[X] My Assistant

[Rob Pinnegar]

Since the Neptune Orbiter thread has started to veer into talking about a Uranus orbiter as well, it seemed like a good idea to start a topic for Uranus.

[tasp]

The Galileo style tour of the Uranian system is quite exciting. With the 'scale' being smaller, the mission generates very close encounters of Ariel, Miranda, Titania and Oberon in fairly a fairly short time interval.

Additionally, with even Oberon being less than (IIRC) 600,000 miles out from Uranus, you are having virtually continuous (well, not quite) reasonably close encounters with non-targeted moons on each orbit.

With the (IMO) near certainty of ongoing geological process on Ariel, and a good chance perhaps for Titania, too, a Uranus orbiter is looking like a pretty useful mission.

Our understanding of these smaller bodies grows synergistically with each one we study.

To learn more about the 'Enceladus phenomena', study Ariel.

And possibily, to learn more about Cassini Regio, study Umbriel.


A Uranus orbiter mission is a lot of bang for the buck.

[JRehling]

I think one difficulty owing to the no-big-moon situation would be lifting the orbit out of the equatorial plane to get a good look at the rings. If the whole mission were spent in the equatorial plane, the rings would be very hard to study. Whereas if the mission were spent in an inclined orbit, satellite flybys would be severely limited. Either some fuel or a Titania boost would be needed to get the UO out of the equatorial plane on one pass, beginning a period of ring observations, and then back down there afterwards.

We could start a pool on which will happen first: a Uranus Orbiter mission or D.C. statehood.

[dvandorn]

We could start a pool on which will happen first: a Uranus Orbiter mission or D.C. statehood.

Frankly, I think you'll see the U.S. split up into several smaller polities before you see a Uranian orbiter... *sigh*...

-the other Doug