Is it impossible to terraform the Moon? Its not known how it formed, but it might have been from a slow-speed collision with a smaller object that got torn apart; the debris then encircled the moon and collapsed along the equator. an ancient ring that fell onto the surface. The arguments above only apply if moons orbital radii scale with their host planets Hill radii. 1 shows the regions of parameter space where a long-lived, 10km-scale submoon could exist under the action of planetmoonsubmoon tides (see caption for parameter choices). However, further calculations are needed to address possible sources of submoon instability, such as the non-uniform concentration of mass in our Moons crust.. Are black holes real? 2001). The existence, or lack thereof, of submoons may yield important constraints on satellite formation and evolution in planetary systems. This is consistent with the results of Reid (1973), who found that a factor of 105 in mass serves as a rough guideline for the potential stability of a long-lived submoon. In the Solar System, the giant planets have large collections of natural satellites. Where and when to see the October 2023 annular eclipse, Lunar eclipse on May 5 will be a subtle show of astronomical wonder, Catch a lunar eclipse: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher, Catch two great conjunctions: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher, Mars passes behind the Moon: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher, Search the Moon for festive hues of green and red this December, Totality touches the Moon during the lunar eclipse on November 8, This Saturday, celebrate International Observe the Moon Night with NASA. By Emma Bubola , Salman Masood and Victoria Kim. SNR thanks the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche for support via grant ANR-13-BS05-0003-002 (grant MOJO) and acknowledges NASA Astrobiology Institutes Virtual Planetary Laboratory Lead Team, funded via the NAI under solicitation NNH12ZDA002C and cooperative agreement no. That also means there needs to be enough distance between the moon and planet for the moonmoon not to be snared by the planet's gravity. From equation(, \begin{eqnarray*} We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. I mean, obviously, you have to be outside the moons surface to orbit, or else kapow. 2013). For artists, writers, gamemasters, musicians, programmers, philosophers and scientists alike! Although, the inferred tilt of its orbit might make it difficult for such an object to remain stable. Iapetus, another moon of Saturn, is best known for its highly contrasting bright and dark hemispheres. The most popular? In addition, dynamical scattering events between planets often destabilize the orbits of host moons(Gong etal. Is anything still orbiting the Moon? Outside this area, a submoon would be destroyed or pushed out of orbit into outer space. A submoon's orbit is stable out to a fraction f of its moon's Hill sphere; Domingos . (2012) proposed that a collision produced a submoon orbiting Iapetus. And if youre too close to your planet, it strips away the submoon. A moon that orbits another moon which in turn orbits a planet would be a very rare occurrence because essentially please excuse this space pun all the stars would have to align. Yet submoons of the Moon would only have been stable once the moon was beyond 30 Earth radii. As planetary astronomer Michele Bannister of Queens University Belfast told New Scientist, "I think we can say for sure that there's not a moonmoon that's kilometres across around Jupiter or Saturn. [6], The possible detection[7] of a ring system around Saturn's natural satellite Rhea led to calculations that indicated that satellites orbiting Rhea would have stable orbits. Something, say, ten meters across would be pretty difficult to spot orbiting our own Moon, let alone Titan. Scan this QR code to download the app now. Our paper is structured as follows. The moon revolves around the Earth, which revolves around the sun. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. It is inferred from the empirical study of natural satellites in the Solar System that subsatellites may be rare, albeit possible, elements of planetary systems.In the Solar System, the giant planets have large collections of natural . The Moon may one day in future have an artificial satellite submoon on a stable orbit. They can affect submoons as well, destabilizing them. ), Deimos vs Neptune (How Are They Different? We assume Mp = 4MJ(Teachey & Kipping 2018), k2,moon = 0.12(Gavrilov & Zharkov 1977), and T = 9Gyr(Teachey & Kipping 2018). When it was really close to Earth, the Moons Hill sphere wouldve been very small, even inside the Moon. This is one of the several hypotheses that have been put forward to account for its unusual equatorial ridge. &\propto & M_\star ^{ \left(\frac{13\alpha }{4} - \frac{13}{6}\right)}. Moons of moons The parameter space in which the moon of a specified planet could host a long-lived submoon under the action of planetmoonsubmoon tides. This volume of space is called the Hill sphere. Does the Moon have Moonquakes? For example, using the Earth and Sun, the Earths Hill sphere is about 1.5 million kilometers in radius, well past the Moons distance of 385,000 km. Have you ever wondered whether a moon can have a moon of its own (a submoon)? ), Neutron Star vs Nova (How Are They Different? Moons can have moons and they are called moonmoons It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. 2 that the largest stable submoon is Vesta- to Ceres-sized. The mass of the submoon would be so low in comparison to the Moon and Earth that submoon influence on the Moons or Earths rotation may be excluded from simplified calculations. Depending on the configuration, moons may migrate inwards and crash into their host planets or migrate outwards until they reach the stability limit. Reddit, Inc. 2023. The moon it would orbit would need to be pretty large with a diameter bigger than 620 miles. The possible detection of a ring system around Saturn's moon Rhea led to calculations indicating that satellites orbiting Rhea would have stable orbits. But thats not really what you mean, is it? 2 shows the effect of the submoon size/mass and the tidal quality factor Qmoon on the parameter space available for long-lived submoons for an adopted system age of 9Gyr(Teachey & Kipping 2018). If that difference gets too much, it can rip the object apart! If the moon is too small or too close to its host planet, it might lose its moonmoon to tidal dissipation which would cause it to be shreddedto pieces. Only large moons on wide-separation orbits can host long-lived submoons. Smaller submoons are stable over a broader range of moon radius and distance from their host planet than larger submoons. The Earth's Moon, Titan and Iapetus (two of Saturn's . For much less massive, Solar system-like moons the largest stable submoon was 10km such that the largest possible subsubmoon would be sub-km-sized. Hmmmmm. The rings suspected were thought to be narrow,[8] a phenomenon normally associated with shepherd moons; however, targeted images taken by the Cassini spacecraft failed to detect any subsatellites or rings associated with Rhea, at least no particles larger than a few millimeters. - A new study suggests it's possible some moons could have moons and the internet wants to give them a namebut scientists have yet to actually find one", "The Dust Halo of Saturn's Largest Icy Moon, Rhea", "Saturn satellite reveals first moon rings", "Cassini imaging search rules out rings around Rhea", "How Iapetus, Saturn's outermost moon, got its ridge", "Delayed formation of the equatorial ridge on Iapetus from a subsatellite created in a giant impact", "NASA's Lunar Flashlight Has Launched Follow the Mission in Real Time", "NASA Calls End to Lunar Flashlight After Some Tech Successes", "CAPSTONE Spacecraft Launch Targeted No Earlier Than June 6", Shadow Moons: The Unknown Sub-Worlds that Might Harbor Life, Likely First Photo of Planet Beyond the Solar System, Working Group on Extrasolar Planets Definition of a "Planet", The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK): I. Furthermore, the suspected rings are thoughts to be narrow, a phenomenon normally associated with shepherd moons. Additionally, the multi-agency supported Lunar Gateway human-rated space station is due to begin construction in 2024 in a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), primarily in support of the later stage NASA Artemis program missions to Earth's moon. However, this effect is likely to be small. There are no moonmoons in our solar system, but there are a few moons that meet the size and orbitaldistance requirements: Titan and Iapetus, which orbit Saturn, Jupiters moon Callisto, and Earths moon. They found that four moons in our own . All rights reserved. In addition, if a moon underwent significant outward migration then its ability to host a primordial submoon depends on its initial orbital radius rather than its final one. Right now, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is happily orbiting . A sub-moon is the moon of a moon, or a satellite orbiting another natural satellite. The submoon tidally evolved outwards whereas the debris was tidally pushed inwards to create Iapetus ridge. Can moons have moons? Theoretically, the answer is yes, but there is a good reason why we haven't discovered any submoons around moons in our own solar system. Credit: Cassini Imaging Team,SSI,JPL,ESA,NASA. And weve never seen one. We discuss the possible habitability of submoons and the potential for subsubmoons. It depends on a lot of things, including the masses of the two objects and the size of the smaller one. A moonmoon down to the size of a skyscraper could exist out there, but I'd call it moonmoonlet.". Benz W., Slattery W. L., Cameron A. G. W.. Cilibrasi M., Szulgyi J., Mayer L., Drakowska J., Miguel Y., Inderbitzi P.. Dombard A. J., Cheng A. F., McKinnon W. B., Kay J. P.. Domingos R. C., Winter O. C., Yokoyama T.. Ferraz-Mello S., Rodrguez A., Hussmann H.. Gong Y.-X., Zhou J.-L., Xie J.-W., Wu X.-M.. Grishin E., Perets H. B., Zenati Y., Michaely E.. Hong Y.-C., Raymond S. N., Nicholson P. D., Lunine J. I.. Kasting J. F., Whitmire D. P., Reynolds R. T.. Konopliv A. S., Asmar S. W., Carranza E., Sjogren W. L., Yuan D. N.. Levison H. F., Walsh K. J., Barr A. C., Dones L.. Payne M. J., Deck K. M., Holman M. J., Perets H. B.. Peale S. J., Cassen P., Reynolds R. T.. Raymond S. N., Scalo J., Meadows V. S.. Sasaki T., Barnes J. W., OBrien D. P.. Selsis F., Kasting J. F., Levrard B., Paillet J., Ribas I., Delfosse X.. Williams D. M., Kasting J. F., Wade R. A., Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. Can a moon have its own moon? - Universe Guide Goldreich 1966; Touma & Wisdom 1994). If plate tectonics and a long-lived atmosphere are prerequisites for habitability, then there may be a lower limit on the mass of potentially habitable world. NB In the case of Kepler-1625b-I (an unconfirmed moon the size of Neptune which may be on a wide orbit of Jupiter), it appears that there is also a major orbital inclination which could affect the stability of potential submoons. The Deepsea Challenger displaced about 12 tons and carried a crew of one. ), The Moon vs Mercury (How Are They Different? It may be that while all these moons are dynamically capable of supporting a sub-moon, the formation pathways which could create submoons in the first place are not viable, so that they never come into being. In 2008, some scientists claimed that an electromagnetic detector on board the Cassini spacecraft had found rings around Saturns moon Rhea. Dr. Raymond and his colleague, Dr. Juna Kollmeier from the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington . Both the Moon and the Earth would influence tidal forces on any submoon. This calculation assumes that all moons have bulk densities of 2.5|$\, {\rm g\, cm}^{-3}$|, appropriate for most large satellites of the giant planets. Image credit: Sci-News.com. Do I believe in aliens and flying saucers? Tidal evolution in starplanetmoon systems has been studied in the context of Venus and Mercurys lack of moons(Burns 1973; Counselman 1973; Ward & Reid 1973) and in the more general case of moons orbiting exoplanets on short-period orbits(Barnes & OBrien 2002; Sasaki, Barnes & OBrien 2012; Sasaki & Barnes 2014; Piro 2018). Can Moons Have Moons? - Universe Today Detailed calculations of this are beyond the scope of this work, but we note further work must be done to investigate these effects in any realistic system. If these submoons did not lie in the right place between the Hill Sphere and Roche Limit, they would either have been destroyed or expelled from orbit due to destabilizing tidal effects. (Yes, and no.). In that thread I briefly go over some of the concepts, but theres a lot more going on here. List of nearest terrestrial extrasolar planets, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. So any moonmoons, if they did manage to somehow get into position, would be likely be relatively short-lived. Most of the large regular moons of the giant planets are too close to their host planets to host submoons. [1][2][4][5] Nonetheless, aside from human-launched satellites in temporary lunar orbit, no notable subsatellite is known in the Solar System or beyond. So yes, the Moon can have a submoon. Cookie Notice Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA, the recent possible discovery of a moon orbiting an exoplanet, a paperdoing some pretty interesting calculations about all this, Cassini Imaging Team,SSI,JPL,ESA,NASA, Iapetus has a tremendous ridge of mountains, the disk of gas and dust swirling around a baby star. If the Moon had a moon, then it could give us some clues and new evidence to help further our understanding of how planets, moons and solar systems are formed and how they evolve. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. The paper has yet to be peer reviewed but several astronomers and members of the scientific community are excited about the potential source of information this study could tap into. They also found that a handful of known moons (Callisto, Titan, Iapetus, and the Moon) are theoretically capable of hosting long-lived submoons. The other is that a pair of astronomers,Juna Kollmeierand Sean Raymond, put outa paperdoing some pretty interesting calculations about all this to see if a moon really can have a moon of its own. Of course this could inform ongoing efforts to understand how planetary systems evolve elsewhere and how our own Solar System fits into the thousands of others discovered by planet-hunting missions, Dr. Kollmeier said. We have shown that, in the face of tidal evolution, submoons can only survive around massive moons on wide orbits around their host planets. Interestingly, the Moons Hill sphere is about 58,000 km from its center (or roughly 56,000 km from its surface, accounting for its radius). The loss of the sub was confirmed after a huge search mission. Can a Supplement Really Help You Control Those Pesky Eye Floaters? Levison etal. Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more! document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Astronomy leads the astronomy hobby as the most popular magazine of its kind in the world. The Outer Space Treaty There is no claim for sovereignty in space; no nation can "own" space, the Moon or any other body.Weapons of mass destruction are forbidden in orbit and beyond, and the Moon, the planets, and other celestial bodies can only be used for peaceful purposes. For some, the Hill sphere is inside the moon (for example, with a very low-mass moon orbiting close to a massive planet), or so small that you cant get a stable orbit. To allow for a comparison with the known moons, we re-frame their analysis to ask: what are the physical and orbital requirements for a moon to host a stable submoon with specified properties? In reality the Moon does not have a submoon and nor does any other known moon in our solar system. ), Deimos vs Pluto (How Are They Different? The tidal-dynamical stability described in Section2 is only one criterion for long-term survival of a submoon. For the case of the exomoon candidate Kepler-1625b-I(Teachey & Kipping 2018) we showed in Fig. CNN . A submoon (also known as a moonmoon, subsatellite, or grandmoon), is a natural or artificial satellite that orbits another natural satellite, i.e. In 2014, one astronomers son asked her a tough question: Can moons have their own moon? Sun vs The Moon (How Are They Different? Jupiters moon Callisto and Saturns moons Titan and Iapetus). Its detailed mapping program is identifying safe landing sites, locating potential resources on the Moon, characterizing the radiation environment, and demonstrating new technologies. Thats hard to calculate, but a decent estimate is that youre stable for a long time (like, billions of years) if youre within half the Hill spheres radius. Can a Submoon have a moon? - big-music-library.com If thats the case, a submoon couldnt have formed! Is it possible for a moon to have a moon? Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. The massive planet, Kepler-1625b, may possess a giant exomoon named Kepler-1625b I, which may possess submoons. This makes sense; a more massive moon can hold on to submoons better, but a more massive planet makes that harder. Data collected by LRO have been described as essential for planning NASA's future human and robotic missions to the Moon. To ensure dynamical stability, the host moon must have a Hill sphere that is larger than its physical radius as well as its Roche limit. The moon, for example, would not be able to slowly move away from the planet, as the Moon is moving away from Earth. 2019. The orbit could shrink to the point that it collides with the planet. (2011) and Dombard etal. In the left-hand panel Qmoon is fixed at 1000 and in the right-hand panel the submoon is fixed at Ceres size and mass. We find that 10km-scale submoons can only survive around large (1000km-scale) moons on wide-separation orbits. How poetic! But theres a problem if you get too close to a moon, too. Ive written about it before, specifically in reference to some peoples claim that, technically, the Moon doesnt orbit the Earth (it does), and also in reference to Pluto being a planet or not. But there's still one really key ingredient. Launched June 18, 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is a NASA robotic spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon in an eccentric polar mapping orbit. A submoon of the Moon could only exist sustainably in a limited region of space between the Moon and Earth, with orbit and spin determined largely by the Moon. Can a moon have a moon? Though it's roughly the size of a minivan, with five adults aboard, the Titanic-touring submersible that went missing Sunday may seem small and cramped. Callisto fits the bill of a satellite that could host its own satellite, although none have been found so far, they said. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. It turns out theres an easy answer to this, and a more complicated (but still cool) one. While the Moon would be the main body exerting gravitational force on a submoon, the Earth and Sun are also close enough and massive enough to exert some gravitational pull on any submoon of the Moon, perhaps influencing its exact orbit and long term stability. Where is Earth's submoon? - Phys.org Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara St., Pasadena, CA 91101, USA. Were really just scratching the surface here with how we can use the absence of submoons to figure out our early history, Kollmeier told Gizmodo. In all known planetary systems, natural satellites occur in a restricted dynamical phase space: planets orbit stars and moons orbit planets. And then that delicate gravitational balance would have to be maintained. We encourage detailed studies of the dynamical stability of submoons in this system in particular, but also in the general case of inclined orbits where additional dynamical effects may play a role in long-term submoonstability. 2017). But in the end, it means you cant get a submoon thats too big and close relative to its parent moon, or else itll break up. We may not have a natural submoon, but one day in future our Moon could have an artificial submoon, if NASAs plans for a Lunar Gateway, or some similar space staging post, come to fruition. Each of the giant planets within the Solar system has large moons but none of these moons have their own moons (which we call submoons). In a paper currently up on pre-print resource arXiv, astronomers Juna Kollmeier of the Carnegie Institution for Science and Sean Raymond of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux have called them submoons. Its not proof at all, but its sure interesting. Then every time it passes between the Moon and Earth the orbit changes a little. Stars have planets, and planets have satellites we call moons; but can a moon have its own satellite? On a stable orbit around the Moon such as the one for NASAs proposed Lunar Gateway a submoon would keep humanitys treasures safe for posterity long after Earth became unsuitable for life., Juna A. Kollmeier & Sean N. Raymond. The article titled Can Moons Have Moons? explores that question as well as the requirements that a moon and a submoonmust have in order to survive long-term. The scientific community has been abuzz on Twitter since the paper was published and has given many suggestions for potentialnames for the moon of a moon. Further research and detailed calculations would be needed to investigate these effects fully. Ironically, literally a few days before this paper came out, I speculated about it as well: 2/ Its important to note that the evidence is pretty compelling for an exomoon orbiting Kepler-1625b, but its not proof. The Hill sphere is the area around the planet / host body where the host body exerts the dominant gravitational force on the satellite rather than any other massive objects nearby, such as the Sun. A Moon is a natural satellite of a planet but could a Moon have its own Natural Satellite, a moon?Could a natural object orbit a moon. It turns out you can model this effect using physics and math. The issue has come up recently for two reasons: One is the recent possible discovery of a moon orbiting an exoplanet. In 1988, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully attempted to put two robotic probes on quasi-orbits around the Martian moon Phobos. What is a sub moon? Iapetus has a tremendous ridge of mountains stretching literally all the way around the moon on its equator. However, detecting a submoon around an exomoon would be very difficult. a subsubmoon. By analogy, submoons could have less stable volume in multiple-moon systems, although we do not expect these effects to dominate, particularly at late times. But, as the paper points out, just because no one has ever laid eyes on one doesnt mean that they dont exist. Over time, the tides from a planet affect a moons orbit. ), How Many Craters Are On The Moon? [12] Other candidates among the Saturnian irregulars include Bestla, Erriapus, and Bebhionn. Using Reid (1973)s rule of thumb, a subsubmoon would have to be less than roughly 105 times the submoons mass. Of course, for submoons to exist they must have a formation pathway. We all know planets orbit stars and moons orbit planets. Planets orbit stars and moons orbit planets, so it was natural to ask if smaller moons could orbit larger ones, said co-authorDr. Sean Raymond, from theUniversity of Bordeaux. At face value the exomoon candidate Kepler-1625b-I could in principle host a Vesta- to Ceres-like submoon. Caroline is a writer and Florida-transplant currently living in New York City. A Moon Can Have Its Own Moon And The Internet Wants Them To Be Called Moonmoons. A subsatellite, also known as a submoon, or moonmoon, or a schmoon, is a "moon of a moon" or a hypothetical natural satellite that orbits the moon of a planet.[3]. In the case of Saturn and Jupiter, the other moons orbiting those planets are pretty dang big (Titan and Ganymede are both about the size of Mercury!). For the case of the Earth we assumed a moon density of the Lunar density of 3.34|$\, {\rm g\, cm}^{-3}$|. Even in a stable situation, the Moon is shifting away from the Earth at roughly four centimeters each year, because of Earth/Moon tidal interactions. Factoring in these limits, research calculations suggest that 10km-scale submoons could only exist in orbit around massive (1000km-scale) moons on wide-separation orbits around host planets. We are particularly grateful to Levi J. Buckwalter, whose initial query from 2014 inspired this work. Still, lets assume for this thread its there. This destabilization further restricts the already limited orbital region in which submoons could exist. Can Moon Have Sub-Moons ? || Moon Facts || Telugu info guru And if it did, what would we call it? The Earths Moon, Titan and Iapetus (two of Saturns moons), and Callisto (one of Jupiters moons), are all theoretically capable of hosting a sub-satellite in dynamic terms. This is mainly because massive, distant moons have larger Hill radii that provide more stable volume for submoons. For example, the possible moon orbiting the Jupiter-sized exoplanet Kepler 1625b is the right mass and distance from its host to support a submoon. We are grateful to Scott Tremaine, Scott Kenyon, Caleb Scharf, Michele Bannister, and Dan Fabrycky for useful discussions. Try 3 issues for just 5 when you subscribe to BBC Science Focus Magazine. What it was like inside the lost Titanic-touring submersible | CNN One possibility is that the formation mechanism of planetmoon systems precludes their formation. If the moon is too small or too close to its host planet, it might lose its moonmoon to tidal dissipation which would cause it to be shredded to pieces. It turns out they can exist, but only under certain conditions. [9], It has also been proposed that Saturn's satellite Iapetus possessed a subsatellite in the past; this is one of several hypotheses that have been put forward to account for its unusual equatorial ridge. The interplanetary spacecraft JUICE launched in 2023 will enter an orbit around Ganymede in 2032, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a moon other than Earth's. Tremaine, Touma & Namouni 2009; Tremaine & Yavetz 2014; Grishin etal. The moonmoon needs to be close enough to the moon to be bound by its gravity, rather than the planet's; but not so close that it gets torn apart by tidal forces. The lack of stable submoons could help planetary researchers better understand the different forces that shaped the satellites we do see. Read the rest of our article to find out more. This subreddit is about sharing your worlds, discovering the creations of others, and discussing the many aspects of creating new universes. Canup & Ward 2006; Cilibrasi etal. Looking at its orbital separation and estimates of its mass and size, the new potential exomoon Kepler-1625b-Ialso be theoretically capable of hosting a submoon. Such a slow rotation rate means that any moon-orbiting object would orbit faster than the moon rotates, which would cause the moon-orbiting object to spiral inward toward the moon (rings, by the way, are not affected by this process). You want to know if a natural moon can orbit another moon. It is actually impossible in most cases for a moon around a moon to be stable in the long term because nearly all moons rotate once per orbit so they always keep the same face toward their planet (Earths Moon is the best-known example). Rebeeca Naden/Reuters/Illustration by QuartzA fake depiction of a moonmoon. Reddit, Inc. 2023. By the time it got far enough away from Earth to have a substantial Hill sphere it was too late. Barnes & OBrien (2002) showed that under tidal evolution there is a maximum mass of a moon that can survive for a given time T around a close-in exoplanet. To go another level down would probably be difficult in this scale. We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. As planetary astronomer Michele Bannister of Queens University Belfast told New Scientist, "I think we can say for sure . It will spend about 9 months in the moons near rectilinear halo orbit. Get newsletters, updates and special offers via email from Astronomy.com! Such an outpost may be long-lived, provided its orbit is dynamically stable, and reasonably sized. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. Yes, theoretically speaking, a moon can have its own moon. Thus, the Moon could only host a very young submoon. Titan carried a pilot and four passengersand . Would Having A Submoon Affect The Moons Orbit?