Miranda's Thick Regolith Indicates a Major Mantling Event from an Unknown Source

Abstract

We investigated “muted” craters and scarps across Miranda’s cratered terrain. The morphologies of the muted craters are most consistent with modification by regolith deposition instead of erosion or viscous relaxation. We used three techniques to estimate regolith thickness. (1) Analysis of muted crater depth–Diameter (d-D) ratios near the South Polar Terrain Chasma indicates that regolith mantling their floors ranges from 0.3 to 1.2 km thick. Because older craters may have collected more regolith than younger craters, the true thickness may be similar to the highest estimate. (2) Analysis of crater size–frequency distributions across the cratered terrain indicates a thickness of 1.0 ± 0.2 km. (3) Analysis of a central mound within Alonso Crater indicates a thickness of km near Verona Rupes and may represent an upper limit. These results indicate that Miranda has one of the thickest regoliths in the solar system, which has important implications for Miranda’s interior thermal properties. Regolith appears to mantle some scarps within Arden but not Elsinore or Inverness, indicating that Arden may be the oldest corona, contrary to previous relative age estimates. In this scenario, the mantling event was ongoing during Arden’s formation but before Elsinore or Inverness formed. We propose three possible sources for Miranda’s thick regolith: (1) giant impact ejecta, (2) plume deposits, and (3) Uranian ring deposits. We favor the ring deposit hypothesis, which is consistent with the regolith’s large spatial extent, substantial thickness, and Miranda’s slightly spectrally blue color. Follow-up studies that rigorously investigate these scenarios are required.