LOS ANGELES, June 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. space agency NASA released a new report on Tuesday envisioning future missions to the mysterious "ice giant" planets Uranus and Neptune.
The Ice Giant Pre-Decadal Study Final Report was commissioned by NASA to take a fresh look at its priorities regarding Uranus and Neptune in preparation.
In the new report, scientists reaffirmed the scientific importance and priority of implementing an "ice giant" mission, presenting options, such as an orbiter with a probe to be flown to one of the planets.
The report discusses various instruments, spacecraft, flight-paths and technologies, and is the first in a series of mission studies NASA will conduct to back the next Planetary Science Decadal Survey, a publication by the United States National Research Council on the pressing issues facing planetary science.
The results of the series of studies will be used as the Decadal Survey deliberates on NASA's planetary science priorities from 2022 to 2032. The European Space Agency also participated in the research.
"This study argues the importance of exploring at least one of these planets and its entire environment, which includes surprisingly dynamic icy moons, rings and bizarre magnetic fields," Mark Hofstadter of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of the two co-chairs of the science team that produced the report, said in a press release.
Voyager 2 spacecraft rapidly flew by Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989, as part of its grand tour of discovery that previously took it by Jupiter and Saturn.
It is believed there is a massive liquid ocean beneath the clouds of the "ice giant" planets, which accounts for about two-thirds of their total mass. This makes them fundamentally different from the gas giant planets.
Uranus has 27 known moons, while Neptune has 14.
However, "we do not know how these planets formed and why they and their moons look the way they do. There are fundamental clues as to how our solar system formed and evolved that can only be found by a detailed study of one, or preferably both, of these planets," said co-chair Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The study also said that NASA could likely implement a mission to the ice giants for under 2 billion U.S. dollars and achieve a worthy set of science objectives.
