Where humanity first flew a helicopter on another planet.
This is the floor of Jezero Crater, an ancient river delta where NASA's Perseverance rover landed on February 18, 2021. It is also where the tiny Ingenuity helicopter made the first powered, controlled flight on another world on April 19, 2021.
Claim your plot here →Perseverance targeted Jezero because it was a lake fed by a river more than 3 billion years ago, leaving a fan-shaped delta ideal for preserving signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is drilling and sealing rock cores into tubes, building a cache that a future mission is meant to fly back to Earth.
Bolted to its belly was Ingenuity, a 1.8 kg helicopter designed to prove flight was possible in Mars' thin air. It was expected to fly five times; it flew 72, becoming an aerial scout before a rotor was damaged in January 2024. Perseverance also ran MOXIE, an experiment that produced breathable oxygen from Martian CO₂.