In 1986, Voyager II traveled within 50,600 miles of Uranus, close enough to view some of the planet's rings and moons. This was the first and only time NASA visited Uranus.
In case you're unfamiliar, here are a few fun facts about the 7th planet from the sun:
Uranus is large, around four times wider than Earth.
Uranus is gassy, made up of hydrogen, helium, and a small amount of methane.
Uranus has many moons, 27 to be exact.
Uranus is lonely, with Voyager II being the only spacecraft to get up close and personal.
Uranus is lifeless.
We will soon know even more about Uranus as NASA is hoping to launch an exploration mission by early 2030s.
The hope of the mission is to get close enough to study the rings, moons, atmosphere, and magnetoshpere of Uranus.
There will likely be two pieces on the mission: an orbiting satellite and a probe to possibly penetrate the atmosphere of Uranus.
Neither has a name yet and, fortunately for the internet, that's where Ice Giant Mission (@ExploreIGO) stepped in:
As you can imagine, responses came flooding in.
Some commenters responded with genuine scientific and origin-based names for the mission:
And some chose to make the pronunciation of Uranus the butt of the joke, er, name.
(It should be noted that many scientists pronounce the ice giant's name as YOOR-un-us.)
Fortunately for us, Ice Giant Missions created two lists of the best responses to their original tweet.
The first list is "seriously cool name suggestions" and the second is what @ExploreIGO considered to be the best jokes.
There appear to be plenty of names, both serious and not-so-serious, from which to choose. Stay tuned!
