How Far Away Is Uranus - 2023, Blueberry farm

People also search for Neptune 4.4315 billion km Saturn 1.3689 billion km Jupiter 799.05 million km

How long will it take to go to Uranus?

7. Uranus, 8.5 Years (Voyager) – Voyager made the trip in a little under a decade. However, it kept going and is long out of our solar system. And you thought the trip to Uranus was just a zipper away!

Can humans go to Uranus?

Surface – As an ice giant, Uranus doesn’t have a true surface. The planet is mostly swirling fluids. While a spacecraft would have nowhere to land on Uranus, it wouldn’t be able to fly through its atmosphere unscathed either. The extreme pressures and temperatures would destroy a metal spacecraft.

How long does it take to get to Earth to Uranus?

How Long Does it Take a Spaceship to Travel to Uranus? Only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, has visited Uranus so far. It took 9½ years to get there.

How far away is Uranus right now?

Seventh Wanderer – Uranus orbits our Sun, a star, and is the seventh planet from the Sun at a distance of about 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers).3

Has Uranus ever been visited?

Significant Events –

Mar.13, 1781: British astronomer William Herschel discovers Uranus—the first new planet discovered since ancient times – while searching for faint stars. 1787-1851: Four Uranian moons are discovered and named Titania, Oberon, Ariel and Umbriel. 1948: Another moon, Miranda, is discovered. Mar.10, 1977: While observing Uranus’ passing in front of a distant star (SAO 158687), scientists at the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and the Perth Observatory in Australia were eager for a rare chance to observe the distant planet. Observations before and after the main event led to a major discovery: Uranus, like Saturn, is encircled with rings. Jan.24, 1986: NASA’s Voyager 2 made the first – and so far the only – visit to Uranus. The spacecraft came within 50,600 miles (81,500 kilometers) of the planet’s cloud tops. Voyager discovered 10 new moons, two new rings and a magnetic field stronger than that of Saturn. Dec.22, 2005: NASA announces the discovery of a new pair of rings around Uranus and two new, small moons (Mab and Cupid) orbiting the planet from photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The largest ring discovered by Hubble is twice the diameter of the planet’s previously known rings. 2006: Observations made at the Keck Observatory and by the Hubble Space Telescope show that Uranus’ outer ring is colored blue while the new inner ring is reddish. Dec.2007: Uranus reaches equinox. Equinox is when the planet is fully illuminated as the Sun passes over its equator. Equinox also brings a ring-plane crossing, when Uranus’ rings appear to get narrower as they pass through, appearing edge-on and then widen again as seen from Earth. Mar.18, 2011: New Horizons passes the orbit of Uranus on its way to Pluto, becoming the first spacecraft to journey beyond Uranus’ orbit since Voyager 2. However, Uranus was not near the crossing point. The spacecraft is asleep during most of its eight-year interplanetary trek from Jupiter to Pluto. Mission controllers do wake up New Horizons for 50 days each year to perform necessary checkups on its instruments.

Notable Explorers Suzanne “Suzy” Dodd Project Manager “Math is going to be the basis for all the science and engineering that you will have to do in the future.” Susan Niebur (1973-2012) Astrophysicist I decided that my dream was to work for NASA, even if there weren’t any girls there yet. Someday there would be, and I was going to be one. Renu Malhotra Professor of Planetary Sciences “There are interesting and important problems everywhere. You just have to be open to them.” Phillips Phil Davis Web Producer Ask lots of questions. Be persistent. And never stop exploring your options. Neil Gehrels (1952-2017) Astrophysicist The happiest people I know are ones who think of their field as both a hobby and a job. Mark Hofstadter Planetary Scientist “To me, being a scientist means seeing something in nature and wanting to figure out how it works or why it is the way it is.” Jeffrey Cuzzi Research Scientist “Stay close to subjects that fascinate you personally, but also ask why is the subject important.” James Green NASA Chief Scientist (Retired) there is absolutely no substitute for being determined. Gerard Kuiper (1905 – 1973) Astronomer Kuiper studied the planets. at a time when they were scarcely of interest to other astronomers. Fran Bagenal Co-Investigator for the New Horizons Mission “Getting along with people is also important – perhaps as important as solving big equations.” Eric De Jong (1947-2017) Planetary Scientist Eric pioneered the use of stereo HDTV, IMAX, and digital cinema technology for the visualization of planetary surfaces and atmospheres. Dr. Bonnie Buratti Deputy Project Scientist, Europa Clipper Mission “When I was a little girl Sputnik was launched, and I was instantly drawn into the whole miracle of spaceflight and exploring the cosmos.” Carl Sagan (1934-1996) Planetary Scientist Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. Suzanne “Suzy” Dodd Project Manager “Math is going to be the basis for all the science and engineering that you will have to do in the future.” Missions Careers

Why can’t we live on Uranus?

The more we learn about life on Earth, the more we realize that it can live in some of the most inhospitable places on the planet: encased in ice, in boiling water, and even in places with high radiation. But could life exist elsewhere in the Solar System? Could there be life on Uranus? Maybe, but probably not.

There are a few problems. The first is the fact that Uranus has no solid surface. It’s mostly composed of ices: methane, water and ammonia. And then it’s enshrouded by an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. The second is that Uranus is really cold. Its cloud tops measure 49 K (?224 °C), and then it gets warmer inside down to the core, which has a temperature of 5,000 K.

You could imagine some perfect place inside Uranus, where the temperature could support life.
The problem is that the pressures inside Uranus are enormous at those temperatures, and would crush life.
The other problem is that life on Earth requires sunlight to provide energy.
There’s no process inside Uranus, like volcanism on Earth, that would give life inside the planet a form of energy.

Life on Uranus would have to be vastly different from anything we have here on Earth to be able to survive. Of course, it’ll be almost impossible to ever send a spacecraft down into the planet to look for ourselves. We have written many articles about the search for life in the Solar System.

Here’s an article about how life on Mars might have been killed off,
And here’s an article about how the soil on Mars might have supported life,
Here’s a link to Hubblesite’s News Releases about Uranus, and here’s NASA’s Solar System Exploration guide.
We have recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast just about Uranus.

You can access it here: Episode 62: Uranus,

Will we ever go to Neptune?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Neptune. Processed image from Voyager 2 ‘ s narrow-angle camera 16 or 17 of August 1989. Neptune’s south pole is at the bottom of the image. Neptune has been directly explored by one space probe, Voyager 2, in 1989. As of December 2022, there are no confirmed future missions to visit the Neptunian system, although a tentative Chinese mission has been planned for launch in 2024.

How much is Uranus worth?

URAC to USD

Amount	Today at 12:38 pm
0.5 URAC	$0.0000000041
1 URAC	$0.0000000081
5 URAC	$0.0000000405
10 URAC	$0.0000000810

Why is Uranus so hard to find?

Uranus orbits the sun at nineteen times the distance from Earth, so it is no wonder that it is tough to spot with a naked eye.

How did Uranus get its name?

Answer: – Herschel did not name the planet Uranus, he called it “the Georgium Sidus” (the Georgian Planet) in honor of King George III of England. The name “Uranus” was first proposed by German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in order for it to be in conformity with the other planetary names – which are from classical mythology.

Uranus is the ancient Greek deity of the Heavens, the earliest supreme god.
This name did not achieve common use until 1850.
Astronomy is very old science – with at least 4,000 years of history.
Many of the names of objects that have been known for a long time are historic in nature.
The planets and their moons were given names which came from Greek or Roman mythology.

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This seemed sensible long ago when the objects were named. These days, so many objects are known that names tend to come from the satellite or observatory which discovered (and catalogued) them and a series of numbers which tell astronomers something about where they are located in the sky. The StarChild site is a service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), Dr. Alan Smale (Director), within the Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) at NASA/ GSFC, StarChild Authors: The StarChild Team StarChild Graphics & Music: Acknowledgments StarChild Project Leader: Dr. Laura A. Whitlock Curator: J.D. Myers Responsible NASA Official: Phil Newman

How old would I be on Venus if I was 11?

How old would I be on Venus? Enter your age in the box above, then click the CALCULATE button to see how old you’d be on the planet Venus. A year on Venus is shorter than a year on Earth—One Venus year is about 0.615 times the length of an Earth year. TE AWAMUTU SPACE CENTRE | | | | : How old would I be on Venus?

Is there a Uranus return?

Uranus is the butt of many elementary school jokes (pun very intended), yet in astrology this planet means serious business. Uranus is the celestial body connected to innovation and revolution, so its movement across the zodiac signifies distinctive chapters in our lives and in society at large.

Uranian energy is unpredictable (the planet also governs earthquakes) and we can be sure that its motion will always shake things up.
Now that Uranus is shifting into Taurus, new areas of our lives are coming into focus.
Taurus is an earth sign associated with the physical realm, including anything and everything that activates the five senses.

It anchors itself in reality, so through 2026 we can expect Uranus’s rumbles to have tangible impacts on the material world, especially regarding finances, food, and the environment. So what exactly does Uranus’s movement into Taurus mean for you, and how will it shape the next eight years? Read on for my answers to some of the most crucial questions about this planetary motion, along with cosmic predictions and tips on how to work with the dynamic, incoming energy.

What does Uranus’s movement into Taurus mean? For thousands of years, humans have looked at the night sky and tracked the motion of the celestial bodies overhead.
In astrology, these movements are referred to as transits,
Astrologers observe how the transiting planets (as opposed to “natal planets” that remain stationary within your birth chart ) affect both personal and collective energy.

Ultimately, this is the foundation of horoscopes and predictive astrology, One of the most important transits is the planetary return, A planetary return occurs when a transiting planet moves back (“returns”) to the exact position it occupied at the moment of your birth.

For instance, your Saturn return occurs at three distinct stages of life — in your late 20s, late 50s, and late 80s — while your solar return, aka your birthday, is the annual phenomenon when the transiting sun perfectly aligns with your natal sun. Uranus, however, is a very distant planet; it takes approximately 84 years for it to complete a full orbit.

Accordingly, we only experience a Uranus return once in our lifetime, around the age of 81. Uranus last cruised through Taurus from 1934 through 1942, so those born during that time are experiencing their Uranus return. For many of us, however, this is the first and last time we’ll encounter the combined energies of Uranus and Taurus.

In many ways, Uranus and Taurus are strange bedfellows: While Uranus symbolizes innovation, Taurus represents tradition.
To understand the next eight years, let’s take a closer look at Uranus and Taurus individually.
What should I know about Uranus? Uranus is more than just a funny name: It’s also a very odd planet.

In fact, Uranus is quite unusual, even by outer space standards. Uranus was the first planet identified with a telescope and the only one named after a Greek god (as opposed to a Roman deity), and it’s tilted so far on its axis that it essentially orbits sideways.

How hot is Uranus?

Uranus – Minus 320°F (-195°C)

Are we going back to Uranus?

MUSE, conceived in 2012 and proposed in 2015, is a European concept for a dedicated mission to the planet Uranus to study its atmosphere, interior, moons, rings, and magnetosphere. It is suggested to be launched with an Ariane 5 rocket in 2026, arriving at Uranus in 2044, and operating until 2050.

Has anyone been to Pluto?

In Depth: New Horizons – New Horizons is a NASA mission to study the dwarf planet Pluto, its moons, and other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system that extends from about 30 AU, near the orbit of Neptune, to about 50 AU from the Sun.

It was the first mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program, a medium-class, competitively selected, and principal investigator-led series of missions. (The program also includes Juno and OSIRIS-REx.) New Horizons was the first spacecraft to encounter Pluto, a relic from the formation of the solar system.

By the time it reached the Pluto system, the spacecraft had traveled farther away and for a longer time period (more than nine years) than any previous deep space spacecraft ever launched. The design of the spacecraft was based on a lineage traced back to the CONTOUR and TIMED spacecraft, both also built by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.

Besides its suite of scientific instruments, New Horizons carries a cylindrical radioisotope thermoelectric generator (a spare from the Cassini mission) that provided about 250 watts of power at launch (decaying to 200 watts by the time of the Pluto encounter). After reaching initial Earth orbit at about 105 × 130 miles (167 × 213 kilometers), the Centaur upper stage fired (for a second time) for nine minutes to boost the payload to an elliptical orbit that stretched to the asteroid belt.

A second firing of the Star 48B solid rocket accelerated the spacecraft to a velocity of about 36,400 miles per hour (58,536 kilometers per hour), the highest launch velocity attained by a human-made object relative to Earth. The spacecraft was now set on a trajectory to the outer reaches of the solar system.

Controllers implemented course corrections on Jan.28, Jan.30, and March 9, 2006.
A month later, on April 7, 2006, New Horizons passed the orbit of Mars.
A fortuitous chance to test some of the spacecraft’s instruments – especially Ralph (the visible and infrared imager and spectrometer) – occurred June 13, 2006, when New Horizons passed by a tiny asteroid named 132524 APL at a range of about 63,300 miles (101,867 kilometers).

The spacecraft flew by the solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter, for a gravity assist maneuver on Feb.28, 2007, with the closest approach at 05:43:40 UT. The encounter increased the spacecraft’s velocity by about 9,000 miles per hour (14,000 kilometers per hour), shortening its trip to Pluto by three years.

During the flyby, New Horizons carried out a detailed set of observations over a period of four months in early 2007. These observations were designed to gather new data on Jupiter’s atmosphere, ring system, and moons (building on research from Galileo) and to test out New Horizon’s instruments. Although observing the moons from distances much farther than Galileo, New Horizons was still able to return impressive pictures of Io (including eruptions on its surface), Europa, and Ganymede.

After the Jupiter encounter, New Horizons sped toward the Kuiper Belt, performing a course correction on Sept.25, 2007. The spacecraft was put in hibernation mode starting June 28, 2007, during which time the spacecraft’s onboard computer kept tabs on mission systems, transmitting special codes indicating that operations were either nominal or anomalous.

During hibernation, most major systems of New Horizons were deactivated and revived only about two months every year.
The second, third, and fourth hibernation cycles were Dec.16, 2008, Aug.27, 2009, and Aug.29, 2014.
New Horizons passed the halfway point to Pluto on Feb.25, 2010.
The discovery of new Pluto moons Kerberos and Styx during the mission added to concerns that there might be debris or dust around Pluto.

Mission planners devised two possible contingency plans in case debris increased as the spacecraft approached Pluto, either using its antenna facing the incoming particles as a shield or flying closer to Pluto where there might be less debris. On Dec.6, 2014, ground controllers revived New Horizons from hibernation for the last time to initiate its active encounter with Pluto.

At that time, it took four hours and 25 minutes for a signal to reach Earth from the spacecraft. The spacecraft began its approach phase toward Pluto on Jan.15, 2015, and its trajectory was adjusted with a 93-second thruster burn on March 10. Two days later, with about four months remaining before its close encounter, New Horizons finally became closer to Pluto than Earth is to the Sun.

Pictures of Pluto began to reveal distinct features by April 29, 2015, with detail increasing week by week into the approach. A final 23-second engine burn on June 29, 2015, accelerated New Horizons toward its target by about 11 inches per second (27 centimeters per second) and fine-tuned its trajectory.

There was concern on July 4, 2015, when New Horizons entered safe mode due to a timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence. Fortunately, the spacecraft returned to normal science operations by July 7. Three days later, data from New Horizons was used to conclusively answer one of the most basic mysteries about Pluto: its size.

Mission scientists concluded that Pluto is about 1,470 miles (2,370 kilometers) in diameter, slightly larger than prior estimates. Its moon Charon was confirmed to be about 750 miles (1,208 kilometers) in diameter. Finally, at 11:49 UT on July 14, 2015, New Horizons flew about 4,800 miles (7,800 kilometers) above the surface of Pluto.

About 13 hours later, at 00:53 UT on July 15, a 15-minute series of status messages was received at mission operations at Johns Hopkins University’s APL (via NASA’s Deep Space Network) confirming that the flyby had been fully successful.
Besides collecting data on Pluto and Charon (the Charon flyby was at about 17,900 miles or 28,800 kilometers), New Horizons also observed Pluto’s other satellites, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx.

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The download of the entire set of data collected during the encounter with Pluto and Charon – about 6.25 gigabytes – took over 15 months and was officially completed at 21:48 UT on Oct.25, 2016. Such a lengthy period was necessary because the spacecraft was roughly 4.5 light-hours from Earth and it could only transmit 1-2 kilobits per second.

Data from New Horizons clearly indicated that Pluto and its satellites were far more complex than imagined, and scientists were particularly surprised by the degree of current activity on Pluto’s surface. The atmospheric haze and lower than predicted atmospheric escape rate forced scientists to fundamentally revise earlier models of the system.

Pluto, in fact, displays evidence of vast changes in atmospheric pressure and possibly had running or standing liquid volatiles on its surface in the past. There are hints that Pluto could have an internal water-ice ocean today. Stunning photographs showed a vast heart-shaped nitrogen glacier (named Sputnik Planitia for Sputnik 1, Earth’s first artificial satellite) on the surface.

It’s about 600 miles wide (1,000 kilometers), undoubtedly the largest known glacier in the solar system.
On Charon, images showed an enormous equatorial extension tectonic belt, suggesting a long-past water-ice ocean.
In the fall of 2015, after its Pluto encounter, mission planners began to redirect New Horizons for a Jan.1, 2019, flyby of 2014 MU69, a Kuiper Belt Object that is approximately 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) from Earth.

The object was later officially named Arrokoth. Four course corrections were implemented in the fall while a fifth was carried out on Feb.1, 2017. The goal of the encounter was to study the surface geology of the object, measure surface temperature, map the surface, search for signs of activity, measure its mass, and detect any satellites or rings.

On April 3, 2017, the spacecraft was halfway from Pluto to its new target.
Soon after, on April 10, New Horizons entered hibernation mode, when much of the vehicle remained in an unpowered mode for “a long summer’s nap” that lasted until Sept.11, 2017.
During that time, the flight computer broadcast a weekly beacon-status tone back to Earth, and another data stream once a month on spacecraft health and safety data.

On the anniversary of its Pluto-Charon flyby, July 14, 2017, the New Horizons team unveiled new detailed maps of both planetary bodies. On Jan.1, 2019, New Horizons flew past Arrokoth, the most distant target in history. Initial images hinted at a reddish, snowman-like shape, but further analysis of images taken near the closest approach – New Horizons came to within just 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) – revealed just how unusual the KBO’s shape really is.

End to end, the overall shape of Arrokoth measures about 22 miles (35 kilometers) long. It’s about 12 miles (20 kilometers) wide, by 6 miles (10 kilometers) thick. The larger lobe was found to be “lenticular,” which means it’s flattened and shaped like two lenses placed back to back. It has dimensions of approximately 14 × 12 × 4 miles (22 × 20 × 7 kilometers).

The smaller lobe is more rounded and is approximately 9 × 9 × 6 miles (14 × 14 × 10 kilometers) in its dimensions. “We’ve never seen anything like this anywhere in the solar system,” said Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

“It is sending the planetary science community back to the drawing board to understand how planetesimals – the building blocks of the planets – form.” According to Dr. Stern, the New Horizons spacecraft remains healthy deep in the Kuiper Belt, and it is speeding away from the Earth and Sun at a rate of about 300 million miles per year.

The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode on June 1, 2022, and will remain in hibernation until March 1, 2023, to save fuel, and wear and tear on the spacecraft. In April 2022 its mission was extended a second time to potentially conduct multi-disciplinary observations of relevance to the solar system and NASA’s Heliophysics and Astrophysics Divisions.

Has anyone been to Jupiter?

Significant Events –

1610 : Galileo Galilei makes the first detailed observations of Jupiter. 1973 : Pioneer 10 becomes the first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt and fly past Jupiter. 1979 : Voyager 1 and 2 discover Jupiter’s faint rings, several new moons and volcanic activity on Io’s surface. 1992 : Ulysses swung by Jupiter on Feb.8, 1992. The giant planet’s gravity bent the spacecraft’s flight path southward and away from the ecliptic plane, putting the probe into a final orbit that would take it over the sun’s south and north poles. 1994 : Astronomers observe as pieces of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collide with Jupiter’s southern hemisphere. 1995-2003 : The Galileo spacecraft drops a probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere and conducts extended observations of Jupiter and its moons and rings. 2000 : Cassini makes its closest approach to Jupiter at a distance of approximately 6.2 million miles (10 million kilometers), taking a highly detailed true color mosaic photo of the gas giant. 2007 : Images taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, on the way to Pluto, show new perspectives on Jupiter’s atmospheric storms, the rings, volcanic Io, and icy Europa. 2009 : On 20 July, almost exactly 15 years after fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy slammed into Jupiter, a comet or asteroid crashes into the giant planet’s southern hemisphere. 2011 : Juno launches to examine Jupiter’s chemistry, atmosphere, interior structure and magnetosphere. 2016 : NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, conducting an in-depth investigation of the planet’s atmosphere, deep structure and magnetosphere for clues to its origin and evolution.

Notable Explorers Tracy Drain Flight Systems Engineer “The important thing about being a scientist or an engineer is learning how to think critically – learning how to learn.” Thomas Ashcraft NASA Citizen Scientist “Science gives purpose and meaning to life. Let it open up paths, and see where they lead over time.” Suzanne “Suzy” Dodd Project Manager “Math is going to be the basis for all the science and engineering that you will have to do in the future.” Susan Niebur (1973-2012) Astrophysicist I decided that my dream was to work for NASA, even if there weren’t any girls there yet. Someday there would be, and I was going to be one. Steve Squyres Professor of Physical Sciences “There is no substitute for persistence. You must get all the training you need, and you must do well at it. that’s a given.” Shannon Berger Mission Operations Manager and Systems Engineer “I’m the Mission Operations Manager for SunRISE. I’m also a systems engineer for Europa Clipper.” Rosaly Lopes Senior Research Scientist “Study hard and do what you love, then it doesn’t feel like work.” Robert (Bob) Pappalardo Europa Mission Project Scientist “The most exciting moments are the ‘aha moments’ when a scientific problem that you’ve been wrestling with suddenly falls into place and begins to make sense.” Richard “Rick” Grammier (1955 – 2011) Former Director for Solar System Exploration “His spirit will continue to inspire us as we continue our quest to understand the Universe.” Phillips Phil Davis Web Producer Ask lots of questions. Be persistent. And never stop exploring your options. Paul Mahaffy Planetary Scientist “Many different technical and scientific skills are needed to plan and implement the planetary missions we work on.” Neil Gehrels (1952-2017) Astrophysicist The happiest people I know are ones who think of their field as both a hobby and a job. Mark Hofstadter Planetary Scientist “To me, being a scientist means seeing something in nature and wanting to figure out how it works or why it is the way it is.” Margaret Kivelson Scientist Remember, I started before there were any spacecraft! Louise Prockter Principal Investigator, Trident Mission “Be tenacious. If you know you want to do something, go and find someone who will help you do it.” Kaley Pinover Systems Engineer “I design high-level concepts for how we’ll launch and fly our spacecraft.” Joan Salute Program Executive Don’t be afraid to try new areas. I was in the Earth sciences remote sensing area for 15 years before venturing out. Jeffrey Cuzzi Research Scientist “Stay close to subjects that fascinate you personally, but also ask why is the subject important.” James Green NASA Chief Scientist (Retired) there is absolutely no substitute for being determined. Fran Bagenal Co-Investigator for the New Horizons Mission “Getting along with people is also important – perhaps as important as solving big equations.” Eric De Jong (1947-2017) Planetary Scientist Eric pioneered the use of stereo HDTV, IMAX, and digital cinema technology for the visualization of planetary surfaces and atmospheres. Eric Ianson Deputy Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division “It’s important to do the best that you can in whatever field you go into and be passionate about it.” Emily Manor-Chapman Systems Engineer “Be curious! Learn something about the field you are interested in, whether by reading a book, taking a course, joining a club, etc. Exploring your interests will help you find your career path.” Dr. Bonnie Buratti Deputy Project Scientist, Europa Clipper Mission “When I was a little girl Sputnik was launched, and I was instantly drawn into the whole miracle of spaceflight and exploring the cosmos.” David Doody Flight Operations Lead Engineer “To be able now to work on projects that are flying to the planets has been really a dream.” Claudia Alexander (1959-2015) Scientist “Science and math are fascinating and fundamental. They require as much discipline as an athlete working to be a football player, or a musician attempting to land a recording contract.” Charles Hall (1920 – 1999) Project Manager Charles (Charlie) F. Hall, managed of several of NASA’s most daring and exciting early scientific space missions. Charlene Pfeifer Systems Engineer “Don’t hesitate to explore. You won’t know what you want to do until you actually do it, so take the time in your career path to try different opportunities and learn something new!” Carl Sagan (1934-1996) Planetary Scientist Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. Bruce Murray (1931-2013) Director, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Bruce C. Murray, the fifth director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was born in New York City in 1931. Ashwin Vasavada Project Scientist “As funny as it sounds, NASA robots inspired me: Viking and Voyager.” Ashley Davies Scientist I study volcanoes—how they erupt, and why—and what they tell us about the interior not only of the Earth, but other planets and satellites across the solar system. Anita Cochran Senior Research Scientist “Perseverance and hard work are more important than smarts. If you really want to be an astronomer, you can overcome lots of obstacles.” Amy Simon Planetary Scientist “Sometimes you have to tackle a problem from many different ways to understand it and you should never be afraid to ask for help.” Albert “Joey” Jefferson Flight Systems Engineer “The wonderful part of working at JPL is that perfection isn’t expected; however, progression is expected.” Al Hibbs (1924-2003) Scientist, “The Voice of JPL” “I wanted to conquer space. And my roommate, Roy Walford, decided that he would conquer death. Together we would then conquer time.” Adriana Ocampo Scientist I love exploring and living life like it is a grand adventure. Tracy Drain Flight Systems Engineer “The important thing about being a scientist or an engineer is learning how to think critically – learning how to learn.” Missions Careers

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Has anyone been to Venus?

Exploration – More than 40 spacecraft have launched for Venus. One spacecraft – Japan’s Akatsuki – is currently in orbit. Three new Venus missions will launch in the next decade. NASA’s Mariner 2 was the first spacecraft to visit any planet beyond Earth when it flew past Venus on Dec.14, 1962. The Magellan spacecraft is deployed from the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Credit: NASA “What’s so fascinating is that both Earth and Venus are about the same size,” said Lori Glaze, NASA’s Director of Planetary Science. She is a longtime Venus expert.

Venus is a little smaller, but not much.
They have similar gravity.
They formed in the same part of the solar system.
They probably formed at about the same time.
And you would think that they would have evolved very similarly.
But they didn’t.
Earth and Venus went very different directions.” Exploring the surface of Venus is difficult because of the intense heat and crushing air pressure.

The longest any spacecraft has survived on the surface is a little over two hours – a record set by the Soviet Union’s Venera 13 probe in 1981. NASA’s DAVINCI mission is next up with a planned probe landing in 2031. The probe will focus on the atmospheric descent, but there is a chance it will send surface data for a few minutes.

Can we live in Pluto?

Potential for Life – The surface of Pluto is extremely cold, so it seems unlikely that life could exist there. At such cold temperatures, water, which is vital for life as we know it, is essentially rock-like. Pluto’s interior is warmer, however, and some think there could even be an ocean deep inside.

Is there oxygen on Uranus?

Oxygen-bearing species such as H 2 O, CO 2 and CO are present in the stratospheres of Uranus and Neptune.

What planets can we live on?

Flexi Says: Right now and for the foreseeable future, humans can only live on Earth. Humans have not traveled very far into space. The Moon is the only other place humans have visited. No other planet in our solar system currently has the conditions to support life as we know it on Earth.

How long would it take to get to Pluto?

It’s a long way out to the dwarf planet Pluto. So, just how fast could we get there? Pluto, the Dwarf planet, is an incomprehensibly long distance away. Seriously, it’s currently more than 5 billion kilometers away from Earth. It challenges the imagination that anyone could ever travel that kind of distance, and yet, NASA’s New Horizons has been making the journey, and it’s going to arrive there July, 2015.

You may have just heard about this news. And I promise you, when New Horizons makes its close encounter, it’s going to be everywhere. So let me give you the advanced knowledge on just how amazing this journey is, and what it would take to cross this enormous gulf in the Solar System. Pluto travels on a highly elliptical orbit around the Sun.

At its closest point, known as “perihelion”, Pluto is only 4.4 billion kilometers out. That’s nearly 30 AU, or 30 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Pluto last reached this point on September 5th, 1989. At its most distant point, known as “aphelion”, Pluto reaches a distance of 7.3 billion kilometers, or 49 AU.

This will happen on August 23, 2113.
I know, these numbers seem incomprehensible and lose their meaning.
So let me give you some context.
Light itself takes 4.6 hours to travel from the Earth to Pluto.
If you wanted to send a signal to Pluto, it would take 4.6 hours for your transmission to reach Pluto, and then an additional 4.6 hours for their message to return to us.

Let’s talk spacecraft. When New Horizons blasted off from Earth, it was going 58,000 km/h. Just for comparison, astronauts in orbit are merely jaunting along at 28,000 km/h. That’s its speed going away from the Earth. When you add up the speed of the Earth, New Horizons was moving away from the Sun at a blistering 160,000 km/h. Artist’s conception of the New Horizons spacecraft at Pluto. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI) New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006, and it’ll reach Pluto on July 14, 2015. Do a little math and you’ll find that it has taken 9 years, 5 months and 25 days.

The Voyager spacecraft did the distance between Earth and Pluto in about 12.5 years, although, neither spacecraft actually flew past Pluto.
And the Pioneer spacecraft completed the journey in about 11 years.
Could you get to Pluto faster? Absolutely.
With a more powerful rocket, and a lighter spacecraft payload, you could definitely shave down the flight time.

But there are a couple of problems. Rockets are expensive, coincidentally bigger rockets are super expensive. The other problem is that getting to Pluto faster means that it’s harder to do any kind of science once you reach the dwarf planet. New Horizons made the fastest journey to Pluto, but it’s also going to fly past the planet at 50,000 km/h.

That’s less time to take high resolution images. And if you wanted to actually go into orbit around Pluto, you’d need more rockets to lose all that velocity. So how long does it take to get to Pluto? Roughly 9-12 years. You could probably get there faster, but then you’d get less science done, and it probably wouldn’t be worth the rush.

Are you super excited about the New Horizons flyby of Pluto? Tell us all about it in the comments below. Podcast (audio): Download (Duration: 4:04 — 3.7MB) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS Podcast (video): Download (Duration: 4:27 — 53.0MB) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

How long will it take to go to Neptune?

Explain It To A Child – If you could hop on a spacecraft and head for Neptune today, the trip would take about 10 years. That’s assuming you had access to a space shuttle capable of traveling very quickly. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have ever visited Neptune, and it took about 10 years to make the journey.