NASA has chosen Jezero Crater as the landing site for its upcoming Mars 2020 rover mission. The rover mission is scheduled to launch July 20, 2020 as NASA's next step in exploration of the Red Planet. It will not only seek signs of ancient habitable conditions - and past microbial life - but the rover also will collect rock and soil samples and store them in a cache on the Mars surface. NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) are studying future mission possibilities to collect the samples and return them to Earth, so this landing site sets the stage for the next decade of Mars exploration.

"The landing site in Jezero Crater offers geologically rich terrain, with landforms reaching as far back as 3.6 billion years old, that could potentially answer important questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate."Getting samples from this unique area will revolutionize how we think about Mars and its ability to harbor life."

Jezero Crater is located on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator. Western Isidis presents some of the oldest and most scientifically interesting landscapes Mars has to offer. Mission scientists believe the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) crater, once home to an ancient river delta, could have collected and preserved ancient organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life from the water and sediments that flowed into the crater billions of years ago. Jezero Crater's ancient lake-delta system offers many promising sampling targets.