"We are definitely in the right place".
A sigh of relief broke out from the scientific team of the American space agency NASA that operates the Perseverance rover in its exploration of Mars.
The researchers are now certain that they have sent the robot to the place where it is most likely to find traces of life.
Rover landed in the Jezero crater in February of this year and has been sending thousands of photos to Earth since then.
The interpretation of the photographs will soon be published in the form of the first scientific paper on this topic in a professional journal Science (this week's edition of Science Magazine).
The analysis confirmed that the rover is currently at the bottom of a former large lake into which a meandering river flowed from the west.
We are talking about the events of 3.5 billion years ago, when the climate on the Red Planet was much more moderate.
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Based on the material collected by the Istrajnost rover, scientists are now certain that at the mouth of the river into the lake, the water slowed down, and sedimentation formed a delta - a kind of river island that can be found all over the planet Earth.
It is possible that microorganisms lived in such conditions and that their traces were preserved.
"People ask me what's new here, didn't we know before that there is a delta in the Jezero crater - and the answer is that we didn't know, we could only guess based on images from orbit, but now that we are on the spot, we are absolutely sure," says Professor Sanjiv Gupta from Imperial College London, one of the co-authors of the scientific paper.
"It is possible that it is an alluvial fan," he says.
It is a fan-shaped accumulation of sediments - the top is the source point of the sediments, and it is formed due to natural phenomena such as strong, rapid floods.
However, it is not a suitable environment for living.
Microbes on Mars, provided they existed, would prefer to live in calmer waters, say around a delta.
The Perseverance rover landed on Mars a few kilometers from the main delta, and from there it has a tempting view through the telescope, especially in the direction of the hill called Kodiak.
Brdašce is a classic example of the formation of a delta by sedimentation.
It has horizontal layers, made of fine sediments that the river deposited when it managed to throw the furthest from the mouth into the lake that was located in the Jezero crater.
In addition, there are "barriers" in the form of depressions that sediments encountered as they moved down the slopes of the widening delta.
Further up, there are the "upper layers", also horizontal, made up of sediments that the river deposited after the delta widened.
There are many rocks on top of Kodiak and the main delta in Jezero Crater.
They bear witness to floods that happened a long time ago, probably when water first appeared in the crater.
"Something has changed in the hydrology [of Mars], possibly related to the climate, but we don't know," says Professor Gupta.
"However, the rocks could only have been moved by something like a flood, perhaps there were glacial lakes from which the flood waters flowed into the Jezero crater," he adds.
As he reminds, overflow floods of glacial lakes also occur on Earth, for example, in the Himalayas.
"In the Ganges basin in India, rocks are mixed with river sand in places where there have been floods like this," he explains to the BBC.
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The team of scientists operating the Perseverance rover will send the robot to the base of the main delta to drill into the soil, which is believed to be made of finely divided carbonate rocks.
The rover will also explore a ring of carbonate rocks around the rim of Jezero Crater, which are believed to have formed the shore of the lake when it was at its deepest.
Rover Perseverance is now tasked with collecting and packaging more than two dozen rock samples from various locations.
The stones will arrive on Earth in the early 2030s, when they will be examined in laboratories.
Then we will finally have an answer to the question of whether there are microscopic traces of life on the surface of Mars.
The venture to bring rocks from Mars is being planned, and far in advance.
NASA and their European Space Agency partners will send another British-made rover with the task of retrieving samples from where the Perseverance rover will leave them.
He will pick up the stones and transfer them to a rocket that will be launched into the orbit of Mars, where a cargo spaceship will be waiting to bring them to Earth.
"We are facing the most exciting phase of Mars exploration," says Sue Horne, director of space exploration at the British Space Agency.
"The dream of testing samples from the Red Planet will soon become a reality, and testing of the rover's propulsion system that will pick them up from Mars will begin next month," he adds.
Life in the Lake - the place after which the crater on Mars got its name
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