Icy moons are a class of natural satellites with surfaces composed mostly of ice.
An icy moon may harbor an ocean underneath the surface, and possibly include a rocky core of silicate or metallic rocks.
Most known large icy moons belong to giant planets, whose orbits lie beyond the Solar System's frost line; the remainder (such as Charon and Dysnomia) formed around dwarf planets such as Pluto and Eris, typically in large impacts not unlike the impact thought to have formed Earth's moon.
In the case of icy gas giant satellites, an additional requirement is that a moon did not form in the inner region of a proto-satellite disk, which is too warm for ices to condense.
[4] Jupiter's outer two Galilean moons Ganymede and Callisto contain more ice since they formed further from the hot proto-Jupiter.