Aster › Space program › Sycorax
Sycorax
Position on the route: 68/130 · level needed 190 · journey (Mk0 engine) 38.2 h
By the numbers
| Diameter | ≈ 150 km |
|---|---|
| Year | 3.5 years |
| Distance | 12.2 million km |
| Found | 1997 |
The story
Sycorax is Uranus’s largest irregular moon and orbits backwards (retrograde). Brett Gladman, Philip Nicholson and colleagues found it with the Hale telescope in 1997. It is named for the witch, Caliban’s mother, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Its orbit lies 12 million km from Uranus, tilted and elliptical: a captured body. Its reddish colour suggests an icy body of Kuiper-belt origin.
Missions
- Hale and Keck observations (1997–)
Colony note
Remote and cold; an outpost for ice.
What probes bring back
- Uranus’s largest irregular moon (≈ 150 km), orbiting backwards; found in 1997. Its orbit takes about 3.5 years.
- Red in colour: it may be a captured Kuiper-belt object.