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Mars · Crater · 1850th largest named feature

Dacono

Town in Colorado, USA.

What Dacono is

Dacono is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Mars, 2.2 km across, centred at 18.3° N, 78.0° E in the Syrtis Major quadrangle. It is the 1850th largest named feature on Mars and the 1166th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Town in Colorado, USA. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2020, under the theme it applies to every crater on Mars. Of the 1237 features of this class catalogued on Mars, the naming categories run United States (137), Russia (110), American (62), Great Britain (52).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
2.2 km
about 2.2 times a 10-minute walk
Coordinates
18.3° N, 78.0° E
Planetocentric, on Mars
Name approved
2020
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Syrtis Major
Map sheet on Mars
Naming category
United States
North America

What it would take to settle Dacono

Mars scores 26.6 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 18.3° N, 78.0° E.

Settlement difficulty here
25.4/ 100
Typical for this world
Mars overall
26.6
1.2 easier than the median site
Ranked
157th
of 2,049 named places on Mars

What this spot has going for it is known ground 29 km from Perseverance (2021). What works against it is water outside the ice-bearing latitudes.

Computed from Dacono'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 Mars (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Mars 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 Mars

All 1,237 craters on Mars — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.