McLaughlin Crater - A Once Lively Lake?

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McLaughlin Crater on Mars may have once been home to a massive lake! That's according to new spectrometer date from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

McLaughlin is a 92 kilometers (57 miles) in diameter and 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) deep. The crater's extreme depth tapped into typically unexposed underground channels of water, which then filled the crater.

Click to see larger, annotated, and captioned version from NASA

MRO discovered clays and carbonates, which only form in the presence of water, on the floor of McLaughlin Crater. We know small underground channels fed this massive lake because there is no evidence of any large outflow channels leading into the crater. Additionally, small channels within the crater end at a certain point on the crater wall, which was likely the level of of the lake.

This new discovery of clays and carbonates in McLaughlin Crater has added even more hope that life once, or maybe still does, exist on Mars. The presence of carbonates in particular indicates that the lake likely had low-acid content because carbonates generally do not remain preserved in high-acid environments. Life as we know is most likely to exist in low-acid environments, so having this knowledge makes scientists think this crater and the underground tributary channels may be the ideal place to search for evidence of past and/or present life.

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Mars Photo of the Day - Mar 3 2012

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Today's Image of Mars was taken by HiRISE and shows a channel-like formation with numerous branches being interrupted by a crater. The feature has a distinctive pink color, and retains a warm temperature at night, which suggests that it is exposed bedrock and not fine-grained materials.

The pink patches in the image below are similar in color, morphology, and geologic setting to larger deposits on Mars that are thought to consist of chloride salts like Sodium Chloride, Magnesium Chloride, and Potassium Chloride. The important thing to note about the presence of chloride salts is that they could only have been deposited by the evaporation of salty water.

Clicking on this image will take you to the original high resolution image from HiRISE. [See their caption for the image]

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Mars Photo of the Day - Nov 9 2011

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Today's Image of Mars is from Kasei Valles, a 1780 km (1100 mi) long set of flood carved channels on Mars. This image focuses on a much narrower channel that was carved into Kasei Valles.

Many channels carved by water on Mars are covered by a more recent layer of lava. In many cases the fissures that released the water, later release the lava that covers the channels, but in the case of Kasei Valles, the lava came from a different location than the water. 

Kasei Valles was carved by floods from Echus Chasma, but the lava came from a source between the Tharsis Volcanoes and only covers the lowlands of the valleys. 

This image links to the original captioned image by HiRISE.

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