Sebastian Oscar Valloud
Grade: 5
School: St Rosa of Lima
City: Mississauga, Ontario
Topic: Titania
We have only seen so little of the biggest of Uranus' moon, Titania.
When Voyager 2 photographed Titania during its flyby of Uranus in January 1986, it could only photograph 40% of the moon's surface, 24% with the precision required for geological mapping which means there is a lot more out there on Titania that we have yet to see. No other spacecraft has inspected the moon ever since.
I would like to send a spacecraft because scientists confirmed by sending the Cassini probe that there are subsurface oceans on Europa and there is a chance that there might be water on Titania too, because these two moons share similarities like signs of cryovolcanism (volcanoes that spew water, ammonia or methane instead of molten rock) as well as an icy mantle.
Where there's water there may be life and I would say it is worth exploring, besides water is a short supply to some people on earth.
The moon itself is too cold, its temperature is -230 Co and a new NASA spacesuit can only withstand -190 C. The best way to learn more about Titania is by sending probes, or any kind of mechanical robot that can gather information from the unexplored moon, similar to robots they sent to mars like Pathfinder, Curiosity etc.
Carbon dioxide was detected in Titania’s atmosphere, as scientists observed by Voyager 2 and if it is present, it means it has the same kind of atmosphere that Callisto has; (the second biggest moon of Jupiter) and that might hold some extraterrestrial life. It Takes 8.7 days for Titania to complete one full rotation on its side. That is about 8 days and 17 hours on Earth; that is a lot of time, you could make an Igloo on Titania!
