Incredible as it may seem, we have only visited Uranus once. NASA’s Voyager 2 probe was in charge of such an arduous mission on January 24, 1986. Of that 36 years ago. And this is, so far, the closest satellite to the seventh planet in the solar system. How was NASA’s visit to Uranus? Do we already have plans to observe the planet closely again?
NASA hadn’t planned on going past Uranus when it launched Voyager 2 in 1977. However, in 1983 they decided they could boost up from the planet to continue on to Neptune and from there to the far reaches of the universe. And, by the way, take the opportunity to observe the frozen giant. It was only 81,500 kilometers from its surface and spent 5.5 hours studying Uranus closely, according to the space agency itself in a Press release.
Thanks to those hours of observation, NASA astronomers obtained valuable information about the planet. we already knew that Uranus was a curious planet since, for example, it has its axis of rotation tilted; that is, it is at its equator. But thanks to Voyager 2 we learned new things about the icy giant.
Voyager 2 discoveries
Thanks to the NASA mission we now know that Uranus it is the coldest known planet in our solar system. And that is not the one that is farthest from the sun. This is because it has no internal heat source.
They also discovered the composition of the icy giant. And it is that Uranus is composed of a 85% hydrogen and 15% helium. In addition, there could be a boiling ocean about 800 kilometers below the clouds that surround the planet, according to NASA in the statement.
The magnetic field of Uranus
Furthermore, the researchers found that “Uranus has a magnetic field unlike any they had previously found.” Other planets like Earth, Mercury, Jupiter or Saturn, the magnetic field is roughly aligned with the axis of rotation. But the same does not happen with Uranus. It’s different on this planet: “We saw that the poles were closer to the equator,” explains Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager mission, based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Stone has been on the mission from the beginning. “Neptune turned out to be similar. The magnetic field was not quite centered with the center of the planet“.
Thanks to this voyage of the probe we know a little more about the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune. In fact, among NASA’s objectives is to better understand how they interact with the Sun, for example.
Also, Voyager 2 too observed 10 new moons orbiting around Uranus. That is to say, there were some that we had not been able to differentiate well from Earth; but the NASA mission managed to see them and now we know that in total there are 27 moons in the ice giant. Too discovered two new rings on the planet, which has 13 in total.
A new mission to Uranus?
“The encounter with Uranus was very exciting for me,” he said. Suzanne Dodd, director of the Voyager project, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Dodd began his career on the mission while Voyager 2 was en route to Uranus. “It was my first planetary encounter and it was of a planet that humanity had never seen up close. Each new image showed more detail of Uranus, and had many surprises for scientists. I hope that another spacecraft will be sent to Uranus, to explore the planet in more detail, in my lifetime.”
But why haven’t we come back yet? Uranus is a planet that is very far from Earth and the trips there are very long and complex. We have already seen that Voyager 2 took about 11 years to get there. But depending on the situation of both planets, the distance can be even greater. Also, keep in mind that between Mars and Jupiter is the asteroid belt and that also makes it difficult to get there.
36 years have passed and, although different proposals have been made by space agencies, it seems that we will have to wait to see a mission that comes so close to the seventh planet in the solar system. Nevertheless, one of the characteristics of the human being is that he loves to know more about his environment. And Uranus, one of the icy giants, could be in the crosshairs at any moment. This has happened, for example, with the gas giant Jupiter, which will be visited in a few years by the Lucy mission.