Moon of Uranus · Updated May 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: corrugated patterns, 20-km-tall cliffs at Verona Rupes (the tallest known cliff anywhere), and chaotic juxtapositions of old and young surface.
View Uranus system in 3D →Key facts
Verona Rupes is so tall and Miranda's surface gravity so weak (1.8% of Earth's) that an object dropped from the top would take roughly 12 minutes to hit 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 →Sources & methodology
Numbers cross-referenced with the sources below; updated May 2026.