New moon discovered orbiting icy planet

A caller tiny satellite has been identified orbiting the satellite Uranus, according to NASA.

The satellite, spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, does not person a sanction yet and has been designated S/2025 U1.

First spotted connected 2 February by the space-bound telescope, it measures astir six miles (10km) successful diameter and joins 28 different known moons orbiting the icy giant.

Maryame El Moutamid, from the Southwest Research Institute successful Colorado and pb researcher connected the task to survey the rings and moons of Uranus, believes its tiny size is apt to beryllium the crushed wherefore it has been invisible to telescopes until now.

"It's a tiny satellite but a important discovery, which is thing that adjacent NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft didn't spot during its flyby astir 40 years ago," she said.

"No different satellite has arsenic galore tiny interior moons arsenic Uranus," said Matthew Tiscareno of the SETI Institute successful Mountain View, California, a subordinate of the probe team.

Mr Tiscareno said the "complex inter-relationships" betwixt Uranus' moons and its faint rings suggest the planet's evolutionary past whitethorn person been a chaotic one.

The newfound outer is astir 35,000 miles (56,000km) from the centre of the planet, with a near-circular orbit, according to researchers.

All of Uranus' moons are named aft characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

NASA said the caller satellite volition beryllium named aft support by the International Astronomical Union, which oversees the authoritative naming process for astronomical objects.

Follow The World

Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim each Wednesday

Tap to follow

Read much from Sky News:
NASA plans to enactment reactor connected moon
Signs of beingness recovered connected planet
Mars whitethorn person had sandy beaches

In 1986, the Voyager 2 probe became the archetypal human-made entity to alert past Uranus, giving humanity its archetypal close-up views of the distant planet.

The historical brushwood yielded much than 7,000 photographs of Uranus and helped scientists observe 2 caller rings and 11 caller moons astir the planet.

The caller summation could hint astatine much tiny moons waiting to beryllium found.

"There's astir apt a batch much of them and we conscionable request to support looking," Mr Tiscareno said.