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Io · Mensa · 55th largest named feature

Echo Mensa

Mother of Iynx.

What Echo Mensa is

Echo Mensa is a mensa — a flat-topped elevation with cliff-like edges — on Io, 205 km across, centred at 79.9° S, 5.5° E. It is the 55th largest named feature on Io and the 5th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Mother of Iynx. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1985, under the theme it applies to every mensa on Io. Of the 9 features of this class catalogued on Io, the naming categories run Greek (7), India (1), Italy (1).

Feature class
a flat-topped elevation with cliff-like edges
Diameter
205 km
about 1.7 times shorter than the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
79.9° S, 5.5° E
Planetocentric, on Io
Name approved
1985
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Greek
Europe

What it would take to settle Echo Mensa

Io scores 76.7 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 79.9° S, 5.5° E.

Settlement difficulty here
81.3/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Io overall
76.7
4.6 harder than the median site
Ranked
256th
of 260 named places on Io

What this spot has going for it is ground mixed ground — a rim, a floor and slopes between them. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Echo Mensa'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 Io (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Io 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 mensa features on Io