Moons of Uranus perturbations at apoapse cause the moons to acquire large eccentricities that lead to collisions with inner satellites or ejection. The lifetime of moons in the instability region is from 10 million to a billion years. Margaret is the only known irregular prograde moon of Uranus, and it currently has the most eccentric orbit of any moon in the Solar System, though Neptune's moon Nereid has a higher mean eccentricity. As of 2008, Margaret's eccentricity is 0.7979. The Uranian moons are listed here by orbital period, from shortest to longest. Moons massive enough for their surfaces to have collapsed into a
Solar System in fiction close to the Sun and its surface was exposed to extremes of temperature. The asteroids were too tiny and airless. By the early 20th century, prospects for life in the Solar System focused on Venus, the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and especially Mars. With the onset of the Space Age, planetary probes cast increasing doubt on the likelihood of extraterrestrial life in the Solar System, at least life of any magnitude greater than organisms such as bacteria. By the mid-1960s, it was firmly established that life could have no foothold on the hostile surfaces of Mercury or Venus,