Unstung
Active member
Voyager 2 only made it to Uranus and Neptune because it was in good shape yet not part of the plan instead of a Pluto flyby, IIRC. Science still hardly knows anything about those two planets, with most of the information coming from Voyager 2. The flybys showed us there is still much to know about the two planets ranging from Neptune's moon Triton to Uranus' magnetic field. Currently Cassini is still orbiting Saturn and Juno is going to Jupiter. Multiple other missions have visited those planets; the "grand tour" only included Jupiter and Saturn I believe and Cassini was launched well over a decade ago. Even New Horizons will visit Pluto because of its short-lived atmosphere.
However, no probe was ever planned to fly by the two "ice giants." I wonder why this is. Surely the Voyager craft proved the endurance of interplanetary probes. Many more well-known proposals to visit the two closer gas giants exist and their moons (which are still of great interest nonetheless).
I discovered a few months ago while searching this subject about a mission supported by over 100 scientists called the Uranus Pathfinder (although a horrible sounding name in English). Despite the backing, it might launch in 2021 and take quite a long cruise to Uranus (arriving half a century after Voyager 2); but what do you expect; under a relatively small budget - 400 million Pounds (compared to Juno and Cassini, as examples). I would consider a mission like this to be a higher priority and should have possessed scientific interest for many years; maybe even something with a lander like the Huygens probe destined for Triton.
Maybe NASA just deserves more funding or to allocate more to science rather than failed manned spaceflight projects. The agency, of course, hardly gets anything compared to the overall budget yet has great potential especially for missions like these. I still cannot see why I haven't found any other missions to an ice giant given serious thought.
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/03/europe_asks_to_probe_uranus/
http://news.discovery.com/space/uranus-pathfinder-mission-to-the-mysterious-ice-giant.html
However, no probe was ever planned to fly by the two "ice giants." I wonder why this is. Surely the Voyager craft proved the endurance of interplanetary probes. Many more well-known proposals to visit the two closer gas giants exist and their moons (which are still of great interest nonetheless).
I discovered a few months ago while searching this subject about a mission supported by over 100 scientists called the Uranus Pathfinder (although a horrible sounding name in English). Despite the backing, it might launch in 2021 and take quite a long cruise to Uranus (arriving half a century after Voyager 2); but what do you expect; under a relatively small budget - 400 million Pounds (compared to Juno and Cassini, as examples). I would consider a mission like this to be a higher priority and should have possessed scientific interest for many years; maybe even something with a lander like the Huygens probe destined for Triton.
Maybe NASA just deserves more funding or to allocate more to science rather than failed manned spaceflight projects. The agency, of course, hardly gets anything compared to the overall budget yet has great potential especially for missions like these. I still cannot see why I haven't found any other missions to an ice giant given serious thought.
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/03/europe_asks_to_probe_uranus/
http://news.discovery.com/space/uranus-pathfinder-mission-to-the-mysterious-ice-giant.html