Your friend found the Millenium Falcon! Holy shit and a half, how cool is that?

Definitely a millennium falcon. May the force be with us

It looks like a water collection basin. When the dark one with water fills it begins to over flow and fill the dry basin.

I believe this is a lake for testing weapons on small water craft. This would explain its remoteness, relatively small size, odd shape ( one lake can be pumped down into the other to recover any sunken targets ) and is supported do to its proximity to Naval air weapons station china lake.

Looking around this area you can find all sorts of anomalies like this, unusual structures in the middle of the desert with no obvious purpose. If you follow the unmarked roads, you find all sorts of weird stuff to ponder. like that giant circle with a 1 mile diameter about 5 miles south of this feature.

There is an Air Force/Space X testing base (Vandenberg Air Force Base) nearby this. I'd guess it has something to do with that. I found several planes and what appear to be tanks, among other things, scattered in the area.

Edit: I found a Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, just north of Ridgecrest, CA, and a few miles south of the object in question. That still doesn't explain what the thing is though.

Check out the nearby hexagram (thanks Kafirah for the correction) [google.com]

The Enterprise landed in Death Valley?

It's a 4 hour drive from Las Vegas airport. Kinda want to go check it out!

My first thought was, someone found the Millennium Falcon's secret landing base!

something to do with water collection; there are a lot of tanks in the area. But I like the Millenium Falcon premise...

Whatever it is, it appears to have a lid that opens and created the impression of whatever it is exactly opposite from it. Missile silo is my guess. Current administration is itching for a new war, probably getting our old nukes warmed up and ready to go.

It is for weapons testing, part of China Lake. As are the tanks, airplanes, shipping containers and most of the other isolated pieces of machinery out there. They are used for targeting systems development, and sometimes are used for actual live fire practice targets, however that is limited to one hit. There are also villages built to scale of places in the middle east, used by special forces to practice CQB missions. China Lake is one of the most secure military installations, don't try going there to see this stuff, you won't be able to. Even if you know people who work there, you can't get into most areas. I have been to Edwards..and can tell you the b-52s abandoned at 34 49'08"N 117 51'08W were flown there and landed as part of a test to see if a newly developed net could allow the plane to be stopped on the deck of an aircraft carrier. It was landed on the lakebed and stopped by the net, with significant damage to the plane. it was then taxied to the current location, and was blown to pieces by special ops guys practicing their shaped charge skills. This was done to prove to the soviets that we were in compliance with the SALT treaty mandated reduction in bombers. There is stuff all over out there, but you don't want to be caught snooping around on the ground, lot of secret stuff out there.....you see some of it flying time to time. The airspace from the ground to space is off limits to any commercial or private aircraft of any type at all times...I've seen the military jets escorting private planes to landings on the base, presumably to answer a lot of questions about why they were where they were.....

Looks like an old mining operation....

Looks like Charles Manson's "Bottomless Pit".

For starts, this is well outside of Death Valley. It appears to be at the northern end of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. That would explain the boat. If you look closely at what appears at first glance to be a spaceship, you will see the green outline that is very likely algae. That explains why the boat is that close by.

Looking as closely as the zoom in Google will allow it appears that the yellow object just to the right of the pointed part of the southern hole is a bulldozer. By the color I would guess Caterpillar.

Going southeast from the center of the water, almost to the road is a very interesting object that, judging by its shadow, is a rather tall structure. It could be either a very thick wall or a fairly narrow building.

Up the road going east from that object is an interesting piece of machinery.

Given that all of this in a classified area, I don't know that we will ever get answers as to what it is or why it's there.

Not trying to go the conspiracy route but the government does edit Google Earth for security reasons and I can clearly see where a road off to the left had been edited (it's very obvious) for what purpose...who knows. But I don't think your going to get a legitimate answer to this because looking at it to me it looks edited (the two points are different than the rest of "the water" ) so most likely it's something to do with the military

There are a lot of tanks parked in the area, targets maybe?

An odd place to park a boat.

The Los Angeles aqueduct runs along the other side of the china lake naval weapons center,mabie it's got something to do with that, I,m leaning toward the theory that it;s some type of water collection but, I don't know,

I don't know what the pond looking thing is but the speck looking things near the bottom of your image are shaped like military tanks. I zoomed in at the link you gave.
I wonder why the vehicles are sprinkled around rather than parked together.
I wonder if the property is private or military.

I grew up in the northern AZ desert and I saw several strange things over the years (mostly abandoned).

I'm using Google Maps and searched for Darwin, California. I can't find anything like it at or near the town. Do you know exactly where it is located?

What...what is? The map pointer?

You can't possibly be serious.

The boat's kinda funny, though.

I think it is a black splotch on a graphic.

Planted.