scientists provide a unique opportunity for scientists to practice planetary defense and study any changes that the flyby makes to the asteroid itself.
Last fall, the Planetary Defense Program launched its first dedicated mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (this year, the spacecraft will collide with the asteroid's satellite to test humans' ability to move threatening asteroids out of Earth's danger zone). Following this mission and the NEO astrometrys mission, the ten-year survey noted that NASA's next priority should be to launch a rapid-response spacecraft to scout nearby asteroids, a rehearsal for a catastrophe.