If you've spent any time perusing the carousel of raw images from NASA's Perseverance Mars rover, you might have stumbled across an odd subject: a tiny, intricate maze etched into a small plate, photographed over and over again.

Why is the Perseverance rover so obsessed with this little labyrinth? It turns out the maze is a calibration target — one of 10 for Perseverance's Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals instrument, otherwise known for its fun acronym, SHERLOC.

This Sherlock Holmes–inspired tool is designed to detect organic compounds and other minerals on Mars that could indicate signs of ancient microbial life. To do that accurately, the system must be carefully calibrated, and that's where the maze comes in.

Located on the rover's

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