Sacajawea Patera
What Sacajawea Patera is
Sacajawea Patera is a patera — an irregular or scalloped-edged crater, usually volcanic — on Venus, 233 km across, centred at 64.3° N, 24.6° W in the Lakshmi Planum quadrangle. It is the 686th largest named feature on Venus and the 1st largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Shoshoni Indian woman who served as an interpreter for the Lewis & Clark expedition to the Pacific Northwest (1786-1812). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1982, under the theme it applies to every patera on Venus. Of the 72 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run American (13), Russia (11), Great Britain (5), France (4).
What it would take to settle Sacajawea Patera
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 64.3° N, 24.6° W.
What this spot has going for it is known ground — 4,530 km from Venera 9 (1975). What works against it is water — same as everywhere else on this world.
Computed from Sacajawea Patera'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 patera features on Venus
All 72 paterae on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.