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Ganymede · Crater · 83rd largest named feature

Melkart

Phoenician; divinity of Tyre.

What Melkart is

Melkart is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Ganymede, 105 km across, centred at 9.9° S, 173.9° E. It is the 83rd largest named feature on Ganymede and the 25th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Phoenician; divinity of Tyre. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1979, under the theme it applies to every crater on Ganymede. Of the 129 features of this class catalogued on Ganymede, the naming categories run Egypt (42), Assyro-Babylonian (30), Phoenician (18), Sumerian (16).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
105 km
about the width of Yellowstone
Coordinates
9.9° S, 173.9° E
Planetocentric, on Ganymede
Name approved
1979
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Phoenician
Asia

What it would take to settle Melkart

Ganymede scores 55 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 9.9° S, 173.9° E.

Settlement difficulty here
53.8/ 100
Typical for this world
Ganymede overall
55
1.2 easier than the median site
Ranked
28th
of 196 named places on Ganymede

What this spot has going for it is radiation geometry under closed field lines, the shielded part of the only magnetosphere on any moon. What works against it is temperature about -157 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Melkart'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 Ganymede (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Ganymede 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 crater features on Ganymede

All 129 craters on Ganymede — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.