Still on the case

In 1893 Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off his most famous literary creation – Sherlock Holmes. In “The Final Problem,” Holmes and his arch nemesis, Professor Moriarty, during a wild struggle appear to plunge to their deaths at the Great Fall at Reichenbach in Switzerland. The short story is narrated by Holmes’ friend and case chronicler, Dr. John Watson.

Doyle was tired of writing about the detective and his faithful sidekick for the Strand Magazine and wanted to turn his attention to more literary endeavors. His many readers weren’t happy at all with Doyle killing off Sherlock Holmes. So the writer brought the “consulting detective” back to life, and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson continue still as popular investigators – even on Mars.

When I was young my impressions of the red planet were driven by the heroic adventures of the John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Sadly, no Dejah Thoris, Tars Tarkas or other Barsoomian life can be found there. But we keep looking for life on Mars. And NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which landed on Mars in 2020, keeps up the search.

And on that multi-billion-dollar space vehicle is a package of equipment called the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals. Or more conveniently: SHERLOC. In many stories and movies, Holmes uses a magnifying glass to search for clues.

On Mars, SHERLOC, which is attached to a robotic arm, relies on cameras, spectrometers and a laser to search for organics and minerals that have been altered by watery environments and may be signs of past microbial life.

SHERLOC is not alone, however. What’s a SHERLOC without a trusty WATSON? In this case, we’re talking about a color camera for taking close-up images of rock grains and surface textures.

Of course, Perseverance has many other scientific instruments, such as RIMFAX, a subsurface radar, PIXL, an X-ray spectrometer, and MEDA, a weather station. But they don’t have the same resonance as SHERLOC and WATSON.

That pair has been going strong since they first sprang to life in a British magazine back in 1887, expounding on investigation, observation, deduction and science. Just like they are doing on Mars. The game, as ever, is afoot!

Image credits

Illustration by Sidney Paget of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson. Published in The Adventure of Silver Blaze, The Strand Magazine, December 1892

The Perseverance rover, built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, is loaded with scientific instruments, advanced computational capabilities for landing and other new systems. NASA image