Recent observations by the James Webb Space Telescope show that Ariel, a moon of Uranus, is a strong candidate for a subsurface ocean.
JWST has detected carbon dioxide ice on the surface, on the trailing edge of entities moving away from the orbital direction. Possible cause, an underground ocean!
Uranus is the seventh planet in the Solar System and has five satellites. Ariel is one of them and stands out for its icy surface and fascinatingly diverse geological features. It was discovered in 1851 by William Lassell, who financed his love of astronomy from his beer business.
Ariel’s surface is a veritable mix of canyons, ridges, faults and valleys, mostly caused by tectonic activity. Cryovolcanism is a prominent surface process that causes a constant return to the surface and has resulted in Ariel having the brightest surface of all the moons of Uranus.
Close-up study of Ariel shows that the surface is covered with significant amounts of carbon dioxide ice. Ariel’s rear hemisphere appears to be particularly covered in ice, which surprised the community.
Ariel stands out for its icy surface
At the Uranian system’s distance from the Sun, an average of 2.9 billion kilometers, carbon dioxide usually turns to gas and is lost to space, not expected to freeze.
Until recently, the most popular theory providing carbon dioxide to Ariel’s surface is the interaction between its surface and charged particles in Uranus’ magnetosphere. The process known as radiolysis breaks down molecules by ionization, he writes ScienceAlert.
A new study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters suggests an interesting alternative: the carbon dioxide molecules are being expelled from Ariel, possibly from an underground liquid ocean.
A team of astronomers using JWST performed a spectral analysis of Ariel and compared the results with those obtained in the laboratory. The results showed that Ariel has some of the richest carbon dioxide deposits in the Solar System.
The deposits are not just chips and traces, but total about 10 millimeters on the entire posterior hemisphere. In addition, the results also showed signals of carbon monoxide, which should not be there given the average temperatures.
A future space mission to Uranus
It is still possible that radiolysis is responsible for at least some of the deposits, but feeding from the subsurface ocean is thought to be the main contributor. This hypothesis was supported by the discovery of signals from carbonate minerals, salts that can only be present due to the interaction between rock and water.
The only way to be absolutely sure is a future space mission to Uranus. Such a mission will undoubtedly explore the moons of Uranus.
Ariel is covered in canyons, fissures and grooves, and these are suspected to be openings to its interior. A robotic explorer in the Uranian system will be able to discover the origin of carbon dioxide on Ariel.
In the absence of such a mission, we’re still somewhat in the dark, given that Voyager 2 only imaged about 35 percent of the moon’s surface.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
