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Venus · Terra · 7th largest named feature

Ishtar Terra

Babylonian goddess of love.

What Ishtar Terra is

Ishtar Terra is a terra — an extensive landmass — on Venus, 5,610 km across, centred at 70.4° N, 27.5° E in the Fortuna Tessera quadrangle. It is the 7th largest named feature on Venus and the 3rd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Babylonian goddess of love. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1979, under the theme it applies to every terra on Venus. Of the 3 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Greek (1), Slavic (1), Babylon (1).

Feature class
an extensive landmass
Diameter
5,610 km
about the width of Australia twice over
Coordinates
70.4° N, 27.5° E
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1979
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Fortuna Tessera
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Babylon
Asia

What it would take to settle Ishtar Terra

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 70.4° N, 27.5° E.

Settlement difficulty here
45.2/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Venus overall
43
2.2 harder than the median site
Ranked
1644th
of 1,985 named places on Venus

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 water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Ishtar Terra'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 terra features on Venus