NASA’s Voyager spacecraft revealed that four of Uranus’ largest moons may hold an ocean layer miles deep between their cores and icy crusts. This is also the first NASA study to detail the evolution of the interior makeup and structure of all five large moons: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, and Miranda.
Out of those four large moons, two of them, Titania and Oberon, may contain water warm enough to support life. This is possible due to a potential heat source in the moons’ rocky mantles, which release hot liquid, thus helping an ocean maintain a warm environment. Miranda, the innermost and fifth largest moon, could also have surface features that appear to be of recent origin, suggesting it could have held enough heat to maintain an ocean at one point.
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When it comes to small bodies – dwarf planets and moons – planetary scientists previously have found evidence of oceans in several unlikely places, including the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto, and Saturn’s moon Mimas. So there are mechanisms at play that we don’t fully understand. This paper investigates what those could be and how they are relevant to the many bodies in the solar system that could be rich in water but have limited internal heat,” said Julie Castillo-Rogez, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
