Aster › Space program › Miranda
Miranda
Position on the route: 24/45 · level needed 180 · journey (Mk0 engine) 38.1 h
By the numbers
| Diameter | 472 km |
|---|---|
| Gravity | 0.079 m/s² |
| Feature | Verona Rupes: a 20-km cliff |
The story
Uranus’s smallest and strangest large moon: its surface is a patchwork of broken, reassembled and shattered terrain. Verona Rupes, an estimated 20 km high, is among the tallest cliffs in the Solar System; in the low gravity a dropped object takes about 12 minutes to fall from the top.
This chaos may come from a moon shattered by a large impact and reassembled, or from tidal heating. It has never been seen apart from Voyager 2 in 1986.
Missions
- Voyager 2 (1986): a single flyby at 29,000 km
Colony note
Distant, small and icy; watch for the cliffs when landing.
What probes bring back
- Verona Rupes, at 20 km, is among the tallest cliffs in the Solar System.
- It has ‘coronae’ terrain that looks broken apart and put back together.