A new tiny moon has been identified orbiting the planet Uranus, according to NASA.
The satellite, spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, does not have a name yet and has been designated S/2025 U1.
First spotted on 2 February by the space-bound telescope, it measures roughly six miles (10km) in diameter and joins 28 other known moons orbiting the icy giant.
Maryame El Moutamid, from the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado and lead investigator on the project to study the rings and moons of Uranus, believes its tiny size is likely to be the reason why it has been invisible to telescopes until now.
“It’s a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft didn’t see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago,” she said.
An image of Uranus taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986. Pic: NASA
“No other planet has as many small inner moons as Uranus,” said Matthew Tiscareno of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, a member of the research team.
Mr Tiscareno said the “complex inter-relationships” between Uranus’ moons and its faint rings suggest the planet’s evolutionary history may have been a chaotic one.
The newfound satellite is about 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 after characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.
NASA said the new moon will be named after approval by the International Astronomical Union, which oversees the official naming process for astronomical objects.
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In 1986, the Voyager 2 probe became the first human-made object to fly past Uranus, giving humanity its first close-up views of the distant planet.
The historic encounter yielded more than 7,000 photographs of Uranus and helped scientists discover two new rings and 11 new moons around the planet.
The new addition could hint at more tiny moons waiting to be found.
“There’s probably a lot more of them and we just need to keep looking,” Mr Tiscareno said.