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About

Joshua Sackos is an instrumental figure in the search for signs of past life on Mars, specializing in the development of advanced spectroscopic instruments for planetary exploration. As a key contributor to NASA’s Perseverance rover mission, his primary research focuses on Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy, ultraviolet instrumentation, and the detection of organic compounds and potential biosignatures on extraterrestrial surfaces. Sackos’s most significant contribution is his central role in the SHERLOC investigation—the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals instrument. His work on this project, detailed in a highly cited 2021 paper (237 citations), has been critical in enabling the first spatially resolved chemical maps of the Martian surface using UV fluorescence. Additionally, his 2020 work on SHERLOC’s processing electronics and detector (6 citations) highlights his expertise in the intricate engineering required to operate such complex hardware in the harsh Martian environment. Through his contributions to this flagship NASA mission, Sackos is directly advancing humanity’s ability to identify habitable environments and search for organic chemistry on another world.