Mawrth Vallis, Mars: a fascinating place for future in situ exploration François Poulet1, Christoph Gross2, Briony Horgan3, Damien Loizeau1, Janice L. Bishop4, John Carter1, Csilla Orgel2 1Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, CNRS/Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France 2Institute of Geological Sciences, Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing Group, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany 3Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA. 4SETI Institute/NASA-ARC, Mountain View, CA, USA Corresponding author: François Poulet, IAS, Bâtiment 121, CNRS/Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France; email:
[email protected] Running title: Mawrth: a fascinating place for exploration 1 Abstract After the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, both NASA and ESA initiated a selection process for potential landing sites for the Mars2020 and ExoMars missions, respectively. Two ellipses located in the Mawrth Vallis region were proposed and evaluated during a series of meetings (3 for Mars2020 mission and 5 for ExoMars). We describe here the regional context of the two proposed ellipses as well as the framework of the objectives of these two missions. Key science targets of the ellipses and their astrobiological interests are reported. This work confirms the proposed ellipses contain multiple past Martian wet environments of subaerial, subsurface and/or subaqueous character, in which to probe the past climate of Mars, build a broad picture of possible past habitable environments, evaluate their exobiological potentials and search for biosignatures in well-preserved rocks. A mission scenario covering several key investigations during the nominal mission of each rover is also presented, as well as descriptions of how the site fulfills the science requirements and expectations of in situ martian exploration.