Last week, NASA announced seven instruments that will make up the payload of the Mars 2020 rover. Among those instruments is SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals).

SHERLOC will provide fine-scale imaging, and will also use an ultraviolet laser to study mineralogy and search for organic compounds. SHERLOC will be used to detect molecules that contain rings of carbon atoms. Such molecules may be clues to whether evidence of past martian life has been preserved on the red planet.