Study Reconsiders Possibility of Life on Uranus Moons

The Facts

• According to a new study, NASA's 1986 Voyager 2 flyby provided only a temporary understanding of Uranus’s magnetosphere. Back then, it revealed an unusually tilted and off-centered magnetic field, which has since been considered one of the most extreme in the solar system.
  

  Nature

  

  USA Today
• However, a recent re-examination of the Voyager images suggests that Uranus’ magnetosphere was in a rare, compressed state due to unusually high solar wind pressure — a condition that occurs less than 5% of the time.
  

  Nature

  

  USA Today
• The researchers believe there are "two magnetospheric cycles during solar minimum," one due to the planet's "extreme dipole tilt and obliquity," and the other from "quasiperiodically varying solar wind conditions." They suggest Uranus' two outermost major moons, Titania and Oberon, "orbit outside the magnetopause."
  

  Nature