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Venus · Vallis · 452nd largest named feature

Saga Vallis

Norse goddess in the form of a waterfall.

What Saga Vallis is

Saga Vallis is a vallis — a valley — on Venus, 450 km across, centred at 76.1° N, 19.4° W in the Snegurochka Planitia quadrangle. It is the 452nd largest named feature on Venus and the 32nd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Norse goddess in the form of a waterfall. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1994, under the theme it applies to every vallis on Venus. Of the 72 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Egypt (3), China (3), India (3), Mayan (2).

Feature class
a valley
Diameter
450 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
76.1° N, 19.4° W
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1994
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Snegurochka Planitia
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Norse
Europe

What it would take to settle Saga Vallis

Venus scores 43 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 76.1° N, 19.4° W.

Settlement difficulty here
47.6/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Venus overall
43
4.6 harder than the median site
Ranked
1960th
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is known ground 5,340 km from Venera 9 (1975). What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Saga Vallis'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 Venus (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Venus 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 vallis features on Venus

All 72 valles on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.