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Vesta · Crater · 2nd largest named feature

Rheasilvia

Rhea Silvia, Roman vestal virgin, mother of Romulus and Remus (c. 770 B.C.).

What Rheasilvia is

Rheasilvia is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Vesta, 450 km across, centred at 72.0° S, 86.3° E. It is the 2nd largest named feature on Vesta and the 1st largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Rhea Silvia, Roman vestal virgin, mother of Romulus and Remus (c. 770 B.C.). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2011, under the theme it applies to every crater on Vesta.

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
450 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
72.0° S, 86.3° E
Planetocentric, on Vesta
Name approved
2011
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Roman
Europe

What it would take to settle Rheasilvia

Vesta scores 56.2 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 72.0° S, 86.3° E.

Settlement difficulty here
59.2/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Vesta overall
56.2
3 harder than the median site
Ranked
99th
of 106 named places on Vesta

What this spot has going for it is temperature about -104 °C mean at this latitude. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Rheasilvia's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 68% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 3 axes were dropped as not applicable to Vesta (radiation geometry, earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Vesta 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 Vesta

All 90 craters on Vesta — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.