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Ganymede · Crater · 70th largest named feature

Gilgamesh

Assyro-Babylonian; sought immortality after Enkidu died.

What Gilgamesh is

Gilgamesh is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Ganymede, 153 km across, centred at 62.8° S, 124.8° W. It is the 70th largest named feature on Ganymede and the 12th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Assyro-Babylonian; sought immortality after Enkidu died. 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
153 km
about the width of Yellowstone
Coordinates
62.8° S, 124.8° W
Planetocentric, on Ganymede
Name approved
1979
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Assyro-Babylonian
Asia

What it would take to settle Gilgamesh

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 62.8° S, 124.8° W.

Settlement difficulty here
61.7/ 100
Among the hardest on this world
Ganymede overall
55
6.7 harder than the median site
Ranked
175th
of 196 named places on Ganymede

What this spot has going for it is water same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is radiation geometry inside the open-field polar cap, where the plasma gets down.

Computed from Gilgamesh'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.