Leix Chaos
What Leix Chaos is
Leix Chaos is a chaos — terrain broken into a jumble of blocks and hollows — on Europa, 415 km across, centred at 39.4° S, 136.2° W. It is the 61st largest named feature on Europa and the 3rd largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
In Celtic mythology, the city to which Maeldūn voyaged to avenge his father, Ailill Edge-of-Battle. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2022, under the theme it applies to every chaos on Europa.
What it would take to settle Leix Chaos
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 39.4° S, 136.2° W.
What this spot has going for it is water — same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is ground — broken ground — hard to reach, and worth reaching for the shelter and the exposed strata.
Computed from Leix Chaos'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.