(ORDO NEWS) — The only spacecraft to visit Uranus was Voyager 2, which flew past the planet in 1986.
Now the researchers are planning to launch a new mission, which will possibly leave Earth in 2032, if engineers start implementing the creation of an orbiter and a probe as early as 2023.
On this occasion, NASA decided to ask users of the social network Twitter: “what would YOU call the mission of the orbiter and probe to Uranus?”.
Here are some names that users have suggested:
- “Carolina” – in honor of the astronomer Carolina Herschel; she worked alongside her brother William, who is credited with discovering the first two known moons of Uranus;
- Discovery, after NASA’s most popular space shuttle (itself named after one of the two ships used by British explorer James Cook to “discover” Hawaii);
- “Earhart” in honor of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart;
- MUSE, short for Mission Uranus Science Expedition (Scientific Expedition to Uranus);
- “Se7en”, a tribute to his seventh planet from the Sun, as well as a 1995 thriller starring Morgan Freeman;
- The Tempest, after the title of a Shakespeare play (because all the moons of Uranus are named after characters in the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope).
And what would you, dear readers of Naked Science , propose a name for a future expedition, and why exactly?
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