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Minerva (Europa) is is the sixth-closest moon of Jupiter, and the smallest of its four major satellites. It is named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. Slightly smaller than Luna, Minerva is primarily made of silicate rock, has a water-ice crust, and an iron–nickel core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is striated by cracks and streaks, whereas craters are relatively rare. It has the smoothest surface of any known solid object in the Sol System. A large liquid ocean exists beneath the frozen ice surface. This is because heat from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives geological activity similar to plate tectonics. There are also water vapor plumes, which are caused by erupting cryogeysers. Before visiting Minerva, Humans thought it was possible that life could exist in the liquid ocean below the surface, but after arriving, no signs of life was found.
Composition[]
Surface[]
Minerva is one of the smoothest objects in the Solar System, due to the lack of large-scale features, such as mountains or craters. However; on a smaller scale, Minera's equator is covered in 10-metre tall icy spikes, which are caused by the effect of direct overhead sunlight on the equator, melting vertical cracks. here are few craters on Minerva, because its surface is tectonically too active and therefore young. The surface is about 90 to 110 million years old.
Minerva's most striking surface features are a series of dark streaks crisscrossing the entire globe. These features on Minerva have been produced by a series of eruptions of warm ice as the crust spread open to expose warmer layers beneath.The effect would have been similar to that seen in Terra's oceanic ridges.
Heat from tidal flexing allows the subsurface ocean to remain liquid.Minerva 's surface temperature averages about 110 K (−160 °C; −260 °F) at the equator and only 50 K (−220 °C; −370 °F) at the poles, keeping Minerva's icy crust as hard as granite. The volume of Minerva's oceans of 3 × 10^18 m^3, between two or three times the volume of Terra's oceans.
Minerva periodically has occurring plumes of water 200 km (120 mi) high, or more than 20 times the height of Mt. Everest. The tidal forces are about 1,000 times stronger than Luna's effect on Earth. The estimated eruption rate at Minerva is about 7000 kg/s.
Conditions[]
The radiation level at the surface of Minerva is equivalent to a dose of about 0.54 Sv (540 rem) per day, an amount of radiation that would cause death in humans exposed for a single day. Without an atmosphere, the Minervan surface is often described as dirty and boring, with interesting shifting to the sub-surface ocean.
Structure[]
Minerva has an outer layer of water as its crust, about 30 km frozen and 70 km liquid water, 100 kilometers in total. Portions of the crust are estimated to have undergone a rotation of nearly 80°, nearly flipping over, proving to early humans that the frozen ice crust was not attached solidly to the mantle. Minerva, underneath the mantle, contains a metallic iron core.
Orbit and rotation[]
Minerva orbits Jupiter in just over three and a half days, with an orbital radius of about 670,900 km. With
Minerva, a human goddess of wisdom and the arts
an eccentricity of only 0.009, the orbit itself is nearly circular, and the orbital inclination relative to Jupiter's equatorial plane is small, at 0.470°.Minerva is tidally locked to Jupiter, with one hemisphere of Minerva constantly facing Jupiter.
The slight eccentricity of Minerva's orbit, maintained by the gravitational disturbances from the other Jovian satellites cause Minerva to wobble slightly. As Minerva comes slightly nearer to Jupiter, Jupiter's gravitational attraction increases, causing Minerva to elongate towards and away from it. As Minerva moves slightly away from Jupiter, Jupiter's gravitational force decreases, causing Minerva to relax back into a more spherical shape, and creating tides and heat in its ocean.
Civilization[]
Initial colonies[]
Minerva's surface is a horrible place for human habitation. Temperatures are on average -170 °C, the frozen crust virtually floats on the sub-surface ocean and can frequently sink into the ocean itself. Minerva's surface receives 540 rem a day, 7715 times the amount that Terra receives. Along with this, the atmosphere of Minerva is negligible and for all practical uses, is a vacuum. This meant that permanent colonies must be constructed below the surface, temporarily within the ice and eventually in the ocean. Minerva has had the largest robotic operation in the Sol system by far, with thousands of them preparing the moon for human habitation. Partial vacuum trains were required for rapid transportation from the surface to the underwater colonies. These partial vacuum trains travel at 600 mph (970 km/h). If these trains were aimed straight down, it would take a few seconds to reach the ocean, protected from virtually all radiation from the kilometers of ice. The first steps of the colonization of Minerva took place in 2148 CE, with the construction of huge heated tunnels to reach the subsurface ocean kilometers in depth. By 2158 CE, the first oceanic pods were deployed to the Minervan ocean to set up the construction of underwater ocean cities. And finally, by 2176 CE, the construction of the first underwater city had been constructed and 1,000 colonists had been transported to the first city. The average Minervan underwater city provides kilometers of space for houses, shops, and farms, etc. By 2213 CE, the last Minervan underwater city had been constructed originally planned in Minerva.
Economy and human geography
Due to the amount of effort that must be put in to allow the human habitation and permanent settlements on Minerva, population density is similiar to Vulcan, quite low. As with both Minerva and Vulcan, cancer rates are anywhere from five to fifty times higher than on Terra, Venus, and Mars. The population of Minerva mainly consists of people there for the beauty of it's vast oceans. Cities are limited in number and frequently hold hundreds of thousands of people.