Hi Guys..

Just wondering, are there any new spacecrafts plans to Uranus & Neptune? i feel there's alot to learn about Neptune's moon Triton - after watching BBC's 'planets' (might be out of date now!! :P ) Scientist have found some sort of a ice volcanoe or Gysers whatever they are called on Triton..

and, sorry if my question is stupid to some people - would Triton happen to be another planet like pluto but dragged into neptune's orbit? i understand it orbits neptune opposite.. im just thinking that can pluto possibly be captured by neptune if the two planets crossed?

Cheers!! Keep up the great work Fraser - you've done an excellent job keeping this site/forums going.

Hi Hal5000, welcome to the BAUT forum.

There are discussions about sending a Neptune orbiter, but it is not a well defined project yet. Most mission plans include a Triton lander. Some of the missions plan to use aerobreaking to help with the orbital insertion.

There is no current proposed date for the mission to fly, but proposals use trajectories taking between 8 and 13 years to get there once launched.

You can find scraps of information on the web about this by googling with the words "Neptune Orbiter".

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Forming opinions as we speak

I say we ought to go out there ASAP. NASA should start working on nuclear propulsion...

Nasa should also get a 500% budge increase, but it isn't going to happen, unfortunately.

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"Bessie Braddock to Churchill "Winston, your drunk!"
Churchill: "Bessie, you're ugly, and tomorrow morning I shall be sober""
the solar system

They are working on nuclear propulsion, the Prometheus Project.

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All words, phrases, definitions and theories provided in the above post are, unless otherwise stated, the property of Champion Munch © 2005.

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I know of only one Uranus-related project that currently has ANY chance of getting off the ground (and very little in that case) -- "New Horizons 2". New Horizons (that is Pluto probe for those who don't know) team is pushing to build a second spacecraft, largely out of the spares for the first. It would go to Pluto with a gravity assist at Uranus. If NH2 ever flies, it would be the first Outer Planets probe not to visit Jupiter.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

"Pluto is locked in a 3:2 resonance with Neptune; i.e. Pluto's orbital period is exactly 1.5 times longer than Neptune's. Its orbital inclination is also much higher than the other planets'. Thus though it appears that Pluto's orbit crosses Neptune's, it really doesn't and they will never collide." (check here: http://www.nineplanets.org/pluto.html for more details on Pluto and here: http://www.nineplanets.org/plutodyn.html for a more consistent explanation concerning it's orbit).