A MARTIAN CRATER
Korolev Crater on Mars is located in the far north of that planet, in the low plains that surround the northern polar regions. Its site is marked by a red star at the upper left of the topographic map below.
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/treiman/greatdesert/workshop/marsmaps1/marsmaps1_imgs/mola_color_2.jpg
The colors here represent elevation above or below the mean, and blue areas are well below that mean. Mars’s northern plains are thought to be the site of a water ocean that covered the area early in its history.
What makes Korolev Crater special? Take a look.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Perspective_view_of_Korolev_crater.jpg
That is water ice filling the crater. Lots of ice. 530 cubic miles, 584 trillion gallons. Water is of course the essential ingredient for life as we know it. If humans are ever to inhabit Mars, water will supply the needs of both people and rockets. Water can be split into its component element, hydrogen and oxygen—rocket fuel.
Korolev’s location is key to why it, and not other craters, is filled with ice. Mars is a cold place but its polar regions, just as on Earth, are colder still. Further, “the ice is permanently stable because the crater acts as a natural cold trap. The thin Martian air above the crater ice is colder than air surrounding the crater; the colder local atmosphere is also heavier so it sinks to form a protective layer, insulating the ice, shielding it from melting and evaporation. Recent research indicates that the ice deposit formed in place within the crater and was not previously part of a once-larger polar ice sheet. The ice in the crater is part of the vast water resources at the poles of the planet.” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korolev_(Martian_crater)]
There is also a Korolev Crater on the far side of the moon that is most definitely NOT filled with water ice.
A ROCKET DESIGNER
Sergei Korolev was a Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer, the man who designed the rockets and spacecraft that sent Soviet cosmonauts to all the space firsts they established in the early 1960s. Unknown even to some of the Soviet cosmonauts and certainly to the West as anything other than Chief Designer (due to fears for his life during the Cold War), his identity was revealed only after his untimely death in 1966.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/The_Soviet_Union_1969_CPA_3731_stamp_%28Sergei_Korolev%29.jpg/1920px-The_Soviet_Union_1969_CPA_3731_stamp_%28Sergei_Korolev%29.jpg
Korolev on a 1969 Soviet stamp
Korolev was imprisoned during the Stalin years, and his health suffered as a result. Despite his doctor’s orders that he not work so intensely, he continued to do so. He died in January 1966 during surgery, the details of which still remain obscure.
The Soviet lunar program suffered as a result. They never had a single agency like NASA leading their program; there were competing groups who just couldn’t pull off the technical feats necessary to send people to the moon.
A TELEVISION SERIES
I have been a big fan of the alternate history TV series For All Mankind. According to its creator, the divergence point of its alternate timeline is that Korolev survives, and that Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, not American astronaut Neil Armstrong, is the first person to walk on the moon.
A crater on the moon, a crater on Mars, a TV show based on his survival being a turning point in history—all this is testament to the importance of a man who was mostly unknown during his lifetime.
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