Uranus (mythology) three one-hundred-handed giants the Hekatonkheires, and the one-eyed giants the Cyclopes. Uranus imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea. For this fearful deed, Uranus called his sons Titanes Theoi, or "Straining Gods." From the blood that spilled from Uranus onto the Earth came forth the Giants, the Erinyes (the avenging Furies), the Meliae (the
Exploration of Uranus Uranus. A call for a medium-class (M-class) mission to the planet to be launched in 2022 was submitted to the ESA in December 2010 with the signatures of 120 scientists from across the globe. The ESA caps the cost of M-class missions at €470 million. In 2009, a team of planetary scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory advanced possible designs for a solar-powered Uranus orbiter. The most favorable launch window for such a probe would have been in August 2018, with arrival at Uranus in September 2030. The science package may include magnetometers, particle detectors and, possibly, an imaging camera.