Neptune Odyssey — the current mission concept for a Neptune orbiter and atmospheric probe being studied as a possible large strategic science mission by NASA that would launch in 2033 and arrive at Neptune in 2049.
Neptune (Voyager)
Want to go to Neptune? It'll take 12 years. Fortunately, there's no good reason anyone would want to go there.
9. Neptune has Only Been Visited up Close Once: The only spacecraft that has ever visited Neptune was NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, which visited the planet during its Grand Tour of the Solar System. Voyager 2 made its Neptune flyby on August 25, 1989, passing within 3,000 km of the planet's north pole.
So will Pluto and Neptune ever collide? No! You can see this in the image below, which shows a view as seen from the side as the planets orbit around the Sun. Most planets only make small excursions in the vertical and radial directions, but Pluto is an exception.
If the planets remain in their current orbits, no. It's true that Pluto's elongated orbit carries it closer to the Sun than Neptune, and then farther away from the Sun than Neptune. However, crossing orbits does not imply these planets will collide.
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.
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.
The planet is mostly swirling gases and liquids deeper down. While a spacecraft would have nowhere to land on Saturn, it wouldn't be able to fly through unscathed either. The extreme pressures and temperatures deep inside the planet would crush, melt, and vaporize any spacecraft trying to fly into the planet.
NASA is keeping Voyager 2 going until at least 2026 by tapping into backup power Engineers have bought the spacecraft's interstellar mission more time by using backup power from a safety mechanism. It means NASA no longer has to shut down one of its five scientific instruments.
The distance of Voyager 1 from Earth is currently 23,843,017,836 kilometers, equivalent to 159.380730 Astronomical Units. Light takes 22 hours, 5 minutes and 31.7467 seconds to travel from Voyager 1 and arrive to us. The following chart shows the distance of Voyager 1 from Earth as a function of time.
Closest approach: 42 days. Farthest approach: 69 days. Average distance: 51 days.
Humans don't really age slower in space. To the contrary, the stress of living in space ages them. You are probably thinking about something that was communicated in the film Interstellar.
They are both headed outward, never to return to Earth. So, can they get closer? The answer is that for a few months each year, Earth in its orbit moves toward the spacecraft faster than they're moving away. Earth's motion around the sun is faster than the motion of the Voyager spacecraft.
In August 2012, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to cross into interstellar space. However, if we define our solar system as the Sun and everything that primarily orbits the Sun, Voyager 1 will remain within the confines of the solar system until it emerges from the Oort cloud in another 14,000 to 28,000 years.
The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of the Deep Space Network through about 2036, depending on how much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a signal back to Earth. Where are Voyager 1 and 2 today?
Potential for Life
Additionally, Titan's rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a habitable environment on the moon's surface, though any life there would likely be very different from Earth's life.
On January 14, 2005, humans successfully achieved an incredible feat unsurpassed to date. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Huygens probe, a metal pie-plate looking device 1.3 metres in diameter, parachuted down onto Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons, and landed unscathed on its surface.
Titan's subsurface water could be a place to harbor life as we know it, while its surface lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons could conceivably harbor life that uses different chemistry than we're used to—that is, life as we don't yet know it. Titan could also be a lifeless world.
Not much is known about Pluto, the only planet that has not been visited by an explorer spacecraft, and our best image of its surface is a hazy picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996. The mission will also study the surrounding Kuiper Belt, which is made up of thousands of icy, rocky objects.
It's about 3.6 billion miles away from the Sun, and it has a thin atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. On average, Pluto's temperature is -387°F (-232°C), making it too cold to sustain life.
Tough Place for Life
It is unlikely that life as we know it could survive on Mercury due to solar radiation, and extreme temperatures.
Could humans land on Mercury's surface? In spite of being so close to the Sun, and wild swings in extreme temperatures, humans could technically walk on the planet's surface. Mercury's slow rotation means it takes 59 Earth days for it to turn around once.
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.
Not yet, but we've sent rovers, landers, and orbiters to. gather the information we'll need to keep future. astronauts safe, and with NASA Artemis, we're.