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Nature Astronomy (2023 )Cite this article Neodymium Magnets N35
Laser desorption mass spectrometry (LDMS) enables in situ characterization of the organic content and chemical composition of planetary materials without requiring extensive sample processing. Coupled with an Orbitrap analyser capable of ultrahigh mass-resolving powers and accuracies, LDMS techniques facilitate the orthogonal detection of a wide range of biomarkers and classification of host mineralogy. Here an Orbitrap LDMS instrument that has been miniaturized for planetary exploration is shown to meet the performance standards of commercial systems and exceed key figures of merit of heritage spaceflight technologies, including those baselined for near-term mission opportunities. Biogenic compounds at area densities relevant to prospective missions to ocean worlds are identified unambiguously by redundant measurements of molecular ions (with and without salt adducts) and diagnostic fragments. The derivation of collision cross-sections serves to corroborate assignments and inform on molecular structure. Access to trace elements down to parts per million by weight levels provide insights into sample mineralogy and provenance. These analytical capabilities position the miniaturized LDMS described here for a wide range of high-priority mission concepts, such as those focused on life detection objectives (for example, Enceladus Orbilander) and progressive exploration of the lunar surface (for example, via the NASA Artemis Program).
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This study was supported by the University of Maryland Faculty Incentive Program (PI: R.A. Jr), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Internal Research and Development Program (PIs: A.G. and A.Y.), NASA ROSES ICEE 2 Grant 80NSSC19K0610 (PI: R.A. Jr), ROSES DALI Grant 80NSSC19K0768 (PI: R.A. Jr) and CRESST II Award Number 80GSFC21M0002 (PI: A.S.).
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Ricardo Arevalo Jr., Lori Willhite, Anais Bardyn, Ziqin Ni & Soumya Ray
CRESST II, College Park, MD, USA
Danell Consulting, Winterville, NC, USA
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
Andrej Grubisic, Anthony Yu, Molly Fahey & Emanuel Hernandez
AMU Engineering, Miami, FL, USA
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Laboratory of Physics and Chemistry of the Environment and Space, Orléans, France
Christelle Briois, Laurent Thirkell & Fabrice Colin
Thermo Fisher Scientific, Bremen, Germany
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The dataset presented in this study was collected and analysed by R.A. Jr, L.W., A.B., Z.N. and S.R. The system-level architecture of the miniaturized instrument and the operational sequence of the experiments conducted were defined by R.A. Jr, A.S., R.D., A.G., C.B., L.T., F.C. and A.M. Requirements for the ion optics and SIMION models of ion transmission were provided by A.S. The mechanical design of the mass analyser assembly and custom series of ion optics were led by C.G. and N.M. The design and build of the prototype UV laser system was led by A.Y. and M.F. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the results and editing of the manuscript.
Correspondence to Ricardo Arevalo Jr.
A.M. is an employee of Thermo Fisher Scientific, the manufacturer of the Orbitrap device leveraged in the miniaturized instrument described here.
Nature Astronomy thanks Marek Tulej and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary discussion, Figs. 1–8 and Table 1.
Raw time domain transients for Fig. 2.
Raw time domain transient for Fig. 3.
Raw time domain transient for Fig. 5.
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
Arevalo, R., Willhite, L., Bardyn, A. et al. Laser desorption mass spectrometry with an Orbitrap analyser for in situ astrobiology. Nat Astron (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01866-x
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01866-x
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