2020-21 United Arab Emirates Winner, Grade 5-6 - Topic: Titania
Sana Kaushik Priyadharshini
School: Pristine Private School
After studying the three moons, I think Titania could be best destination to investigate more in detail. Titania is an airless, cold -334F, geologically active moon and Uranus’s biggest moon about 1,600 km in diameter, which increases the chances that we can go back to spot evolutions. The surface of Titania interests me with a variety of landforms like canyons, scarps, craters, fault valleys with troughs that exhibits reflective frost on sun-facing valley walls, which can be evidence for the presence of water. Since Titania is geographically active, it can be hypothesized that Titania’s tectonic plates can move. This can cause its mantle subsurface ocean to reach the crust resembling Earth; we can even have research centers there in the future. It is quite simple; scientists believe that it takes nine years or more to reach Uranus, but in the following decades, with scientific advancements like the fastest rockets powered by radioisotopes, we would surely reach Titania in about a year.
By reaching Titania, we would have a grand view of the Uranium system, including the major moons, and it provides an extensively large area to have a base camp for a permanent observatory system. Although cold, it exhibits a normal day-night cycle at the equator. I predict that the other side of Titania will have many more depressions, probably impact craters, or halo craters, even more interesting are probably fault canyons which can be an adventure spot on Titania as it presents the strongest gravity of 4% of Earth’s. I think Titania would be best suited for a robotic space expedition. It will help us learn unlearn and relearn the mysteries of its landforms and evolution over these years, which will help us understand and protect our home planet Earth better.