Related papers: Atmospheric Science Questions for a Uranian Probe
At the far reaches of the outer Solar System, the ice giants remain the last class of planets yet to be studied using orbiters. The 2023-2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey has underscored the importance of the ice giants in understanding…
A comprehensive exploration of Uranus and Neptune is essential to understand the formation and evolution of the giant planets, in particular, solar system, in general, and, by extension, a vast population of exoplanets. Though core…
The key to the exploration of the Ice Giant planets is avoiding cutting edge technology. Complexity produces delay and financial roadblocks. Simple robot scouts can be launched in time to utilize gravity assists from Jupiter in the early…
Uranus and Neptune are the least explored planets in the Solar System. A key question regarding the two planets is the similarity of their observed flows despite the great differences in their obliquity and internal heating. To answer this…
The purpose of this document is to discuss the scientific case of a space mission to the ice giants Uranus and Neptune and their satellite systems and its relevance to advance our understanding of the ancient past of the Solar System and,…
Uranus and Neptune are the last unexplored planets of the Solar System. I show that they hold crucial keys to understand the atmospheric dynamics and structure of planets with hydrogen atmospheres. Their atmospheres are active and storms…
So far no designated mission to either of the two ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, exists. Almost all of our gathered information on these planets comes from remote sensing. In recent years, NASA and ESA have started planning for future…
The shapes of fluid planets bear the signatures of rotational flattening and atmospheric flows. Precise knowledge of their shapes and wind profiles may therefore reveal their interior rotation rates. We re-examine this idea for the ice…
Atmospheric circulation patterns derived from multi-spectral remote sensing can serve as a guide for choosing a suitable entry site for a future in situ probe mission. Since the Voyager-2 flybys in the 1980s, three decades of observations…
Ground-based near-IR observations have revealed that Uranus anomalously hot upper atmosphere, detected by Voyager 2, has been steadily cooling. The observed $H_3^+$ and $H_2$ emission-line spectra probe Uranus' ionosphere and thermosphere,…
Observations from the Juno and Cassini missions provide essential constraints on the internal structures and compositions of Jupiter and Saturn, resulting in profound revisions of our understanding of the interior and atmospheres of Gas…
The interior composition and structure of Uranus are ambiguous. It is unclear whether Uranus is composed of fully differentiated layers dominated by an icy mantle or has smooth compositional gradients. The Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP),…
The Ice Giants Uranus and Neptune have hydrogen-based atmospheres with several constituents that condense in their cold upper atmospheres. A small number of bright cloud systems observed in both planets are good candidates for moist…
With more than 15 years since the the first radial velocity discovery of a planet orbiting a Sun-like star, the time baseline for radial velocity surveys is now extending out beyond the orbit of Jupiter analogs. The sensitivity to exoplanet…
There are still many open questions regarding the nature of Uranus and Neptune, the outermost planets in the Solar System. In this review we summarize the current-knowledge about Uranus and Neptune with a focus on their composition and…
We outline a flagship-class mission concept focused on studying Titan as a global system, with particular emphasis on the polar regions. Investigating Titan from the unique standpoint of a polar orbit would enable comprehensive global maps…
We present a radiative transfer analysis of latitudinally resolved H (1.487-1.783 micron) and K (2.028-2.364 micron) band spectra of Uranus, from which we infer the distributions of aerosols and methane in the planet's atmosphere. Data were…
This review presents an insight into our current knowledge of the atmospheres of the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the satellite Titan, and those of exoplanets. It deals with the thermal structure, aerosol…
Lightning was detected by Voyager 2 at Uranus and Neptune, and weaker electrical processes also occur throughout planetary atmospheres from galactic cosmic ray (GCR) ionisation. Lightning is an indicator of convection, whereas electrical…
Remote sensing observations suffer significant limitations when used to study the bulk atmospheric composition of the giant planets of our solar system. This impacts our knowledge of the formation of these planets and the physics of their…