![\"Innovative](\"https:\/\/cdn.satnow.com\/news\/nasa_C_638257745662003804.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In its first 400 days on Mars, NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover may have found a diverse collection of organics \u2013 carbon-based molecules considered the building blocks of life \u2013 thanks to SHERLOC, an innovative instrument on the rover\u2019s robotic arm. Scientists with the mission, which is searching for evidence that the planet supported microbial life billions of years ago, aren\u2019t sure whether biological or geological sources formed the molecules, but they\u2019re intrigued.<\/p>\n
Short for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, SHERLOC helps scientists decide whether a sample is worth collecting. This makes the instrument essential to the Mars Sample Return campaign. The Perseverance rover is the first step of the campaign, a joint effort by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) that seeks to bring scientifically selected samples back from Mars to be studied on Earth with lab equipment far more complex than could be sent to the Red Planet. The samples would need to be brought back to confirm the presence of organics.<\/p>\n
SHERLOC\u2019s capabilities center on a technique that looks at the chemical makeup of rocks by analyzing how they scatter light. The instrument directs an ultraviolet laser at its target. How that light is absorbed and then emitted \u2013 a phenomenon called the Raman effect \u2013 provides a distinctive spectral \u201cfingerprint\u201d of different molecules. This enables scientists to classify organics and minerals present in rock and understand the environment in which the rock formed. Salty water, for example, can result in the formation of different minerals than fresh water.<\/p>\n
After SHERLOC captures a rock\u2019s textures with its WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera, it adds data to those images to create spatial maps of chemicals on the rock\u2019s surface. The results, detailed in a recent paper in Nature, have been as promising as the instrument\u2019s science team had hoped.<\/p>\n \u201cThese detections are an exciting example of what SHERLOC can find, and they\u2019re helping us understand how to look for the best samples,\u201d said lead author Sunanda Sharma of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. JPL built SHERLOC along with the Perseverance rover.<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, has confirmed the presence of organic molecules several times in Gale Crater, 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) away from Perseverance. Curiosity relies on SAM, or the Sample Analysis on Mars, an instrument in its belly that heats up powderized rock samples and performs chemical analysis on the resulting vapor. <\/p>\n Because Perseverance\u2019s scientists are looking for rocks that may have preserved signs of ancient microbial life, they want to leave the samples intact for closer study on Earth.<\/p>\n Getting to the Core<\/strong><\/p>\n The new Nature paper looks at 10 rock targets SHERLOC studied, including one nicknamed \u201cQuartier.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe see a set of signals that are consistent with organics in the data from Quartier,\u201d Sharma said. \u201cThat grabbed everyone\u2019s attention.\u201d<\/p>\n When data that comes back from SHERLOC and other instruments looks promising, the science team then decides whether to use the rover\u2019s drill to core a rock sample that\u2019s about the size of a piece of classroom chalk. After analyzing Quartier, they took rock-core samples \u201cRobine\u201d and \u201cMalay\u201d from the same rock \u2013 two of the 20 core samples collected so far.<\/p>\n Picking out a good target to collect a sample from isn\u2019t as simple as looking for the most organic molecules. Ultimately, Perseverance\u2019s scientists want to collect a set of samples that\u2019s representative of all the different areas that can be found within Jezero Crater. That breadth will provide context for future scientists studying these samples, who will wonder what changes occurred around any samples that might indicate signs of ancient life.<\/p>\n \u201cThe value comes from the sum rather than any individual sample,\u201d Sharma said. \u201cPointillism is a good analogy for this. We\u2019re eventually going to step back and see the big picture of how this area formed.\u201d<\/p>\n More About the Mission<\/strong><\/p>\n A key objective for Perseverance\u2019s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet\u2019s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).<\/p>\n Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.<\/p>\n The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA\u2019s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.<\/p>\n JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In its first 400 days on Mars, NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover may have found a diverse collection of organics \u2013 carbon-based molecules considered the building blocks of life \u2013 thanks to SHERLOC, an innovative instrument on the rover\u2019s robotic arm. Scientists with the mission, which is searching for evidence that the planet supported microbial life billions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26,25,20],"class_list":["post-8354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-ground","tag-launch","tag-satellite"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/cdn.satnow.com\/news\/nasa_6_638257754551332200.jpg\")
Each color in this image represents a different mineral mapped across a rock\u2019s surface. The mineral map was made by the SHERLOC instrument in a test prior to NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover launching to Mars.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/cdn.satnow.com\/news\/nasa_2_638257756319823803.jpg\")
Within a rock target called \u201cGarde,\u201d different kinds of carbon-based molecules called organic compounds were viewed by SHERLOC, one of the instruments on the end of the robotic arm aboard NASA\u2019s Perseverance Mars rover.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/cdn.satnow.com\/news\/nasa_3_638257757740497338.jpg\")
This close-up view of the SHERLOC instrument located at the end of the robotic arm on NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover was captured prior to the rover\u2019s launch to Mars.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n