uranus full disc in baby blue

There's a proposal to launch a Uranus spacecraft in 2031, and the Internet thought it was time to name that probe. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

Is it the Tempest or the MUSE that you're talking about?

An informal Internet poll shows that fans of the planet have a lot of ideas for the next mission.

ExploreIgo, a fan account devoted to icy worlds, asked its community what to call a space craft.

"We want to know what you think about the Uranus mission, what would you name it?" the account asked, getting tens of thousands of likes, retweets and comments. The account references is an early stage proposal for NASA to revisit the planet that hasn't seen an up- close view in over 25 years.

The top 5 weird facts about Uranus.

The cover is based on a proposal by three scientists led by Amy Simon. The group told the survey that it was time for a mission to go to Uranus.

The proposal process led by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine resulted in the community voting on the top destination.

A $4 billion flagship mission was called for by the decadal committee to look at the icy giant's wild weather and mysterious features from up close. It would be the first time that a smaller gas giant would get a detailed mission.

If accepted, the mission would leave Earth in 2031 and take 13 years to travel to the outer solar system, but it wouldn't just fly by. The mission is a work in progress. Funding and a measure of scientific and technical will are required to get the proposal together.

The Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory continue to look at the atmosphere, rings and moons of Uranus.

The naming ideas were shared despite the tentative nature of the mission. The space shuttle program, Shakespeare, and polar exploration are just some of the things that community favorites refer to. There are some examples.

  • Caroline, after astronomer Caroline Herschel; she worked alongside her brother William, who is popularly credited as finding the first two known moons of Uranus;
  • Discovery, after NASA's most-flown space shuttle (which itself was named after one of the two ships used by British explorer James Cook when he 'discovered' Hawaii);
  • Earhart, after aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart;
  • Endurance Orbiter and Shackleton Probe, which are the ship and leader (respectively) of the Ernest Shackleton expedition to Antarctica in 1914-17
  • M.U.S.E, an acronym for Mission Uranus Science Expedition;
  • Se7en, an homage to its seventh planet position from the sun along with a 1995 thriller starring Morgan Freeman;
  • Tempest, after the Shakespeare play. (Uranus moon names (opens in new tab)traditionally come from Shakespeare characters, or characters from Alexander Pope's "Rape of the Lock.")

There were a lot of butt joke names for the probe, but we decided to spotlight some of the more restrained ones.

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