The tantalising possibility of life on Uranus, or at least its moons, is under serious consideration after a reanalysis of data collected by NASA’s Voyager 2 probe in 1986.
The spacecraft’s flyby was impacted by an unusually strong solar storm, the agency has revealed, potentially explaining the odd magnetic and atmospheric phenomena observed on the icy planet.
This storm, according to scientists, compressed Uranus’s magnetosphere and expelled plasma, intensifying the planet’s radiation belts and creating data that appeared as though the environment around Uranus and its moons was more barren than it might truly be.
Dr William Dunn of UCL highlights how much of our understanding of Uranus is based on Voyager 2’s very brief visit.
He explained: “This study shows that much of the planet’s bizarre behaviour during that time might be explained by the sheer scale of the space weather event happening then.”
This storm likely depleted the water-related particles and plasma around Uranus, which Voyager did not detect, leading to the initial belief that Uranus’s moons were inactive worlds, Mr Dunn added.
He said: “Now we can explain that absence of water ions – the solar storm would have blown that material away.”
If that was the case, with normal conditions, the moons might have shown evidence of activity, or even subsurface oceans.
This idea of a far more active Uranian system is echoed by Dr Linda Spilker from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was part of the Voyager 2 mission.
Reflecting on the findings, she recalled that “the flyby was packed with surprises, and we were searching for explanations for this unusual behaviour”.
Dr Spiker now believes the new research explains the contradictions noted back then.
She said: “The magnetosphere Voyager 2 measured was only a snapshot in time,” suggesting that this fleeting look may have painted an incomplete picture of the Uranian system.
The revelations increase scientists’ enthusiasm for a future mission to Uranus, currently in preliminary planning stages following a prioritisation by the US National Academies’ 2023 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey.
With Voyager 2 now some 13 billion miles from Earth, a second close encounter with Uranus could finally provide answers about the daily dynamics of its magnetosphere and whether its moons might indeed support life.
