Moon of Uranus · Updated October 2026
Miranda.
Miranda is the smallest of Uranus's five major moons at just 472 km across, but its surface has some of the most extreme terrain in the solar system: three ridged "coronae" found nowhere else, fault canyons up to 12 times as deep as the Grand Canyon, the long scarp of Verona Rupes, and chaotic juxtapositions of old and young surface.
View Uranus system in 3D →Key facts
Miranda's surface gravity is under 1% of Earth's (about 0.077 m/s²), and its cliffs are so tall that a rock dropped off the highest one would take a full 10 minutes to reach the bottom.
About Miranda
Two leading explanations for Miranda's patchwork surface: a catastrophic impact that broke the moon apart and reassembled it, or partial differentiation arrested mid-process. Voyager 2 saw Miranda only briefly in 1986; we've had no closer look since.
How to view Miranda in 3D
Miranda orbits Uranus in real time inside the interactive viewer. Open the parent body to see the orbital geometry, or use the object browser to fly directly to the moon and observe its rotation, surface, and orbit.
Open the Uranus system →More about Uranus
Sources & methodology
Numbers cross-referenced with the sources below; updated October 2026.