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Everything you need to know about the Mars 2020 landing site

HRSC’s high-resolution digital terrain models have made important contributions to the selection of numerous landing sites on Mars, including that of the Mars 2020 mission. Accurate topographical information is critical for ensuring a safe landing (see also the film "Flight over the Jezero Crater" from 29.07.2020).

The latest map sheets, each covering an area of over three million square kilometres, can be downloaded from the website of the HRSC team from the map server of the Freie Universität Berlin and at DLR. One of these map sheets (MC-13 East) was used for the image products shown here. This section depicts the wider geographical context around the landing site, located at approximately 18 degrees north and 77 degrees east. The area shown is more than 1.5 million square kilometres (1330 by 1195 kilometres – over twice the size of the Iberian Peninsula) and gives a good overview of the location of the impact crater and the geological context. However, the maps shown here not only provide a large-scale overview of the geographic location, they also provide an outstanding view of details that is exceptional for such large-scale images. The high resolution of these image here allows them to be greatly enlarged for a closer look at individual details of the landscape.

The extraordinary geological diversity of this region helped Jezero Crater finally come out on top after the intensive, meticulous selection of the landing site, which took five years. The crater lies exactly on the border between the ancient highland region of Terra Sabaea, where rocks from the Martian Palaeozoic (the Noachian: 4.1–3.7 billion years ago) can still be found, and the similarly ancient Isidis impact basin, which was formed 3.9 billion years ago. However, its present-day Isidis Planitia plain was formed primarily by much younger deposits formed in the Martian Middle Ages, the Hesperian (3.7–3.0 billion years ago) and the Martian Modern (the Amazonian 3.0 billion years to present day). The nearby Nili Fossae graben system, which roughly traces the shape of the rim of the Isidis basin through its curvature, was formed precisely by this impact as a result of tectonic fractures. To the southwest of Jezero Crater is the volcanic region of Syrtis Major, whose most recent lava flows are also assigned to the Hesperian. Thus, the rocks and deposits in and around the crater originate from all three geological epochs of Mars.