NASA announces important exploration missions for the next decade

Source: Science and Technology Daily

For decades, Uranus may welcome visitors. NASA will send probes to Uranus and its satellites. Image source: Nature website

【Today's Perspective】

According to the British "Nature" website recently reported, the United States planetary scientists released a detailed report, elaborating on the current understanding of the solar system by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the focus of exploration in the next decade (2022 to 2032).

The report is based on 527 white papers submitted by planetary scientists across the United States and nearly two years of discussions by 97 experts, the most notable of which are: the launch of the Uranus probe in the early 30s and the dispatch of probes to Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, in the late 30s or early 40s.

Uranus becomes "Uranus"

The report calls Uranus "one of the most fascinating objects in the solar system" and recommends the Uranus Orbiter and Probe as the number one flagship mission.

Astronomers are proposing to launch orbiters and probes to Uranus for about $4.2 billion, ideally in 2031 or 2032, which would take 13 years to reach Uranus and then orbit Uranus for years to gain information about its atmosphere, interior and moons. The last and only time humans visited Uranus was when the Voyager II probe flew over Uranus in 1986. The latest expedition is expected to reveal the formation and evolution of the planet and its moons.

The orbiter will orbit Uranus for years, gathering information about its magnetic fields, which could provide energy for the glowing auroras on Uranus. The probe will enter Uranus' atmosphere and measure its atmospheric composition, temperature and circulation. Robin Karnap, one of the report's lead authors, of the Southwest Research Institute, said: "This will be the first space mission by scientists to an ice giant, which is particularly important given that we believe that ice giants may be the most common type of planet in the universe." ”

The mission will explore some of Uranus's 27 known moons, possibly Titan and Titan, which have enough water beneath the ice.

Report participant Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said: "This mission will be absolutely transformative. Uranus is full of mysteries, such as why it rotates almost sideways and how it forms a complex magnetic field. Studying Uranus could give scientists information about planets orbiting other stars, as the most common of the more than 5,000 known exoplanets is the size of Uranus. ”

Astronomers point out that the Uranus mission can be launched on commercial Falcon Heavy rockets, and missions to neptune that are farther away may require larger rockets, such as NASA's Space Launch System (SLS).

"Enceladus" is looking for life

The flagship mission, which ranks second in the report, is the Enceladus Orbiter, a probe that combines an orbiter and a lander, potentially worth as much as $5 billion, to probe Saturn's ice moon, Enceladus. There is an ocean beneath Enceladus' surface, and plumes break through the ice shell and spew into space. "Conditions on Enceladus allow scientists to conduct a direct survey of the habitability of a marine world and assess whether it is inhabited by life," the report said.

The Enceladus Orbiter will spend a year and a half orbiting Enceladus and collecting samples of those plumes, before landing on Enceladus, where it will embark on a two-year exploration mission to collect more samples and analyze them for signs of life. The mission is expected to be launched by SLS or Heavy Eagle rockets in the late 1930s and implement a landing in the early 1950s.

Asteroids need to be defended against incoming attacks

In addition, the report analyzes for the first time WHAT NASA is preparing to protect Earth from a deadly asteroid attack. It recommended that the agency launch a mission to detect near-Earth asteroids as soon as possible. NASA recently announced that the project will be postponed for two years until 2028 to save money.

In recent years, NASA has focused more and more on the field of planetary defense, which involves identifying, tracking, and assessing the risks that nearby asteroids pose to Earth. The agency has developed exploration plans to detect such asteroids and is working to build a new spacecraft called the NEAR-Earth Surveyor to identify such NEOs, all of which have been endorsed by the new report.

The top priorities listed in the report are completing NASA's Mars Sample Retrieval mission. The Perseverance Mars rover has been collecting samples as it explores the surface of Mars, after which it will hand them over to a spacecraft scheduled to arrive on Mars in 2028, allowing the samples to eventually return to Earth for analysis by scientists.

The report also recommends some relatively small space missions, such as launching a lunar rover to collect samples from the moon's south pole and having astronauts bring the samples back to Earth.

In addition, the report considered four other flagship mission options: a Europa lander, a Mercury lander, a Neptune orbiter and probe, and a Venus exploration mission containing orbiters, landers, and a Venus exploration mission that would operate within Venus's atmosphere, but ultimately rejected them because of cost and technical maturity.

The ten-year survey includes the most pressing scientific questions for planetary scientists in the next decade: origin (how the solar system and Earth originated and whether they are rare in the universe), celestial bodies (how planets evolve), and life and habitability (what conditions led to habitable environments on Earth and the emergence of life, and whether life exists elsewhere), and the new mission will help scientists answer these questions.