Hours from now, the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will leave Earth for Mars. It will land on the Jezero crater, shown in the video below. The planned landing area is marked with an orange ellipse.
Jezero is an impact crater with a diameter of about 45 km. It is found at the rim of the enormous Isidis impact basin. Based on morphological studies, the crater was once a lake some 3.5 billion years ago.
Water on the crater was further evidenced by the existence of an inlet and outlet channel on the crater. The inlet channel discharges into a fan-delta deposit, containing water-rich minerals such as smectite clays.
According to scientists, the Jezero lake was relatively long-lived. The delta may have required 1 to 10 million years to reach its thickness and size. Other studies conclude that the lake did not experience periods of important water-level fluctuations and that it was formed by continuous surface runoff.
These findings make the Jezero crater a primary candidate for the search for signs of ancient life on Mars, given the fact that lake sediments and river deltas preserve organic molecules well.
The video animation was created using image mosaic made from four single orbit observations obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on Mars Express between 2004 and 2008. The mosaic is a combination of data from the HRSC color and nadir channels. The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of the Red Planet as if staring down at the surface.
To produce a 3D landscape, topography data from the stereo channels of HRSC was combined with the mosaic image, which was then recorded from different angles, similar to a movie camera in order to render the flight, as shown in the clip.
The Mars 2020 mission officially starts July 30, when it launches the Perseverance rover to the Red Planet. NASA is inviting everybody to take part in virtual activities to celebrate this monumental event.
Live coverage will start at 7 am EDT on NASA TV, which will be accompanied by a countdown commentary. The event will be broadcasted on the agency's official social media accounts as well, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Theta.TV, Daily Motion, and LinkedIn.
NASA's latest Mars rover is named Perseverance, designed to search for ancient life on the Red Planet. The rover should land at Jazero Crater by Feb. 18, 2021. From there, the rover will start gathering soil and rock samples to bring to Earth in the future.
