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Venus · Tessera · 34th largest named feature

Fortuna Tessera

Roman goddess of chance.

What Fortuna Tessera is

Fortuna Tessera is a tessera — terrain deformed into a tile-like pattern of ridges and grooves — on Venus, 2,801 km across, centred at 69.9° N, 45.1° E in the Fortuna Tessera quadrangle. It is the 34th largest named feature on Venus and the 3rd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Roman goddess of chance. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1985, under the theme it applies to every tessera on Venus. Of the 65 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Greek (10), Slavic (5), Roman (4), Egypt (4).

Feature class
terrain deformed into a tile-like pattern of ridges and grooves
Diameter
2,801 km
about the width of the Mediterranean
Coordinates
69.9° N, 45.1° E
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1985
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Fortuna Tessera
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Roman
Europe

What it would take to settle Fortuna Tessera

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 69.9° N, 45.1° E.

Settlement difficulty here
47.2/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Venus overall
43
4.2 harder than the median site
Ranked
1941st
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is known ground 7,235 km from Venera 9 (1975). What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Fortuna Tessera'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 tessera features on Venus

All 65 tesserae on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.