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In the course of the selection of the scientific themes for the second andthird L-class missions of the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program of the EuropeanSpace Agency, the exploration of the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune wasdefined "a timely milestone, fully appropriate for an L class mission". Amongthe proposed scientific themes, we presented the scientific case of exploringboth planets and their satellites in the framework of a single L-class missionand proposed a mission scenario that could allow to achieve this result. Inthis work we present an updated and more complete discussion of the scientificrationale and of the mission concept for a comparative exploration of the icegiant planets Uranus and Neptune and of their satellite systems with twinspacecraft. The first goal of comparatively studying these two similar yetextremely different systems is to shed new light on the ancient past of theSolar System and on the processes that shaped its formation and evolution.This, in turn, would reveal whether the Solar System and the very diverseextrasolar systems discovered so far all share a common origin or if differentenvironments and mechanisms were responsible for their formation. A spacemission to the ice giants would also open up the possibility to use Uranus andNeptune as templates in the study of one of the most abundant type ofextrasolar planets in the galaxy. Finally, such a mission would allow adetailed study of the interplanetary and gravitational environments at a rangeof distances from the Sun poorly covered by direct exploration, improving theconstraints on the fundamental theories of gravitation and on the behaviour ofthe solar wind and the interplanetary magnetic field.

The Comparative Exploration of the Ice Giant Planets with Twin Spacecraft: Unveiling the History of our Solar System