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The Conversation USA

Unwrapping Uranus and its icy secrets: What NASA would learn from a mission to a wild world

  • Written by Mike Sori, Assistant Professor of Planetary Science, Purdue University

Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, orbits in the outer solar system, about two billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) from Earth. It is an enormous world – quadruple the diameter of Earth, with 15 times the mass and 63 times the volume.

Unvisited by spacecraft for more than 35 years, Uranus inhabits one of the least explored regions of...

Read more: Unwrapping Uranus and its icy secrets: What NASA would learn from a mission to a wild world

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