Why haven't we sent another orbiter to Neptune? The physics of this planet are absolutely wild
Every time I read about Neptune, I'm reminded of how truly terrifying and fascinating it is. It has 2,100 km/h permanent winds on a frozen world with barely any solar heat, a captured moon (Triton) that it's slowly pulling in to destroy into rings, and a magnetic field that literally rotates independently from the planet itself.
Voyager 2 only spent 6 hours there in 1989. With missions like Trident getting rejected or pushed back, the absolute earliest we might return is around 2045.
Why do you think ice giants get so little love compared to Jupiter, Saturn, or Mars? Is it purely the brutal 12-year travel time, or is the scientific justification harder to pitch to NASA compared to looking for life on Europa/Enceladus?
(For reference, this video covers a lot of the specific anomalies that made Voyager 2's data so unsettling at the time:https://youtu.be/ube7fjzEwaE)