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Europa · Fossa · 64th largest named feature

Eightercua Fossa

Stone row in County Kerry, Ireland.

What Eightercua Fossa is

Eightercua Fossa is a fossa — a long, narrow depression — on Europa, 407 km across, centred at 6.7° N, 19.3° E. It is the 64th largest named feature on Europa and the 4th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Stone row in County Kerry, Ireland. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2019, under the theme it applies to every fossa on Europa. Of the 6 features of this class catalogued on Europa, the naming categories run Ireland (3), France (3).

Feature class
a long, narrow depression
Diameter
407 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
6.7° N, 19.3° E
Planetocentric, on Europa
Name approved
2019
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Ireland
Europe

What it would take to settle Eightercua Fossa

Europa scores 60.9 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 6.7° N, 19.3° E.

Settlement difficulty here
60.7/ 100
Typical for this world
Europa overall
60.9
0.2 easier than the median site
Ranked
58th
of 129 named places on Europa

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 99% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Europa gets. What works against it is temperature about -153 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Eightercua 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 Europa (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Europa 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 Europa