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Ganymede · Fossa · 43rd largest named feature

Lakhamu Fossa

Dragon monster, or divine natural force produced by Apsu and Tiamat.

What Lakhamu Fossa is

Lakhamu Fossa is a fossa — a long, narrow depression — on Ganymede, 370 km across, centred at 11.7° S, 132.8° E. It is the 43rd largest named feature on Ganymede and the 3rd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Dragon monster, or divine natural force produced by Apsu and Tiamat. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1985, under the theme it applies to every fossa on Ganymede.

Feature class
a long, narrow depression
Diameter
370 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
11.7° S, 132.8° E
Planetocentric, on Ganymede
Name approved
1985
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Assyro-Babylonian
Asia

What it would take to settle Lakhamu Fossa

Ganymede scores 55 as a world. That number is the same for every square metre of it — but sunlight, water, radiation and the ground under your feet are not. This is the same question asked at 11.7° S, 132.8° E.

Settlement difficulty here
54.5/ 100
Typical for this world
Ganymede overall
55
0.5 easier than the median site
Ranked
78th
of 196 named places on Ganymede

What this spot has going for it is radiation geometry under closed field lines, the shielded part of the only magnetosphere on any moon. What works against it is temperature about -157 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Lakhamu Fossa's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Ganymede (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Ganymede and are already counted in the world's own index, not again here.

What this cannot see: elevation. Slope, local shadowing and the polar “peaks of eternal light” — ridge tops near the poles of a barely tilted world that catch sun almost continuously while a crater floor kilometres away never does — need a terrain model this does not have. Where a real mission targets a pole, that is usually why.

What is next to it

The largest fossa features on Ganymede