🚀 Starship: after the Moon and Mars, a mission to Uranus!
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Getting to Uranus to study it up close represents a major challenge due to its distance. Located at a considerable distance from the Sun, it requires many years of travel, as demonstrated by the Voyager 2 probe forty years ago. Planned missions often have to rely on gravitational assists from other planets, which reduces the number of launch windows and lengthens the journey.
The recent development of Starship, SpaceX's giant launch vehicle and spacecraft of the same name, is a game-changer. Thanks to its increased payload capacity and the possibility of refueling in orbit, this system could drastically reduce the time needed to reach Uranus.
An innovative idea, presented in a publication at the IEEE Aerospace Conference, is to use the Starship itself (here Starship refers to the spacecraft, not the complete launch vehicle) as a heat shield for aerobraking in Uranus's atmosphere. This approach would slow down the probe without resorting to other maneuvers, by leveraging the vehicle's design already adapted for atmospheric re-entries on Earth.
According to calculations, the combination of orbital refueling and aerobraking with Starship could halve the travel time, reducing it to about six and a half years. This would lower operational costs and risks associated with a long-duration mission, while avoiding the need for additional gravitational assists during the journey.
Image of Uranus and its rings captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Credit: NASA
Uncertainties remain regarding the funding and planning of this mission. The launch windows in the 2030s are crucial: even if Starship allows for a more direct journey, a favorable planetary alignment is still essential for the mission. A delay could postpone the exploration of Uranus by several decades, leaving this planet still poorly understood for generations to come.