Eeloo's history

[LordSlayaton]

Contains Spoilers!!

Eeloo is an interesting planet, far away and on a storage orbit. KSP isn't a realistic game, but that doesn't stop people from forming theories!

Eeloo is covered in ice, with large cracks on its surface. A surface sample from it reveals that beneath a layer of ice is brown soil. For soil to form, erosion must take place. Erosion doesn't occur in a full ice planet. This could mean that Eeloo was a "goldilocks" planet, capable of having liquid water. However, it's very far from that zone. It's eccentric orbit that dips in past jool and then far back out, with extreme ascension and descension, which could suggest it was slingshoted out of the inner system. Of course all this speculation will be undone when it becomes a moon.

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

Contains Spoilers!!

Eeloo is an interesting planet, far away and on a storage orbit. KSP isn't a realistic game, but that doesn't stop people from forming theories!

Eeloo is covered in ice, with large cracks on its surface. A surface sample from it reveals that beneath a layer of ice is brown soil. For soil to form, erosion must take place. Erosion doesn't occur in a full ice planet. This could mean that Eeloo was a "goldilocks" planet, capable of having liquid water. However, it's very far from that zone. It's eccentric orbit that dips in past jool and then far back out, with extreme ascension and descension, which could suggest it was slingshoted out of the inner system. Of course all this speculation will be undone when it becomes a moon.

According to some definitions soil must contain organic matter, so for it to form you need life. The stuff on Eeloo would be called regolith. In any case, the statement that the formation of regolith requires water is dead wrong. It is found on nearly all solid bodies in the solar system, including those as small as 500m long. This is thought to be due to mostly micrometeoroid impacts breaking up the surface, but thermal cycling and other factors may also play a role.

Anyway, Eeloo is basically Europa, but orbiting Kerbol (its orbit resembles Pluto, but its temperature is close to that of Jool). Given its temperature and composition, the brown cover likely comes from tholins, or whatever makes the crevasses on Europa dark. Given its smoothness, the surface must be fairly young, although it hasn't had an art pass like Duna or the Mun. This implies that Eeloo is geologically active. Radioactive heating for a body its size would be too weak, so it will likely eventually get a large moon or parent planet providing some tidal heating.