Jezero Crater is a ~45 km Martian impact crater that hosted an ancient lake and river delta roughly 3.5 billion years ago. It has been the working area of NASA’s perseverance-rover since landing on February 18, 2021.
The crater’s preserved deltaic sediments and clay-bearing units make it a prime astrobiology target and the source region for samples cached for mars-sample-return. The valley feeding the crater, neretva-vallis, is the location of:
- the Cheyava Falls potential biosignature minerals reported in 2025 (src-mars-perseverance-biosignature-2025);
- the Sapphire Canyon sample (cached for return);
- the 2026 nickel-rich iron sulfides reported by henry-manelski et al. (see src-perseverance-neretva-nickel-rocks-2026-04).
”Lac de Charmes” panorama (Dec 2025 – Jan 2026)
Per src-mars-two-sides-panoramas-2026-04, Perseverance captured a 360-degree mosaic (980 images, Dec 18 2025 – Jan 25 2026) of a site nicknamed “Lac de Charmes,” just outside Jezero’s rim — some of the oldest terrain in the solar system. Next destination: “Singing Canyon.”