A panel of American scientists, fully aware of the implications of such a public stance and the endless chortling it would draw, urged NASA to send a probe up to Uranus on Tuesday. “The Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) should be the highest priority large mission,” says the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in a press release on their decadal survey titled Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032, adding “The UOP would conduct a multiyear orbital tour to transform knowledge of ice giants in general, and the Uranian system in particular, through flybys and the delivery of an atmospheric probe.” When discussing the report among themselves, the scientists probably went out of their way to pronounce the planet’s name as “YOUR-UH-NUS”, instead of “YOUR-ANUS” in a self-conscious gambit to avoid snickering about “probing” it. The main objective of a mission is to explore the possibilities of life forms crawling around in the gassy plumes of Uranus.
“The Enceladus Orbilander should be NASA’s second-highest priority large mission,” the press release also said, referring to a proposed mission to send an orbital probe equipped with a lander to Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, an icy world whose name is much easier to say with a straight face.