Sisyphi Cavi
What Sisyphi Cavi is
Sisyphi Cavi is a cavus — a hollow or irregular steep-sided depression — on Mars, 424 km across, centred at 72.2° S, 6.3° W in the Mare Australe quadrangle. It is the 230th largest named feature on Mars and the 4th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Classical albedo feature name. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1976, under the theme it applies to every cavus on Mars. Of the 29 features of this class catalogued on Mars, the naming categories run Latin (10), Greek (9), Roman (2), Indonesia (2).
What it would take to settle Sisyphi Cavi
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 72.2° S, 6.3° W.
What this spot has going for it is water — inside the polar zone where Mars keeps its ice. What works against it is sunlight — 49% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Mars gets.
Computed from Sisyphi Cavi'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 cavus features on Mars
All 29 cavi on Mars — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.