NASA announced it was now funding development of a new instrument to detect signs of life on Mars. The new instrument is called Urey. It was proposed by a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
The instrument is designed to provide the most rigorous analysis possible for the past and present existence of biological compounds on Mars' surface, according to Jeffrey Bada, a professor at Scripps and lead investigator on the project team. Other principal scientists are Richard Mathies of UC Berkeley and Frank Grunthaner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena as well as researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center in Menlo Park and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry in the Netherlands.