The National Academies (the equivalent of Taiwan’s “Academia Sinica”), an academic non-governmental organization, has released the latest ten-year strategic report on planetary science and astrobiology. This report covers the National Academy’s strategic recommendations for NASA’s mission priorities from 2023 to 2032. Almost unexpectedly, at the top of this list is the launch of Uranus-orbiting satellites and probes that can enter Uranus’ atmosphere.
The Planetary Science Decadal Survey (The Planetary Science Decadal Survey) is a report commissioned by NASA to be compiled by the National Academy every ten years, referred to as “the decadal”. Since the first release in 2002, after 2011, this is the third issue. Unlike the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, which recommends spending budgets on observing deep space through large (space) telescopes, planetary scientists use the Decadal Survey to examine major exploration goals in the solar system, Prioritize to provide NASA with a balanced program that doesn’t sacrifice other planetary exploration.
The title of this report is “Origins, Worlds, and Life”, which aims to understand the origin and evolution of the solar system; under what conditions can life survive; and how to search inside and outside the solar system potentially habitable environment.
Although Uranus has a huge presence in the solar system (about 4 times the diameter of Earth), humans don’t know as much about Uranus as they think. The closest human contact to Uranus was only the Voyager 2 (Voyager 2) mission, which was launched by NASA in 1977 and flew by the planet at the end of 1986. At that time, the blue-green planet was still photographed from more than 80,000 kilometers above the atmosphere. The clearest color photo of Uranus to date.
Planetary scientists believe that the blue-green color of Uranus may be derived from methane clouds in the atmosphere, and is mainly composed of rocks, ice, hydrogen, helium and other components, but only through orbiting satellites and probes can be sure. Compared with terrestrial planets, Jupiter, and Saturn, which have all carried out orbital detection so far, our actual knowledge of Uranus and Neptune is still close to blank.
Exploring large icy planets like Uranus and Neptune is important because NASA recently announced the discovery of 5,000 extrasolar planets, which planetary scientists believe is one of the most common, not when we started exploring earlier gas giants — such as Jupiter and Saturn.
Another reason why the next decade is suitable for detecting Uranus is the arrangement of the planets. According to reports, if launched in 2031 or 2032, it will be able to use Jupiter’s gravity assist to accelerate the throwing of the probe, reducing the travel time to 13 years.
In addition to the Uranus mission, second on the list of priorities for this decadal report is the mission to explore Enceladus (Saturn’s sixth largest moon). In the past, Cassini-Huygens, which mainly aimed to explore Saturn and Titan (Saturn’s largest moon), flew by Enceladus several times in 2005 and obtained a large amount of data. Based on the measurement data, in 2014 NASA said it found evidence of a large amount of liquid water on Enceladus. Scientists believe that Enceladus, as an ocean world star, is by far the most active and accessible.
Decade presents exciting new missions, but also emphasizes that there is nothing more important than bringing rock samples collected by the Perseverance rover back to Earth.
When we recall that the primary goal of the Perseverance mission to Mars was to search for evidence of ancient life for astrobiology, whether it was the exploration of Uranus embodied in trying to understand the world of ice giants that pervade our universe, or the exploration of the oceans of Enceladus , Aiming to find signs of life, the theme throughout the ten-year plan really hits the gist of the report: “Origins, Worlds, and Life”.
The European Space Agency (ESA) proposed the Voyage 2050 long-range plan in 2021. The theme of the mission includes the exploration of giant planet satellites, and also mentions the classic plan of US-European space cooperation “Cassini-Huygens mission” “. Considering this huge project budget, which is estimated to be as high as 4.2 billion US dollars, is there a chance to see the world‘s two major space powers join hands again in large-scale exploration and fly to Uranus in the future? Looking forward to the day when we will see research results from the hands of a new generation of astronomers!
Reviewing Editor: Chris
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