Most of the moon's surface was strip-mined of uridium during the reign of the Galactic Republic, although a huge explosion at one of the mines destroyed nearly thirty percent of the moon's matter some 32 years before the Battle of Hoth. At some point the moon was abandoned.
After the Galactic Empire took power, it rediscovered the moon, planning to use Andoan mineral-fish to extract the volatile uridium. In order to protect the lab, the Empire surrounded the moon with a network of sixteen DTX detector satellites. They called this the Ando Project.
- The Essential Atlas