Gale Crater
A ~154-km Martian impact crater and the Curiosity Rover landing site (since August 2012). Hosts Mt. Sharp (Aeolis Mons) at its center — a 5-km layered mound that records hundreds of millions of years of Martian climate history. The crater floor was once a long-lived lake bed.
jeffrey-kluger’s 2026 TIME piece (src-mars-organics-fresh-clues-2026-04) frames the Gale lake basin as ~95 miles wide ~3.5 Gya, predating Mars’s loss of its magnetic field and atmosphere — a habitability window directly relevant to the Curiosity SAM organics result.
Glen Torridon
A clay-mineral-rich region within Gale, formed in liquid water and exceptional at preserving organic matter. Curiosity drilled mudstone samples here in 2020 that, in the April 2026 SAM/TMAH wet-chemistry experiment, yielded more than 20 organic molecules including a DNA-precursor-like nitrogen compound and benzothiophene (src-curiosity-mars-life-molecules-2026-04).
Contrast with perseverance-rover’s Jezero Crater landing site, which was selected to find biosignatures rather than primarily assess habitability.