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Mars · Labyrinthus · 288th largest named feature

Cydonia Labyrinthus

Named for classical albedo feature at 50N, 355W.

What Cydonia Labyrinthus is

Cydonia Labyrinthus is a labyrinthus — a complex of intersecting valleys or ridges — on Mars, 344 km across, centred at 41.3° N, 12.1° W in the Mare Acidalium quadrangle. It is the 288th largest named feature on Mars and the 3rd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Named for classical albedo feature at 50N, 355W. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2003, under the theme it applies to every labyrinthus on Mars. Of the 6 features of this class catalogued on Mars, the naming categories run Latin (3), Greek (2), Romania (Rumania) (1).

Feature class
a complex of intersecting valleys or ridges
Diameter
344 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
41.3° N, 12.1° W
Planetocentric, on Mars
Name approved
2003
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Mare Acidalium
Map sheet on Mars
Naming category
Latin
Europe

What it would take to settle Cydonia Labyrinthus

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 41.3° N, 12.1° W.

Settlement difficulty here
29.4/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Mars overall
26.6
2.8 harder than the median site
Ranked
2045th
of 2,049 named places on Mars

What this spot has going for it is known ground 1,690 km from Mars Pathfinder (1997). What works against it is water outside the ice-bearing latitudes.

Computed from Cydonia Labyrinthus'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.

What is next to it

The largest labyrinthus features on Mars