Skip to main content

See Mars’s beautiful Jezero Crater from the air in flyover video

If you’re feeling in need of some travel to broaden your horizons but you don’t have the option to leave home right now, the European Space Agency (ESA) has something special to offer you: A virtual flight over the famous Jezero Crater on Mars.

Visit Jezero Crater on Mars in this flyover created using orbiter data

The video, created using computer simulations from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, begins in orbit and shows a soothing swoop down to Jezero’s location, before switching to a point of view slightly above the surface to show you the view of the crater from above. First you see a pan around the entire crater, then the video goes closer to show the features of the crater in more detail.

You’ll then see some of the most important features in the crater: a long, winding outlet channel where water once flowed out of the crater, then two inlet valleys called Neretva Vallis and Sava Vallis. The reason the outlet channel is so important is to do with how long water was present in this location.

To look for evidence of ancient life, we want to look in locations where liquid water was present. But when we do see evidence that there used to be water in an area, it’s hard to tell how long that lasted. Did the crater only fill with water once, or just very occasionally? Or was it regularly full of water, making it much more hospitable to potential emerging life? Most of the time, we can’t tell which of those is the case. But when it comes to Jezero, we know it must have been full of water for a pretty long time, because the water overflowed and carved out the outlet valley.

It’s pretty rare to have a crater with an outlet valley, and it makes Jezero a particularly good place to search for evidence of life if it ever existed on Mars.

The inlet valleys are exciting as well, as one of them meets the crater edge and then branches out to become a river delta. The NASA Perseverance rover is currently on its way to study this delta, where it should find layers of sediment from different times as well as potentially finding a wide variety of rocks, carried to this location by ancient rivers.

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA’s Perseverance rover shows off its latest Mars find
mars 2020 perseverance rover

NASA’s Perseverance rover is continuing to explore Mars’ Jezero Crater in its search for evidence of ancient microbial life on the distant planet.

The vehicle -- NASA’s most technologically advanced rover to date -- arrived on the red planet in February 2021 in a breathtaking landing captured by high-definition cameras.

Read more
NASA video from space shows Hurricane Franklin churning
watch this video shot from space showing hurricane franklin iss

HURRICANE FRANKLIN IS SEEN FROM THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

NASA has shared dramatic video of Hurricane Franklin as remains out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean.

Read more
See Ingenuity helicopter take to the air in video captured by Perseverance rover
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover captured this video of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's 54th flight on Aug. 3, 2023. After performing a preflight "wiggle check" with its rotors, the helicopter takes off, hovers at an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters), and rotates to the left, before touching back down. The mission conducted the short pop-up flight to check Ingenuity's navigation system.

NASA has released a video taken by the Perseverance rover on Mars that shows its companion, the helicopter Ingenuity, in flight. Ingenuity performed a short flight into the air and back down to the martian surface on August 3, and the rover was near enough to capture footage of the flight using its Mastcam-Z imager.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover captured this video of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's 54th flight on August 3, 2023. After performing a preflight "wiggle check" with its rotors, the helicopter takes off, hovers at an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters), and rotates to the left, before touching back down. The mission conducted the short pop-up flight to check Ingenuity's navigation system. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Read more