(ORDO NEWS) — In the latest video from ESA, you can get a bird’s eye view of the area where Perseverance is located.
There’s a reason Jezero Crater was chosen as the landing site for the Perseverance rover: it’s considered one of the most likely places to find any evidence that Mars was habitable.
A video created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express and NASA‘s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provides an aerial tour of the crater.
From above, you can see the water features in this ancient impact crater and understand why it was considered one of the interesting places to explore Mars.
Perseverance landed in Lake Jezero Crater in February 2021. The varied rocks and mineralogy found in and around Lake Jezero tell the complex geological history of Mars.
The crater, about 45 km in size, lies on the border between the ancient region of Terra Sabaea, which contains rocks up to 4.1 billion years old, and the younger Isidis Planitia basin, which was formed by an asteroid impact.
Was there ever water in the crater?
Evidence so far suggests that the Jezero crater wall is cut by three valleys that were once rivers of flowing water. This crater is believed to be an ancient “open pool lake” that once had water flowing in it.
The video also shows an outflow channel extending from the crater wall. Then you can see two channels of the Neretva-Vallis and Sava-Vallis tributaries, located on the western and northwestern edge of the Lake.
The most prominent of these branch off into a crater, forming an ancient fan-shaped river delta where Perseverance landed.
Jezero lies next to an intriguing fault system known as the Nili Fossae and a prominent volcanic area called Sirtis Major, where lava flowed about three billion years ago.
To know for sure, scientists need to study Mars up close. To this end, Perseverance collects samples of Martian rock and places them in special containers that will one day be collected by the upcoming mission.
According to the ESA, this mission in terms of robotization will be more advanced than the previous ones.
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