Lupercalia Fossa
What Lupercalia Fossa is
Lupercalia Fossa is a fossa — a long, narrow depression — on Vesta, 82.3 km across, centred at 10.3° N, 117.4° W. It is the 17th largest named feature on Vesta and the 3rd largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Roman festival reflecting the needs of a small pastoral community, involving the sacrifice of goats and youths striking those whom they met with strips of goat skins, held February 15. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2014, under the theme it applies to every fossa on Vesta.
What it would take to settle Lupercalia Fossa
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 10.3° N, 117.4° W.
What this spot has going for it is sunlight — 99% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Vesta gets. What works against it is water — same as everywhere else on this world.
Computed from Lupercalia Fossa'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.