Miranda is the smallest of the five main satellites on the planet Uranus and the last to be discovered before the Uranus flyby by the space probe Voyager 2. Discovered by Gerard Kuiper in 1948, Miranda is named after a character from a play from Shakespeare. Miranda is a quasi-spherical body 472 km in diameter. Miranda's surface is made up mostly of ice water, with the interior possibly made up of siliceous rocks and methane-rich compounds, and geologically, Miranda has been the most active body in the Solar System. The inclination of Miranda's orbit (4.3°) is very high for a body so close to its planet, and it is speculated that at some point it was in 3:1 orbital resonance with Umbriel and that the friction caused by tidal forces. It would have caused a warming inside the satellite and be the origin of the geological and cryovolcanic activity.
