Mass Spectrometer Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Astrobiology

An artist’s rendition of Saturn’s moon Enceladus depicts hydrothermal activity on the seafloor and cracks in the moon’s icy crust that allow material from the watery interior to be ejected into space. New research shows that instruments destined for the next missions could find traces of a single cell in a single ice grain contained in a plume. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Analog Studies, Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Comets and Asteroids, Enceladus, Europa, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Meteorites & Asteroids, Missions & Hardware, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Laboratory Characterization Of Hydrothermally Processed Oligopeptides In Ice Grains Emitted By Enceladus And Europa

by Keith CowingJune 25, 2024June 25, 2024

The Cassini mission provided evidence for a global subsurface ocean and ongoing hydrothermal activity on Enceladus, based on results from Cassini’s mass spectrometers. Laboratory simulations of hydrothermal conditions on icy […]

CREDIT ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA; J. Roger – CC BY SA 4.0 Larger image

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Comets and Asteroids, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Missions & Hardware, Status Report, Tricorders & Sensors

A Cometary Landcape Covered With Organic Chemicals

by Keith CowingApril 23, 2024June 8, 2024

Editor’s note: according to “Organic compounds on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko revealed by COSAC mass spectrometry” – “Comets harbor the most pristine material in our solar system in the form of ice, […]

TPD measurement of H2O, CO2, CO, and O2 in the ratio 60:20:10:10, respectively, with a heating rate of 0.5 K min−1 (Gudipati et al. 2023). For CO also the residual signal has been derived, i.e., after subtraction of the contribution by fragmentation of CO2. The experiment also tracked the chamber background species N, a fragment of N2. The two vertical lines separate the three temperature regimes introduced in Table 1. The portions released in the three temperature ranges are listed in Table 3. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Comets and Asteroids, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Volatiles In The H2O and CO2 Ices Of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

by Keith CowingOctober 9, 2023October 9, 2023

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) was the first mission that accompanied a comet over a substantial fraction of its orbit.

Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS)

Tricorder Tech: Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS) Will Study Complex Chemistry On Titan

by Keith CowingMarch 18, 2023November 1, 2026

A new NASA mission to Saturn’s giant moon, Titan, is due to launch in 2027. When it arrives in the mid-2030s, it will begin a journey of discovery that could […]

Retrieval accuracy

Astrochemistry, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exploration Gear & Tech, Nanotechnology & SynBio, Status Report, Tricorders & Sensors

Tricorder Tech: Method for Accurate Detection of Amino Acids and Mycotoxins in Planetary Atmospheres

by Keith CowingJanuary 31, 2023January 31, 2023

We present a systematic analysis of a large number of mass spectra accumulated as the number of ion fragments recorded in unit mass-to-charge detector channels.

MASPEX

Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Europa, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Missions & Hardware, Press Release

SwRI Delivers MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX) For Europa Clipper

by Keith CowingJanuary 5, 2023May 27, 2024

A groundbreaking new mass spectrometer designed and built by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has been delivered for integration onto NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Tricorders & Sensors

ORIGIN Mass Spectrometer

by Keith CowingAugust 20, 2020September 20, 2022

The question of whether life exists beyond the Earth is one of humanity’s most fundamental questions. Future NASA missions, for example, aim to examine the ice moons of Jupiter and […]

Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Europa, Press Release

Building A Mass Spectrometer To Land on Europa

by Keith CowingMay 24, 2017

An instrument originally developed to search for organic molecules on Mars is being repurposed to potentially hunt for life on a handful of moons in the outer solar system that […]