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Venus · Planitia · 11th largest named feature

Aino Planitia

Finnish heroine who became water spirit.

What Aino Planitia is

Aino Planitia is a planitia — a low plain — on Venus, 4,985 km across, centred at 40.5° S, 94.5° E in the Juno Dorsum quadrangle. It is the 11th largest named feature on Venus and the 4th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Finnish heroine who became water spirit. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1982, under the theme it applies to every planitia on Venus. Of the 41 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Greek (4), Finland (3), Slavic (2), Russia (2).

Feature class
a low plain
Diameter
4,985 km
about the width of Australia twice over
Coordinates
40.5° S, 94.5° E
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1982
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Juno Dorsum
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Finland
Europe

What it would take to settle Aino Planitia

Venus scores 43 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 40.5° S, 94.5° E.

Settlement difficulty here
41.7/ 100
Typical for this world
Venus overall
43
1.3 easier than the median site
Ranked
303rd
of 1,985 named places on Venus

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 same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Aino Planitia'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 Venus (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Venus 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 planitia features on Venus

All 41 planitiae on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.