Space and astronomy news
Uranus is an oddball among the Solar System’s planets. While most planets’ axis of rotation is perpendicular to their orbital plane, Uranus has an extreme tilt angle of 98 degrees. It’s flopped over on its side, likely from an ancient collision. It also has a retrograde orbit, opposite of the other planets.
The ice giant also has an unusual relationship with the Sun that sets it apart from other planets.
Continue reading “Uranus is Getting Colder and Now We Know Why”
The Solar System’s hundreds of moons are like puzzle pieces. Together, they make a picture of all the forces that can create and modify them and the forces that shape our Solar System. One of them is Miranda, one of 28 known moons that orbit the ice giant Uranus. Miranda is its smallest major moon, at 471 km in diameter.
New research shows that this relatively small, distant moon may be hiding something: a subsurface ocean.
Continue reading “There’s Another Ocean Moon Candidate: Uranus’ Tiny Moon Miranda”
Venus is known for being really quite inhospitable with high surface temperatures and Mars is known for its rusty red horizons. Even the moons of some of the outer planets have fascinating environments with Europa and Enceladus boasting underground oceans. Recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope show that Ariel, a moon of Uranus, is also a strong candidate for a sub surface ocean. How has this conclusion been reached? Well JWST has detected carbon dioxide ice on the surface on the trailing edge of features trailing away from the orbital direction. The possible cause, an underground ocean!
Continue reading “Now Uranus’ Moon Ariel Might Have an Ocean too”
Despite being extraordinarily difficult to detect for the first time, gravitational waves can be found using plenty of different techniques. The now-famous first detection at LIGO in 2015 was just one of the various ways scientists had been looking. A new paper from researchers from Europe and the US proposes how scientists might be able to detect some more by tracking the exact position of the upcoming Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP).
Continue reading “A Mission to Uranus Could Also be a Gravitational Wave Detector”
The giant outer planets haven’t always been in their current position. Uranus and Neptune for example are thought to have wandered through the outer Solar System to their current orbital position. On the way, they accumulated icy, comet-like objects. A new piece of research suggests as many as three kilomerer-sized objects crashed into them every hour increasing their mass. Not only would it increase the mass but it would enrich their atmospheres.
Continue reading “When Uranus and Neptune Migrated, Three Icy Objects Were Crashing Into Them Every Hour!”
It seems crazy that Uranus was discovered in 1781 yet here we are, in 2024 and we have only sent one spacecraft to explore Uranus. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have given us close-up images of Uranus (and Neptune) but since their visit in 1986, we have not returned. There have of course been great images from the Hubble Space Telescope and from the James Webb Space Telescope but we still have lots to learn about them.
Continue reading “It’s Time to Go Back to Uranus. What Questions do Scientists Have About the Ice Giants?”
In the late 1980s, the Voyager 2 spacecraft snapped the “canonical” up-close images of Uranus and Neptune. In those views, Uranus was a pretty greenish-blue and Neptune appeared a deep azure color. It turns out that both planets are pretty close in color: a greenish-blue more akin to Uranus’s appearance.
Continue reading “Uranus and Neptune are Actually Pretty Much the Same Color”
This article was updated on 11/28/23
When spacecraft return to Earth, they don’t need to shed all their velocity by firing retro-rockets. Instead, they use the atmosphere as a brake to slow down for a soft landing. Every planet in the Solar System except Mercury has enough of an atmosphere to allow aerocapture maneuvers, and could allow high-speed exploration missions. A new paper looks at the different worlds and how a spacecraft must fly to take advantage of this “free lunch” to slow down at the destination.
Continue reading “Aerocapture is a Free Lunch in Space Exploration”
Just in time for Hallowe’en, astronomers confirmed the existence of spooky-looking infrared auroras on Uranus. Their existence reveals something about that planet’s misaligned magnetic field.
Continue reading “Uranus Has Infrared Auroras, Too”
Exploration missions to the outer solar system are still sorely lacking, even though they were highly prioritized in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey from 2013-2022. In fact, many planets in the outer solar system have never even been orbited by a probe. For one in particular – Uranus – we must rely on data from Voyager 2, with instruments designed over 50 years ago, or Earth-based observations. Neither solution can genuinely understand the weird physics going on with this planet that is essentially lying on its side. And while there have been plenty of proposed mission architectures to go and look at it, it’s always fun to take a look at a new one when it pops up. A team from Stanford came up with a new concept called the Sustained CubeSat Activity Through Transmitter Electromagnetic Radiation (SCATTER). It was given a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grant to develop the idea further. They released a paper a little while ago, and it’s worth digging into here.
Continue reading “We Could SCATTER CubeSats Around Uranus To Track How It Changes”