00:03After a thousand sunrises on Mars, here's where NASA's Perseverance rover is exploring now.
00:09A river environment, billions of years old, that tells a dynamic story of the forces that shaped it.
00:14Let's take a tour of this area and see where we'll send the rover next.
00:19Perseverance is exploring Jezero equator, where an ancient lake and river system once existed.
00:24If microbes ever lived here, signs of them could be preserved in these rocks.
00:29About three and a half billion years ago, a river carved a canyon through the crater rim,
00:34filling the crater with water and depositing sand and rocks that formed a delta.
00:38On Earth, the record of such an ancient river and lake would have been erased long ago.
00:43That's why sending a robotic explorer like Perseverance is so valuable.
00:47Mars is a special place that preserves a unique record of things that happened in the first billion years of
00:51the solar system.
00:54In this area, different rock layers record different parts of the crater's history.
00:59The flat, light-colored rocks were deposited on the banks of a river, flowing slowly across the landscape.
01:04The boulders in the distance were deposited later, in what was likely a raging torrent.
01:10And if this peculiar outcrop caught your attention, it did ours as well.
01:14It doesn't look like sediment at all.
01:16Perhaps it's a remnant of a lava flow, now mostly eroded away.
01:19Lab equipment on Earth can accurately measure when a volcanic rock was formed.
01:23So if we can return a sample of this lava to Earth in the future, we may know when and
01:28for how long water flowed into Jezero.
01:32From here, Perseverance will continue west.
01:35In the distance, you can trace the tops of the natural levees that formed at the near and far banks
01:39of the river.
01:45The rover will pass this area on its way upstream, continuing toward this spot where the river carved through the
01:51crater wall.
01:52You can see the canyon on the horizon here.
01:59From there, Perseverance will be well positioned to head south and ascend this natural ramp that leads up and out
02:05of the crater.
02:06We're lucky to have a route the rover can safely drive up the rim right where we need it.
02:11Starting the climb would mark a new and exciting phase of the mission, exploring rocks far older than those in
02:16Jezero,
02:17and produced in an entirely different way.
02:19One tempting target are these light-colored rocks part way up the rim.
02:23They may have interacted with hot water in a hydrothermal environment, another exciting place to hunt for evidence of past
02:28life.
02:30Since finishing its study of the crater floor, Perseverance has been climbing the delta
02:34and piecing together the history of this once watery environment.
02:38We've come a long way in nearly three years of exploring and collecting samples, but there's still so much more
02:43to investigate.
02:44Follow the journey at mars.nasa.gov.
02:47slash perseverance.
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