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Planitia Descensus

Luna 9 landing site ("plain of descent").

What Planitia Descensus is

Planitia Descensus is a planitia — a low plain — on The Moon, centred at 7.2° N, 64.2° W in the Hevelius quadrangle.

Where the name comes from

Luna 9 landing site ("plain of descent"). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1970.

Feature class
a low plain
Diameter
Not catalogued
Coordinates
7.2° N, 64.2° W
Planetocentric, on The Moon
Name approved
1970
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Hevelius
Map sheet on The Moon
Naming category
Latin
Europe

What it would take to settle Planitia Descensus

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 7.2° N, 64.2° W.

Settlement difficulty here
25/ 100
Better than most of this world
The Moon overall
29.1
4.1 easier than the median site
Ranked
2nd
of 2,023 named places on The Moon

What this spot has going for it is earth link near side — Earth stands 26° above the horizon and never moves. What works against it is water outside the ice-bearing latitudes.

Computed from Planitia Descensus'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