Free Republic

ExploreIGO, a Twitter fan account devoted to icy worlds, asked its community yesterday what to call a spacecraft visiting the big blue world. Embedded with the tweet is a 2021 proposal by three scientists led by Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The group told the U.S. decadal survey of planetary science that a spacecraft to Uranus is a "journey whose time has come." Uranus was voted the top destination by the community in April after this proposal process, which was led by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The decadal committee called...

The appearance of a massive white cap on Uranus may seem alarming, but as planetary scientists are learning, this is what a prolonged summer looks like on the remote ice giant. Ice giants Uranus and Neptune have water-rich interiors coated with hydrogen, helium, and a pinch of methane, the latter of which gives these outer planets their distinctive cyan complexion. Unlike Earth, where seasons last just a few months, Neptune and Uranus experience seasons that last for decades, resulting in strange and intense atmospheric phenomena. New images released by the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program highlight a evolving atmospheric...