Korolev is an ice-filled

impact crater An impact crater is a circular depression in the surface of a solid astronomical object formed by the hypervelocity impact of a smaller object. In contrast to volcanic craters, which result from explosion or internal collapse, impact crater ...

in the

Mare Boreum quadrangle The Mare Boreum quadrangle is one of a series of 30 quadrangle maps of Mars used by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Astrogeology Research Program. The Mare Boreum quadrangle is also referred to as MC-1 (Mars Chart-1). Its name deriv ...

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

, located at 73° north latitude and 165° east longitude. It is in diameter and contains about of water

ice Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaqu ...

, comparable in volume to

Great Bear Lake Great Bear Lake ( den, Sahtú; french: Grand lac de l'Ours) is a lake in the boreal forest of Canada. It is the largest lake entirely in Canada (Lake Superior and Lake Huron are larger but straddle the Canada–US border), the fourth-largest ...

in northern Canada. The crater was named after

Sergei Korolev Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (russian: Сергей Павлович Королёв, Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov, sʲɪrˈɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ kərɐˈlʲɵf, Ru-Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.ogg; ukr, Сергій Павлович Корольов, ...

(1907–1966), the head

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

rocket A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...

engineer and designer during the

Space Race The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the t ...

in the 1950s and 1960s. Korolev crater is located on the

Planum Boreum Planum Boreum (Latin: "the northern plain") is the northern polar plain on Mars. It extends northward from roughly 80°N and is centered at . Surrounding the high polar plain is a flat and featureless lowland plain called Vastitas Borealis which ...

, the northern polar plain which surrounds the north

polar ice cap A polar ice cap or polar cap is a high-latitude region of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite that is covered in ice. There are no requirements with respect to size or composition for a body of ice to be termed a polar ice cap, nor a ...

, near the Olympia Undae dune field. The crater rim rises about above the surrounding plains. The crater floor lies about below the rim, and is covered by a deep central mound of permanent water ice, up to in diameter.

Ice formation

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 In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than . The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland; during the Last Glacial Period at La ...

. The ice in the crater is part of the vast water resources at Mars poles. Plan view of Korolev crater.jpg, Natural color view of Korolev crater from ''

Mars Express ''Mars Express'' is a space exploration mission being conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA). The ''Mars Express'' mission is exploring the planet Mars, and is the first planetary mission attempted by the agency. "Express" originally ref ...

'' Topography of Korolev crater.jpg, Color-coded topographic view of Korolev crater based on a digital terrain model from ''Mars Express'' data Mare Boreum Map.JPG, Map of Mare Boreum quadrangle with major features and craters labeled Mars NPArea-PIA00161.jpg, High-resolution image mosaic of Mare Boreum quadrangle from the

Viking Orbiter The ''Viking'' program consisted of a pair of identical American space probes, ''Viking 1'' and ''Viking 2'', which landed on Mars in 1976. Each spacecraft was composed of two main parts: an orbiter designed to photograph the surface of Mars f ...

USGS-Mars-MC-1-MareBoreumRegion-mola.png, High-resolution topographic map of Mare Boreum quadrangle with features and craters labeled, from Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) data

References

External links

* (Animated;

ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...

; June 30, 2020) Impact craters on Mars Mare Boreum quadrangle Sergei Korolev Water on Mars {{crater-stub

Ice formation

See also

References

External links