Comments on: Modeling suggests Uranus’s moon Ariel needed underground oceans to shape its known surface https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/modeling-suggests-uranuss-moon-ariel-needed-underground-oceans-to-shape-its-known-surface/ Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:43:29 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: agimarc https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/modeling-suggests-uranuss-moon-ariel-needed-underground-oceans-to-shape-its-known-surface/#comment-1623323 Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:43:29 +0000 https://behindtheblack.com/?p=117723#comment-1623323 The Uranus Orbiter and Probe is apparently on the list for the next Flagship-class probe. Launch date in 6 years if approved. I am an early and often kind of guy, but …. No such proposal exists for Neptune as yet. Cheers –

https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/uranus-orbiter-and-probe.pdf

]]> By: Richard M https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/modeling-suggests-uranuss-moon-ariel-needed-underground-oceans-to-shape-its-known-surface/#comment-1623312 Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:48:35 +0000 https://behindtheblack.com/?p=117723#comment-1623312 If only we had sent more than one solitary probe (using early 1970’s tech, no less) to the Ice Giants, our planetary scientist would not have to engage in so much speculative modeling….

I get it. Uranus and Neptune are really danged far away, and it’s not cheap or easy to send anything out there (you need nuclear power, for starters), and it takes a long time when you do. But these are planetary systems that have fallen into the low priority boxes, thanks in part to the energy and power of the Mars lobby and thanks in part due to those aforementioned costs and difficulties.

We’re left to hope that Starship is as successful as Elon Musk promises, such that it may open up more possibilities for exploring these strange distant worlds and their moons — and not all of them U.S. government possibilities.

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