NASA plans to launch a research vehicle to the most distant planet of the Solar System, Neptune. The launch is scheduled for 2031, according to a document published by the space agency.
The Neptune Odyssey mission will cost $3.4 billion, and the spacecraft is expected to reach the eighth planet by 2043.
Space travel is planned using the Space Launch System or Falcon Heavy rocket, which belong to the SpaceX company of American billionaire and researcher Elon Musk.
Neptune's orbit was reached only by the US Voyager-2 research probe in 1989, and a new mission to explore the most distant planet in the Solar System will be the most expensive in history.
Earlier, astronomers from the United States found new evidence of the existence of a hypothetical ninth planet in the Solar System. They confirmed that the clustering of the orbits of Kuiper belt objects is not the result of a systematic observation error and can indeed be caused by a massive object or planet X that has not yet been discovered.
Marina Sovina
