Miranda

The patchwork appearance of Miranda in this mosaic of Voyager 2 images suggests that this satellite consists of huge chunks of rock and ice that came back together after an ancient, shattering impact by an asteroid or a neighboring Uranian moon. The curious banded features that cover much of Miranda are parallel valleys and ridges that may have formed as dense, rocky material sank toward the satellite’s core. At the very bottom of the image—where a “bite” seems to have been taken out of the satellite — is a range of enormous cliffs that jut upward as high as 20 km, twice the height of Mount Everest.