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Venus · Planitia · 20th largest named feature

Rusalka Planitia

Russian mermaid.

What Rusalka Planitia is

Rusalka Planitia is a planitia — a low plain — on Venus, 3,600 km across, centred at 3.0° N, 170.0° E in the Rusalka Planitia quadrangle. It is the 20th largest named feature on Venus and the 9th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Russian mermaid. 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
3,600 km
about the width of the United States
Coordinates
3.0° N, 170.0° E
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1982
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Rusalka Planitia
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Russia
Europe

What it would take to settle Rusalka 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 3.0° N, 170.0° E.

Settlement difficulty here
39.5/ 100
Better than most of this world
Venus overall
43
3.5 easier than the median site
Ranked
2nd
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 100% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Venus gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Rusalka 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.