Ariel is the fourth-largest of the 27 known moons of Uranus.It was discovered in October 1851 by William Lassell, and named for a character in two different pieces of literature. As of 2012, much of the detailed knowledge of Ariel derives from a single flyby of Uranus performed by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986, which managed to image around 35% of the moon's surface. There are no active plans at present to return to study the moon in more detail, although various concepts such as Uranus orbiter and probe are proposed from time to time. Ariel orbits and rotates in the equatorial plane of Uranus, which is almost perpendicular to the orbit of Uranus, and so has an extreme seasonal cycle. Ariel will be similar to the terraforming of the moon Umbriel.
See also: Ariel Simulation