Uh, no, this is nuts. I work there and personally know the PI of the below-linked instrument which is designed to “search for organics and minerals that have b

Uh, no, this is nuts. I work there and personally know the PI of the below-linked instrument which is designed to “search for organics and minerals that have been altered by watery environments and may be signs of past microbial life.” Some of the best engineers at JPL have worked to get this ready for Mars2020. https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/sherloc/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/sherloc/ There is a standard and open pipeline to getting an instrument on these missions. Scientific American is not part of it. It’s more like AGU, LPSC, Icarus, and the National Academies decadal survey — writing actual instrument proposals with hypotheses and trace back to hardware that can make the measurements needed to test the hypothesis.