Verona Rupes: Tallest Known Cliff in the Solar System
Image Credit: Voyager 2, NASA
Explanation: Could you survive a jump off the tallest cliff in the Solar System? Quite possibly.
Verona Rupes on
Uranus' moon
Miranda is estimated to be 20 kilometers deep -- ten times the depth of the
Earth's Grand Canyon. Given
Miranda's low gravity, it would take about 12 minutes for a
thrill-seeking adventurer to fall from the top, reaching the bottom at the speed of a racecar -- about 200 kilometers per hour. Even so, the
fall might be survivable given proper
airbag protection. The
featured image of Verona Rupes was captured by the passing
Voyager 2 robotic spacecraft in 1986. How the
giant cliff was created remains unknown, but is possibly related to a
large impact or
tectonic surface motion.
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