Exploring Uranus with SpaceX's Starship

   SpaceX's Starship could take half  the travel time to Uranus

The ice giants remain some of the most interesting places to explore in the solar system. Uranus in particular has drawn a lot of interest lately, especially after the 2022 Decadal Survey from the National Academies named it as the highest priority destination. But as of now, we still don’t have a fully fleshed out and planned mission ready to go for the multiple launch windows in the 2030s. That might actually be an advantage, though, as a new system coming online might change the overall mission design fundamentally. The daring strategy would have the beleaguered vehicle slow down by flying through the planet’s atmosphere. In the worlds of the Solar System, Uranus is among the weirdest. Its peculiar properties, from internal heating to its crooked magnetic fields, have left astronomers baffled. Maybe it is not even an ice giant at all, but a weirder rocky giant planet. This and more are motivations to send a mission to the planet. Now, an analysis might have found a way to do that faster than previously thought.         

Starship recently continued its recent string of successful tests, and a new paper presented at the IEEE Aerospace Conference by researchers at MIT looked at how this new, much more capable launch system, could impact the development of the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) that the Decadal Survey suggested. Uranus in infrared, seen from Earth. Our only up-close view of the planet is from Voyager 2 in the 80s. Uranus is one of the least explored planets, the last probe to visit it was Voyager 2 during a flyby 40 years ago. Neither it, nor its ice giant cousin Neptune, have ever had an orbiter visit it, nor any consistent mission presence in their system, marking them out as the only two planets which haven’t been studied in detail up close so far. NASA has planned a mission called the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP), and it is expected to launch in the mid-2030s. It was originally planned to launch in 2031, but issues with NASA’s procurement of plutonium meant that this had to be postponed. Missions to the outer Solar System need a radioactive source of energy because they cannot rely on sunlight.

That’s not for lack of interest. Uranus has a lot of strange things about it that closer study could help explain. It’s lying on its side, has a rather wonky magnetic field, and has a bunch of moons which could potentially hide oceans under their icy surfaces. What’s more, planets like Uranus are some of the most common exoplanets that we’ve found so far in the Milky Way, so studying the system up close would also improve our understanding of those other worlds as well. The mission will reach Uranus over a decade later in the mid-to-late 2040s, as the planet is getting closer to the equinox. Adding to the oddities, Uranus spins on its side, so currently as we approach the northern summer solstice, the northern hemisphere is fully illuminated while the southern hemisphere is in darkness. Only during the equinox does the whole planet experience day and night.

The problem is that Uranus is far away. It’s 19 times farther from the Sun than Earth is, and it took Voyager more than nine and a half years to reach the system, and that probe didn’t even attempt to slow down to stay in it. Previous calculations done during the decadal survey used a Falcon Heavy booster and several gravitational assists from other planets, but ultimately took over 13 years to reach Uranus. That’s time the mission has to be maintained, both operationally and financially, and also time that critical personnel might move on, or, if recent NASA history is any guide, furloughed. So getting UOP to its final destination faster is inarguably better. Enter Starship. Despite a series of testing mishaps earlier in the year, SpaceX’s game-changing rocket system is finally coming into its own with a successful test. Assuming it continues its positive trajectory, it could be ready for regular use by the end of the decade, making it a viable option for use as UOP’s launch vehicle.

This is the plan for UOP, but that scenario involved the mission being launched on a Falcon Heavy Rocket. Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to eventually retire this rocket as its Starship vehicle becomes operational. Starship has faced several setbacks this year, enough to have NASA looking for new commercial partners for the Moon landing. So, researchers considered a scenario where UOP is launched with Starship, and that opened up an interesting and speedy opportunity. In addition to its increased lifting capability, two other aspects of Starship’s capabilities make it interesting for a UOP mission. First is its ability to refuel in orbit. SpaceX has made sure to design the system so that it can store and take fuel in orbit, allowing it to reach destinations much faster than other systems, whose fuels has to be lifted exclusively from the ground. While this capability hasn’t been demonstrated yet, further tests of Starship will undoubtedly begin to do so, unlocking whole new speed possibilities for probes to the furthest reaches of the solar system.

One advantage of Starship, which should be tested in the coming months, is the ability to be refuelled in space. The vehicle will be launched from Earth at high speed, rendezvous with a previously launched refuelling Starship vehicle to get more fuel, and use that to get on a Uranus-bound trajectory at really high speed. The other capability is to use Starship itself as an aerobraking shield. In the paper, the researchers examined the idea of using Starship, which itself is already designed to deal with the heat of reentry on both Earth and Mars, as a shield against the heat caused by aerobraking in Uranus’ atmosphere. They found that, with a little modification, the basic principle could work. Instead of separating from the probe once its boost was provided, in this case the Starship would accompany UOP to the Uranus system, using its thermal protective system as an air brake to slow the probe down from its interplanetary speed and remain in the system.

Often, the complaint about sending missions is why they take so long. This is due to the complex celestial mechanics necessary to cross space with minimal expenditure of fuel, so that the space probe can safely manoeuvre once in orbit. A filled-up Starship taking the mission all the way to Uranus would not have that issue; it could spend all the fuel it wants, cutting the travel time to just six and a half years. From calculations in the paper, the combination of being refuelled in space and also using Starship as an aerobrake could cut the time to the Uranus system in half. It also wouldn’t require any gravitational assists from any other planets on the way. Even with the added cost of taking a Starship along for the ride, this would dramatically decrease the operational cost of the mission by literally halving its travel time. There is also another reason to have Starship go all the way to Uranus with UOP. Once you go really fast, you need to slow down to enter orbit around a planet. This could be done by expending propellant, firing in the opposite direction of travel. 

The research proposal suggests instead to consider aerobraking, using Starship’s size with a modified design to fly through the Uranian atmosphere and slow down enough. Only then will UOP be released. With all that being said, UOP is still a far way from reality, nor is Starship ready for aerobraking a probe into an ice giant’s atmosphere yet. Despite being the highest priority to come out of the decadal survey, it's unclear whether UOP will even get a funding green light at this point, and given the current turmoil and NASA it will likely remain unclear for some time. If we miss the launch windows in the 2030s, the next opportune launch window would be the mid-2040s, meaning it would be almost 70 years between missions to this most interesting of worlds. All planetary science and space exploration enthusiasts should hope that the organizations which would potentially support such a mission get their act together and support a trip back there, whether it uses Starship or not. The size of Starship's payload, much bigger than the Falcon Heavy, might allow for a bigger probe too, allowing for even more science around Uranus and its moons.

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World’s fastest bullet train

  World’s fastest bullet train by China, touches 281 mph in pre-service trials           

China's CR450 has set the new record as world's fastest bullet train. This achievement surpasses the previous record of 350 km/h (217 mph) held by the CR400 Fuxing trains. The bullet train is set to enter commercial operations in 2026. China has begun pre-service trials for CR450, hailed as the world’s fastest bullet. The train clocked a speed of 281 mph (450 km/h) in the trials on the Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu high-speed railway line, as revealed on 21 Oct 25. The CR450’s prototype was unveiled in November last year as a bullet train capable of hitting the 249 mph mark (400 km/h), and subjected to continuous testing across all metrics. Now in its final testing stage, the bullet train has to achieve 373,000 miles (600,000 km's) of operation before being cleared for commercial services. Given its latest attempt, the CR450 has surpassed the current fastest speed record of 217 mph (350 km/hr) achieved by CR400 Fuxing trains.

Other high-speed trains like France’s TGV and Japan’s Shinkansen follow with maximum speeds of 320 km/h, while Korea’s KTX-Sancheon reaches 305 km/h, according to Chosun Biz. Unveiled in November 2024, the CR450 has undergone extensive testing to meet all performance targets. It is now set to undergo 600,000 km's of operation before it can be cleared for commercial passenger service, according to CGTN. Started as a project in 2021 by China State Railway Group, the train is expected to enter commercial operations in 2026, post the evaluation phase. It is manufactured by subsidiaries of the state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC). The CR450 is equipped with structural enhancements. Its nose cone has been increased from 41 feet (12.5 meters), as on the existing 217 mph trains, to 49 feet (15 meters), reducing drag.

CR450’s height has also been reduced by 8 inches (20 cm), with weight being trimmed by 55 tons. The developers have focused on drag reduction as a top priority, which has also helped achieve dramatic acceleration. The train has fully enclosed bogies and lower skirt panels beneath carriages, and a design philosophy inspired by high-performance cars. These innovations have helped the train reduce its overall resistance by 22 %. The CR450 can accelerate from 0 to 350 km/h in 4 minutes and 40 seconds. This is 100 seconds faster than the existing Fuxing EMUs, which take 6 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the same speed. Over five years of research and testing, improvements have been measured in minute increments as small as 0.1%. An EMU is a train made of self-propelled, electric-powered carriages which don’t require a separate locomotive.

China’s national television broadcaster CCTV also revealed how the country views this development as a major step towards modern innovation. During trials, two CR450 trains also set a combined speed record of 896 km/h when they passed each other, as reported by Xinhua. “The recent test run is the final step for the CR450 to enter the commercial operation phase and will be a milestone symbolizing that the technological prowess of China’s high-speed rail is leaping from ‘Made in China’ to ‘Created in China’,” said CCTV. China’s CR450 project is part of a sweeping initiative to expand and modernize the nation’s world-leading transport network.

The CR450’s speed is largely due to aerodynamic and structural enhancements over the CR400. The new model features a longer, sleeker nose, a 20-cm lower roofline, and a 50-tonne weight reduction. The country now operates the largest high-speed rail and expressway systems globally, forming an integrated grid that stretches over six million km's. Modern transport corridors link over 80% of China’s county-level regions, encompassing over 90 % of its economy and population. The scale of this network was on full display during the recent National Day holiday, when 2.4 billion interregional trips were recorded. Railways alone carried 213 million passengers, averaging 18 million train travellers daily. Launched in 2021 by China State Railway Group, the CR450 is expected to enter commercial operation in 2026 following its evaluation phase.

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