Humans just landed a new robot on Mars.
Did you see this?
The landing was so intense.
My heart was pounding.
I was all sweaty.
And then, yes, we landed on Mars again.
Yeah.
I was so lucky and got to go see InSight takeoff.
We watched the rollback of the actual launch.
It was so interesting and cool.
And to see it land, I mean, it was amazing.
Mars InSight is going to be a huge source of knowledge
for planetary sciences and alien geology.
But you know what?
I'm not going to talk about that this week because it's
going to be everywhere.
If you want to know more about Mars
and geology and space and stuff, go over to Instagram or Twitter
and follow Sue Smrekar, Lindsay Elkins-Tanton,
Emily Calandrelli, Dr. Sarah Hurst, Ellen Stofan,
and Raquel Nuno.
They're all amazing and they're way more
qualified to talk about InSight and planetary geology
than I am.
The other reason I decided not to talk about Mars this week
is because it's already occupying news and video
outlets across the verse.
What am I going to say that you don't already know?
In the last 60 years, we've sent at least three dozen missions
to our red neighbor.
But what about the least explored planets
in our solar system, Neptune and Uranus?
We've only sent one mission to each of those,
and it the same mission, Voyager 2.
It flew by them in '86 and '89 respectively.
So instead of focusing on famous Mars,
I have questions about our lonely cold ice giants.
Why aren't we visiting them?
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Our solar system has eight confirmed planets.
Maybe nine if we can figure out if Planet X actually
exists or not.
Also, we have a handful of dwarf planets.
Just honorable mention, Pluto, Ceres, Haumea, Eris,
and Make-make.
I see you.
But two of our friends in the planet category,
they just don't get enough love.
They're cold and lonely and far away.
[SAD MUSIC]
And they need us.
We flew by Uranus and Neptune with Voyager 2 in the '80s,
and when we did, we found new rings, new moons.
We learned a ton of new things about our icy friends.
We've observed these planets with telescopes
for generations.
But visiting them again could change how we see them.
Think about what happened with Pluto
when we sent a mission there.
For example, Neptune has the fastest winds
on any planet in our solar system.
But that's not Neptune, that's Uranus.
I just John Olivered you.
This is Neptune.
They're really similar.
You probably never confuse Mercury and the Moon
because you know more about them, but Neptune and Uranus,
exactly.
Admittedly, we do know a lot about our ice giants.
Their atmospheres are mainly hydrogen, helium, water,
and ammonia and methane sprinkled
in, depending on which planet you're talking about.
They both have a lot of water in their atmospheres,
more than the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.
The blue color comes from methane,
but why they're different shades of blue is actually a puzzle.
Scientists don't really know the exact reason, which is great.
Let's learn that one.
Another incredible thing Uranus is sideways,
like it fell on its face, and the Sun sometimes
sees it from the top.
Poor guy.
Its rings and moon orbit along its equator,
so it's perpendicular to the Sun, which is so weird.
Wouldn't you like to know more?
Of course you would.
Me too.
Of course, both of the planets have a core,
but while Neptune's is probably iron, ice, and silicates,
Uranus' is water, methane, and ammonia ice.
But they haven't been modeled accurately because quote,
"no model we have fits all observations."
Yeah.
They all both have magnetic fields,
and even those are weird.
The source of a planet's magnetic field
is called the planetary dynamo.
It has to do with spinning cores and all sorts
of different metals.
And it's actually interesting, because theirs is probably
closer to the surface than ours is.
And it's not symmetrical to the axis like ours.
It's also not dipolar.
Why?
Nobody knows.
This is amazing, right?
In the end, of course, we're just getting to this one thing,
more research is frickin' needed.
There are plans and drafts out there
talking about visiting our icy brothers.
In fact, in June 2017, a 500-page report
was created that lays out precisely why we should visit.
We could answer what they're made of,
how they're put together, we could
learn more about the planetary dynamo,
maybe changing our own theories on our own planetary dynamo.
They could check out their rings, peak their moon,
study solar atmospheric interaction.
Not to mention every solar system out there,
it's thought, has a snow line, or region where the planets
past there become cold and icy.
Ice giant exoplanets might be one of the most common types
in our galaxy.
So learning about the ones in our back yard
could give us tools to learn about solar systems
thousands of light years away.
That is incredible stuff.
The best part about this report is the possible missions
it lays out, one of which, the most expensive one,
could hit both planets with flybys and probes.
Each planet could teach us something unique,
so to see them both would be better.
But you can also learn something from their moons.
Neptune's moon Triton is a captured Kuiper belt object,
while Uranus has a couple of moons that formed naturally,
meaning if we could hit both planets,
we could compare captured versus natural satellites, not
to mention study the ice giant planets themselves.
Now, I know what you're thinking, how much that is?
What's the paper?
The report says the whole mission might only
cost 2 and 1/2 billion bucks.
That's $1.25 billion per planet.
Might sound like a lot, but President Trump
wants $5 billion for a wall.
A wall.
This is the probing and flyby of two planets
plus countless moons, maybe even discovery of new moons
we don't even know where there.
Planetary rings, who doesn't love a good planetary
ring, right?
And the furthering of planet science.
Obviously I'm being overzealous a little bit, of course.
But mostly I'm pointing out that we've spent
more than 30 missions to Mars.
And I love that we have.
We should send more.
We should send humans.
But we've got these treasure troves of icy knowledge
for inspiration.
They're just right there and they're ripe for the taking.
So let's take them.
The main roadblock here is our will to fund the trip.
And in part, because many scientists
who work on these missions won't be around to see the results.
The science and planning is complicated,
and these missions would be long.
And because the planets are far away
and their orbits are decades long,
as the report states, quote, "now
is the time to begin formulating the next mission to the ice
giants."
So what do you think?
You in for this or what?
Come on, let me know in the comments.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you next week on Uno Dos of Trace.
So instead of focusing on famous Mars, the golden--
the red-- I got all sweaty just talking about it.
Namely hydrogen, helium, and water,
with ammonia [STAMMERING]