The National Academy of Sciences finally released its new decadal survey — and the votes are in for Uranus. The survey is an unofficial but influential temperature check-style analysis of NAS members’ priorities for NASA, the U.S. space agency. The new edition, Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032, calls for, among other things, a dedicated Uranus mission and, if possible, an orbiter and lander on Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn believed to have a vast ocean under its ice shell. And where there’s water, there just might be life.
