While Artemis is currently NASA’s most focused mission, there is a possibility that the agency will carry out other missions over the next decade focused on discovering facts that will help expand our understanding of the solar system.
To do this, NASA could use probes, which would be programmed to study the ice giants. Uranus and Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moonsin an effort to find life beyond Earth.
These two would be the missions where NASA could Focus your efforts on the next 10 years; this according to the report prepared by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS).
As far as the probe is concerned, the report notes that it could make an orbital tour that lasts several years to obtain information about the Uranus system, also aided by an atmospheric probe.
In that sense, the co-chair of the NAS steering committee for the decadal surveyRobin Canup pointed out that both Uranus and Neptune were surprising objects. However, the authors of the report said that Uranus should be the planet on which NASA will focus its next mission, using existing launch vehicles.
Although the mission would be technically ready to start, the report recommends that this be done from 2024 so that by 2031 the mission take advantage of launch opportunities and by 2032 take advantage of the jupiter gravity assist to reduce the cruise time of the probe.
On the other hand, the report mentions the Orbilander as next on NASA’s priority list. This mission would aim perform the search that confirms or not the existence of life on Enceladusthe sixth largest moon of Saturn.
It would be planned to carry out this mission from orbit, to then start a ground operation that would last two years and would aim to carry out detailed studies of the material present in the interior of the Enceladus ocean.
Canup says that the report’s emphasis on these missions represents “the real desire of the scientific community in this decade to advance not only in the study of habitability, but in the attempt to detect if life exists elsewhere in our system.” solar”.
