Jezero Crater

Jezero Crater is an impact crater on Mars selected as the landing site for NASA’s Perseverance rover. Evidence indicates that the crater once contained a lake and an ancient river delta. That setting makes its rocks and sediments relevant to the study of Mars’s past habitability. Perseverance landed at Jezero on 18 February 2021 and conducts geological and astrobiological investigations there. The crater therefore provides a study context that brings together an ancient lake, a river delta, and preserved materials within an impact crater. Evidence for those former features supports investigation of conditions related to past habitability, but it does not by itself establish that life existed there. The rover’s work at the site is geological and astrobiological in scope.