Vastitas Borealis
What Vastitas Borealis is
Vastitas Borealis is a vastitas — an extensive plain — the term is used for exactly one feature — on Mars, 2,003 km across, centred at 87.7° N, 32.5° E in the Mare Boreum quadrangle. It is the 27th largest named feature on Mars and the 1st largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Classical albedo feature name. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1973.
What it would take to settle Vastitas Borealis
Mars scores 26.6 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 87.7° N, 32.5° E.
What this spot has going for it is ground — flat ground — the easiest thing to land on and build across. What works against it is sunlight — 45% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Mars gets.
Computed from Vastitas Borealis'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 Mars (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Mars 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.