On February 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater on Mars. The team identified Jezero Crater as an ancient lakebed, illustrated here—as it may have been billions of years ago—filled with water.

“The crater is one of the most promising places to look for evidence of ancient microbial life and to collect samples for future return to Earth,” says Matt Smith,PhD, systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover is the first mission to collect rock and dust particles from Mars, providing insight to the Red Planet’s geology and past climate and opening the door for future human exploration.