Newton Tholus
What Newton Tholus is
Newton Tholus is a tholus — a small domical mountain or hill — on Mars, 80.4 km across, centred at 40.5° S, 165.1° W in the Phaethontis quadrangle. It is the 750th largest named feature on Mars and the 12th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Named for nearby crater, Newton. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2020, under the theme it applies to every tholus on Mars. Of the 29 features of this class catalogued on Mars, the naming categories run Greek (16), Latin (9), China (3), Great Britain (1).
What it would take to settle Newton Tholus
Mars scores 26.6 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 40.5° S, 165.1° W.
What this spot has going for it is known ground — 1,831 km from Spirit (2004). What works against it is water — outside the ice-bearing latitudes.
Computed from Newton Tholus's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 74% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Mars (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Mars 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 tholus features on Mars
All 29 tholi on Mars — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.