Concept
Jezero is a crater on Mars in the Syrtis Major quadrangle, about in diameter. Thought to have once been flooded with water, the crater contains a fan-delta deposit rich in clays. The lake in the crater was present when valley networks were forming on Mars. Besides having a delta, the crater shows point bars and inverted channels. From a study of the delta and channels, it was concluded that the lake inside the crater probably formed during a period in which there was continual surface runoff. In 2007, following the discovery of its ancient lake, the crater was named after Jezero, Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of several eponymous towns in the country. In some Slavic languages, the word jezero means 'lake'. In November 2018, it was announced that Jezero had been chosen as the landing site for the rover Perseverance as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. In November 2020, evidence of boulder falls was found on the slopes of the delta deposits that the rover is planned to explore, on the wall of Jezero itself as well as on the wall of Dacono, a small crater in diameter on the floor of Jezero. Perseverance successfully landed in the crater on 18 February 2021. On 5 March 2021, NASA named the landing site of the rover Octavia E. Butler Landing. Séítah (pronounced /sei˥tha˩x/, meaning 'amidst the sand' in Navajo) – potentially the oldest, accessible geologic units in Jezero Crater with multiple outcrops between the numerous sand ripples; location where Perseverance started the first year of its scientific campaign and took the first core samples. In December 2021, NASA announced that some of the rocks in Jezero in Séítah were igneous. When examined closely, rocks revealed the mineral olivine surrounded by the mineral pyroxene. That arrangement happens in thick magma bodies and geologists call this type of texture "Cumulate." Carbonate and sulfate minerals were also detected which means that the rocks had been altered by water. The instrument used for this analysis was the Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry (PIXL).
