The NASA Perseverance rover landed on Mars in February 2021. In the years since, it has been diligently investigating the Jezero Crater on the red planet, seeking signs of ancient life. An important breakthrough in that effort came with a recent report in the journal Nature coauthored by Prof. Sanford Asher and Pitt PhD candidate Ryan Roppel indicating evidence for the existence of aromatic hydrocarbons on the crater floor. Conducting complex analytical chemistry measurements more than 200 million miles from your sample is a hard problem. A key piece of equipment on the rover that makes it possible to overcome this challenge is SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, pictured to the left), an instrument developed by a team including the Asher lab. SHERLOC makes use of a combination of UV fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy to provide a unique fingerprint of different organics and minerals present in a complex sample. Perseverance and SHERLOC are not finished yet, and there will be more insights to come as the mission continues.
More on SHERLOC: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/sherloc/
More on Perseverance: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Nature article: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06143-z
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech