Mars Rover - 1

This Mars flyover was produced from NASA images taken from orbit. The blue circle indicates the area the rover will probably land. The arcing hills in the centre, about 1600 feet high, form the rim of the ‘Jezero’ crater. The goal of the mission, Mars 2020 is to learn whether life ever existed on Mars. It's too cold and dry for life to exist on the Martian surface today, but at Jezero, a crater formed billions of years ago. Water filled it to form a deep lake about the same size as Lake Tahoe in the American Sierra Nevada. Eventually, as the climate of Mars changed, Lake Jezero dried up up and surface water disappeared from the planet. An ancient lake is a fantastic place to pursue our goal of looking for possible Martian life. On earth, lakes are filled with living creatures: evidence of that life is often preserved in the mud and sand deposited on the bottom of the lake. So we use the Rover's instruments to explore the rocks.