NASA scientists call for two major new missions in search of extra-terrestrial life

dailystar.co.uk:

NASA’s next priorities should include the exploration of Saturn's ice moon Enceladus and the mysterious planet Uranus, a major scientific report has said.Every 10 years, the US National Academies of Sciences prepares a report identifying the next set of space exploration goals for NASA and the US National Science Foundation.For the 2022 report, the experts agreed that the number one priority should be collecting soil samples from the planet Mars and bringing them to Earth.

That project – NASA’s Mars Sample Return initiative – began with the Mars Perseverance rover, which is already on the first leg of this ambitious scheme.Two more Mars Sample Return missions are planned to follow in Perseverance's wheel-tracks to Mars’s Jezero Crater and help solve the question of whether life ever existed – or can still exist – on the Red Planet.“Only by bringing the samples back,” says NASA, “can we truly answer the question by using the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art labs, at a time when future generations can study them using techniques yet to be invented”.But the two new missions mentioned in the report are the first dedicated Uranus probe and an ambitious landing on Saturn’s ice moon Enceladus.The Uranus orbiter recommended in the report would orbit distant gas giant Uranus for a number of years, while a separate probe would skim the planet’s frigid atmosphere to determine exactly what it’s made of.

Robin Canup at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, who co-wrote the report, told New Scientist: “This would be the first ever mission focused on one of the ice giants, which is particularly important now that we think ice giants might be the most common type of planet in the universe”.