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Europa · Mensa · 87th largest named feature

Belenos Mensa

Celtic sun god, equated with Apollo in that character; found mainly in Aquileia (now at NE Italy).

What Belenos Mensa is

Belenos Mensa is a mensa — a flat-topped elevation with cliff-like edges — on Europa, 34 km across, centred at 42.8° N, 75.1° W. It is the 87th largest named feature on Europa and the 3rd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Celtic sun god, equated with Apollo in that character; found mainly in Aquileia (now at NE Italy). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2019, under the theme it applies to every mensa on Europa.

Feature class
a flat-topped elevation with cliff-like edges
Diameter
34 km
about a marathon
Coordinates
42.8° N, 75.1° W
Planetocentric, on Europa
Name approved
2019
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Celtic
Europe

What it would take to settle Belenos Mensa

Europa scores 60.9 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 42.8° N, 75.1° W.

Settlement difficulty here
60/ 100
Typical for this world
Europa overall
60.9
0.9 easier than the median site
Ranked
30th
of 129 named places on Europa

What this spot has going for it is water same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is temperature about -162 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Belenos Mensa'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 Europa (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Europa 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 mensa features on Europa