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The Moon · Mare · 70th largest named feature

Mare Vaporum

"Sea of Vapors."

What Mare Vaporum is

Mare Vaporum is a mare — a large dark plain — an ancient lava flood, not a sea — on The Moon, 243 km across, centred at 13.2° N, 4.1° E in the Mare Vaporum quadrangle. It is the 70th largest named feature on The Moon and the 19th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

"Sea of Vapors." The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1935, under the theme it applies to every mare on The Moon. Of the 22 features of this class catalogued on The Moon, the naming categories run Latin (20), Great Britain (1), Germany (1).

Feature class
a large dark plain — an ancient lava flood, not a sea
Diameter
243 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
13.2° N, 4.1° E
Planetocentric, on The Moon
Name approved
1935
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Mare Vaporum
Map sheet on The Moon
Naming category
Latin
Europe

What it would take to settle Mare Vaporum

The Moon scores 29.1 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 13.2° N, 4.1° E.

Settlement difficulty here
25.9/ 100
Better than most of this world
The Moon overall
29.1
3.2 easier than the median site
Ranked
13th
of 2,023 named places on The Moon

What this spot has going for it is earth link near side — Earth stands 76° above the horizon and never moves. What works against it is water outside the ice-bearing latitudes.

Computed from Mare Vaporum's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and one axis was dropped as not applicable to The Moon (radiation geometry). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on The Moon 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 mare features on The Moon

All 22 maria on The Moon — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.