PIA24172: Ancient Jezero Crater (Illustration)


Ancient Jezero Crater (Illustration)

Caption:

This illustration shows Jezero Crater — the landing site of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover — as it may have looked billions of years go on Mars, when it was a lake. An inlet and outlet are also visible on either side of the lake.

Background Info:

A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA in cooperation with the European Space Agency, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Mars
System
Target Type Planet
Mission Mars 2020
Instrument Host Perseverance
Host Type Rover
Instrument
Detector
Extra Keywords Color, Crater, Dust
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2020-10-20
Date in Caption
Image Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24172
Identifier PIA24172