US planetary scientists have called for NASA to launch missions to Uranus and Enceladus in the next 10 years in a major report setting out priorities for the next decade of space exploration.
US planetary scientists have put together a huge report on the state of our knowledge of the solar system and priorities for the next decade of exploration. They recommend two big new missions: a Uranus probe to launch in the early 2030s and a mission to Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, to take off in the late 2030s or early 2040s.
Once every 10 years, the top research priorities of the entire US planetary science community are identified by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in a process called . This document makes recommendations to the government agencies that fund most of the country’s planetary research – primarily NASA and the National Science Foundation – and is often used as a sort of blueprint for the next decade of exploration.Origins, Worlds, and Life
. The process of creating it included 527 white papers submitted by planetary scientists around the US and nearly two years of discussions among a group of 97 experts.The highest priority laid out in the new decadal survey is the completion of NASA’s Mars Sample Return initiative, which began with the Perseverance rover. The rover has beenas it explores Mars that it will later leave behind for a planned 2028 mission to pick up and return to Earth for analysis.
It also recommends two large new missions. The first is the Uranus Orbiter and Probe , which would ideally launch in 2031 or 2032. The last – and only – time we visited Uranus was with the Voyager 2 probe in 1986, and
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