page_title: McLaughlin (Martian crater)
hierarchical_section_title: McLaughlin (Martian crater)
caption_attribution_description: English: PIA20338: Mars 2020 Candidate Landing Site in McLaughlin Crater http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20338 Browse image =&gt; http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA20338_fig1.jpg McLaughlin Crater (21.9 N, 337.6 E) is a large, approximately 95-kilometer diameter impact crater located north of Mawrth Vallis, in Arabia Terra, a region that was made famous by the book and movie "The Martian" by Andy Weir. McLaughlin Crater straddles three major terrain types: the Northern lowlands, the Southern highlands and the Mawrth Vallis region. The crater floor is thought to be covered by clays and carbonates that were deposited in a deep lake at least 3.8 billion years ago perhaps by ground water upwelling from beneath the crater floor (Michalski et al., 2013, Nature Geoscience). McLaughlin Crater is listed as a candidate landing site for the 2020 Mars surface mission. Although it is described as a "flat, low-risk and low-elevation landing zone," the region in this image on the southern floor of the crater shows a complex surface of eroded layers that are rough in places. An unusual feature is a straight fracture cutting diagonally across the layered material at the bottom portion of the image that may be a fault line. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace &amp; Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
context_page_description: McLaughlin Crater is an old crater in the Oxia Palus quadrangle of Mars, located at 21.9°N 337.63°E. It is 90.92 km in diameter and 2.2 km deep. The crater was named after Dean B. McLaughlin, an American astronomer. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found evidence that the water came from beneath the surface between 3.7 billion and 4 billion years ago and remained long enough to make carbonate-related clay minerals found in layers. McLaughlin Crater, one of the deepest craters on Mars, contains Mg-Fe clays and carbonates that probably formed in a groundwater-fed alkaline lake. This type of lake could have had a massive biosphere of microscopic organisms.
context_section_description: McLaughlin Crater is an old crater in the Oxia Palus quadrangle of Mars, located at 21.9°N 337.63°E. It is 90.92 km (56.50 mi) in diameter and 2.2 km (1.4 mi) deep. The crater was named after Dean B. McLaughlin, an American astronomer (1901-1965). The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found evidence that the water came from beneath the surface  between 3.7 billion and 4 billion years ago and remained long enough to make carbonate-related clay minerals found in layers.  McLaughlin Crater, one of the deepest craters on Mars, contains Mg-Fe clays and carbonates that probably formed in a groundwater-fed alkaline lake.  This type of lake could have had a massive biosphere of microscopic organisms.
caption: McLaughlin crater - close-up
  (released 14 January 2016).
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