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The Moon · Statio · 2004th largest named feature

Guang Han Gong

Moon palace where Chang-E and Yutu lived in Chinese mythology; Chang’e-3 landing site.

What Guang Han Gong is

Guang Han Gong is a statio — a landing site — the only class named after a human arrival — on The Moon, 0.1 km across, centred at 44.1° N, 19.5° W in the Sinus Iridum quadrangle. It is the 2004th largest named feature on The Moon and the 1st largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Moon palace where Chang-E and Yutu lived in Chinese mythology; Chang’e-3 landing site. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2015, under the theme it applies to every statio on The Moon. Of the 4 features of this class catalogued on The Moon, the naming categories run China (3), Latin (1).

Feature class
a landing site — the only class named after a human arrival
Diameter
0.1 km
about 10.0 times shorter than a 10-minute walk
Coordinates
44.1° N, 19.5° W
Planetocentric, on The Moon
Name approved
2015
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Sinus Iridum
Map sheet on The Moon
Naming category
China
Asia

What it would take to settle Guang Han Gong

The Moon scores 29.1 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 44.1° N, 19.5° W.

Settlement difficulty here
27.1/ 100
Better than most of this world
The Moon overall
29.1
2 easier than the median site
Ranked
269th
of 2,023 named places on The Moon

What this spot has going for it is ground flat ground — the easiest thing to land on and build across. What works against it is water outside the ice-bearing latitudes.

Computed from Guang Han Gong's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and one axis was dropped as not applicable to The Moon (radiation geometry). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on The Moon 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 statio features on The Moon