Onwards to Uranus and Neptune! |
Onwards to Uranus and Neptune! |
Jan 12 2008, 09:40 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 8-February 04 From: Arabia Terra Member No.: 12 |
As soon as MESSENGER gets to Mercury, the most poorly explored planets in the solar system will be Uranus and Neptune. Could this lead to a revival of interest in the ice giants and their retinue, in the same way that the existence of New Horizons is perhaps partly due to the Pluto stamp*?
*via Pluto Fast Flyby and later Pluto Kuiper Express |
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Feb 7 2008, 10:33 AM
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#2
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 66 Joined: 8-November 05 From: Australia Member No.: 547 |
Oh Great Maker, let it be so....
(for the record, I'm a staunch atheist, but if prayer has one part in a trillion chance of success... ) |
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Feb 7 2008, 11:00 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3652 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
To me, any new mission to Neptune that isn't an orbiter will be a tough concept to sell. Spending considerable time and money on an essentially Yet Another Flyby mission. An orbital mission would be significantly costlier, but the increased science return would most likely far outweigh the cost increase.
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Feb 7 2008, 03:45 PM
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#4
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Member Group: Members Posts: 718 Joined: 22-April 05 Member No.: 351 |
An orbital mission would be significantly costlier, but the increased science return would most likely far outweigh the cost increase. From various outer planet mission studies, we can safely say that a Neptune or Uranus orbiter will likely cost in the $2-3B range (one Flagship mission to outer planets every 10-20 years). (The last outer planets new start was Cassini in 1990.) This proposed flyby is in the ~$850M range (one New Frontiers mission every 3-5 years). We'll pick either Jupiter or Titan for the next Flagship mission, and then presumably will pick the other one 10-20 years later. That pushes an ice giant mission out to the 2040-2050s or so by the time it arrives. So if we want to learn anything about ice giants from a spacecraft mission in the working lifetime of the present cadre of scientists (and for many of us, in our lifetime at all), it will have to be a mission like this. My only complaint about the proposal is that it doesn't have an atmospheric probe, which could be very minimal and provided by an international partner. Understanding the elemental composition of ice giants is key to understanding the formation of the solar system. -------------------- |
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