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Ganymede · Crater · 159th largest named feature

Humbaba

Babylonian terrifying guardian of the cedar forests.

What Humbaba is

Humbaba is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Ganymede, 40 km across, centred at 55.1° S, 67.3° W. It is the 159th largest named feature on Ganymede and the 94th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Babylonian terrifying guardian of the cedar forests. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2000, 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
40 km
about a marathon
Coordinates
55.1° S, 67.3° W
Planetocentric, on Ganymede
Name approved
2000
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Bangladesh
Asia

What it would take to settle Humbaba

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 55.1° S, 67.3° W.

Settlement difficulty here
61/ 100
Among the hardest on this world
Ganymede overall
55
6 harder than the median site
Ranked
160th
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 Humbaba'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.