“New Study Reveals Potential Oceans and Life-Sustaining Environments on Uranus’ Moons”

2023-05-06 23:08:00

Four of Uranus’ five major moons have been suggested to have oceans between the icy surface and the core.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on the 7th, a research team led by Dr. Julie Castillo-Loges, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), built a new computer model of Voyager 2’s 1986 close-flight observation data and reanalyzed the results. It was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Until now, only Titania, the largest of Uranus’ moons with a diameter of 1,580 km, had been estimated to have internal heat from radioactive decay and to have an ocean beneath a layer of ice.

▲ Uranus and its surrounding rings and moons observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The other moons, which had been thought to have only the heat from Uranus’ gravity and not enough to form oceans, reversed this.

Uranus has at least 27 satellites, including Titania, Oberon (1,520 km), Umbriel (1,170 km), Ariel (1,160 km), and Miranda. ·470 km) is considered as one of the five major satellites.

The research team complemented the findings from the exploration of planets with oceans or satellites and built a new computer analysis model by reflecting the results of geological and chemical exploration of icy satellites similar in size to those of Uranus.

This measured the degree of heat permeability of the surface of the moons of Uranus, and it was analyzed that it would have served as a sufficient thermal barrier to retain the internal heat necessary to have an ocean.

▲ The internal structure of the five satellites of Uranus.

Along with this, it has been speculated that there may also be a potential source of heat in the rocky mantle, which releases hot liquids to maintain a warm environment, potentially making life possible. Titania and Oberon have been suggested as the most likely.

Miranda, the smallest of the five moons and closest to the planet, once had an ocean, but it was analyzed that it might not last and was frozen.

The team points out that internal heat is just one component of the moon’s ocean maintenance, and that ammonia and chloride may have served as anti-freezing agents and contributed to keeping the ocean beneath the ice layer.

The research team said that these results obtained through the new computer model will help to efficiently build scientific equipment for the future Uranus probe.

Uranus was recommended as a top priority exploration target in the ‘2023 Decade of Planetary Science and Astrobiology’ announced last year by the ‘National Institute of Science, Engineering and Medicine’ (NASEM), an influential American scientist group.

Science Team [email protected]

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