Jezero on Earth and Jezero on Mars: The Village NASA Made Famous

Editor's note: This piece was originally published in Hedonist's print edition in 2021, shortly after NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars in a crater named after the municipality of Jezero. We're republishing it in its original form, as a record of the moment when a small town on the Pliva River briefly became part of a global space story.

This once-anonymous municipality on the Pliva River, with a population under 1,000, became a global sensation when a crater on Mars was named after it. Scientists chose it because of an uncanny resemblance: the two Jezeros, earthly and Martian, are strikingly similar in terrain - practically twins.

The story, which had been quietly building for a few years, reached its peak in February 2021, when NASA's research rover, symbolically named Perseverance, touched down on Mars - right inside Jezero Crater. And just like that, the earthly Jezero found itself in the global spotlight.

For Snežana Ružičić, the energetic and marketing-savvy mayor of the municipality of Jezero, this was, as she puts it, an opportunity to promote and develop her beautiful but underfunded homeland.

"Marketing experts pour millions into creating this kind of planet-famous story, and we got it for zero marks. We didn't fall from Mars, so why would we pass up a chance like this," says Ružičić.

Ever since 2018, when NASA headquarters directly confirmed this wasn't "fake news" and that the dried-up crater on Mars really was named after the town of Jezero, she says she's latched onto the story "like a leech." And she hasn't let go.

The letter formally confirming that the town now has a namesake on the Red Planet was delivered to Jezero in person by Eric Nelson, then the U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

When the Perseverance rover launched toward Mars, the children of Jezero saw it off with a colorful procession and imaginative drawings of their own. Word got around.

When the world's media covered the rover's landing, cameras also caught something else: the residents of Jezero gathered around a big outdoor screen, watching the space mission unfold and breaking into applause.

And through all of it, journalists kept passing through a town that doesn't have a town square, a single apartment building, or even a kiosk or a medical clinic.

"We'll do our best to turn this public attention into real development - sustainable agriculture and tourism," says Snežana Ružičić.

It's a chance for Europe and the wider world to discover the beauty of the Pliva River and Lake Pliva, to lure travelers from far away to try their hand at trout fishing on the Pliva, whitewater rafting, and sailing traditional wooden boats called ladas, to sample the local kajmak and lamb, and to send bikers and cyclists down the AVNOJ route toward fairy-tale landscapes now known as far away as Mars...

Five years later: Snežana Ružičić still leads the municipality of Jezero today, now in her third consecutive term. NASA's Perseverance rover remains active and continues exploring Jezero Crater on Mars.

• Written by: Milkica Milojević / HEDONIST
• Originally published in HEDONIST magazine, issue 04, 2021