Laser Desorption Mass Spectrometry at Saturn’s moon Titan

Grubisic, Andrej; Trainer, M. G.; Li, Xiang; Brinckerhoff, W. B.; Amerom, F. H. van; Danell, Ryan M.; Costa, J. Tighe; Castillo, M.; Kaplan, Desmond; Zacny, K.

doi:10.1016/j.ijms.2021.116707

Cited by 31 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Various LIMS instruments are being developed for space exploration missions (Getty et al, 2012;Riedo et al, 2012;Riedo et al, 2013a;Briois et al, 2016;Riedo et al, 2017;Arevalo et al, 2018). They have been included in the payloads of the Phobos Grunt (LAZMA, Roscosmos) (Managadze et al, 2010), (Zelenyi and Zakharov, 2012), the Luna-Glob LASMA (Chumikov et al, 2021) and the upcoming ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover (MOMA, ESA/Roscosmos) (Goesmann et al, 2017) and the Dragonfly rotorcraft (DraMS, NASA) (Lorenz et al, 2018;Grubisic et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlation Network Analysis for Amino Acid Identification in Soil Samples With the ORIGIN Space-Prototype Instrument

Schwander

Ligterink²,

Kipfer³

et al. 2022

Front. Astron. Space Sci.

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The detection of biomolecules on Solar System bodies can help us to understand how life emerged on Earth and how life may be distributed in our Solar System. However, the detection of chemical signatures of life on planets or their moons is challenging. A variety of parameters must be considered, such as a suited landing site location, geological and environmental processes favourable to life, life detection strategies, and the application of appropriate and sensitive instrumentation. In this contribution, recent results obtained using our novel laser desorption mass spectrometer ORganics INformation Gathering Instrument (ORIGIN), an instrument designed for in situ space exploration, are presented. We focus in this paper on the detection and identification of amino acid extracts from a natural permafrost sample, as well as in an analogue mixture of soils and amino acids. The resulting dataset was analysed using a correlation network analysis method. Based on mass spectrometric correlation, amino acid signatures were separated from soil signatures, identifying chemically different molecular components in complex samples. The presented analysis method represents an alternative to the typically applied spectra-by-spectra analysis for the evaluation of mass spectrometric data and, therefore, is of high interest for future application in space exploration missions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlation Network Analysis for Amino Acid Identification in Soil Samples With the ORIGIN Space-Prototype Instrument

Schwander

Ligterink²,

Kipfer³

et al. 2022

Front. Astron. Space Sci.

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“…First, this rotorcraft lander, able to visit dozens of surface sites on Titan, will measure the composition of the sand, whose origin and fate is not well‐determined (e.g., Barnes et al., 2015; Malaska et al., 2016; Yu et al., 2018). Dragonfly is equipped with a powerful instrument designed specifically to tease apart large molecules—a laser desorption mass spectrometer (Grubisic et al., 2021), so we will finally know the right material to test on Earth. Additionally, it has cameras with macro lenses able to make images that should resolve individual sand grains and constrain their shape and size.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Sand Transport on Titan: A Sticky Problem

Lorenz

2022

Geophysical Research Letters

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Saturn's moon Titan has the only solid surface in the solar system today, apart from our own, on which it rains. As any child on a beach knows well, the presence of even small amounts of dampness can drastically change the mechanical properties of sand by providing cohesion between the grains. A penetrometer instrument on the Huygens probe in 2005 determined that the streambed sediments at the landing site were damp (Atkinson et al., 2010), data initially interpreted (in)famously as indicating mechanical properties similar to crème brûlée (e.g., Lorenz, 2020). Some new work (Comola et al., 2022) explores the implications of possibly enhanced cohesion of the carbon-rich sands elsewhere on Titan.Ironically, it was the expected presence of moisture (in frigid Titan's case, liquid methane) that might immobilize sand that led this author to speculate before Cassini (Lorenz et al., 1995) that sand dunes would not be found. That prediction was spectacularly inaccurate, since more than 10% of Titan's surface proved to be draped with giant dark sand dunes, hundreds of km long and in some places over 100 m high. This welcome surprise arose from Titan's climate, which segregates the methane moisture into polar lakes and seas, dessicating the equatorial regions.This drying of low latitudes is a feature that was quickly found in Global Circulation Models (GCMs) of the climate (and in part results from Titan's slow 16-day rotation). Much subsequent work focused on attempting to relate the dune morphology (linear, e.g., Radebaugh et al., 2010) and orientation (indicating sand migration toward the east, e.g., Lorenz and Radebaugh, 2009) to the wind patterns predicted in these models.After some initial confusion, in that the average winds at low latitudes should be toward the west, the big-picture agreement of models with the pattern has been satisfying. In fact, the dominant near-surface flows are seasonally alternating north-south winds-such bidirectional flows in abundant sands give the linear morphology. The wrinkle is that during the stormy equinox seasons (around 2009, 2024, and 2039) occasional storms pull down the prograde eastwards flow from higher altitudes, and so the winds that are strong enough to move sand are biased in that direction, even though the usual (gentler) winds are biased westwards. While the details differ between models (e.g., Charnay et al., 2015;Lucas et al., 2014;Tokano, 2010) the general picture seems secure. Since 100 m dunes take millennia to grow and change, the details of the dune pattern may also carry some memory of recent Croll-Milankovich climate cycles (e.g., Ewing et al., 2015;McDonald et al., 2016).In part stimulated by the Titan discoveries, models of dune formation, migration, and growth have been studied extensively in the last decade. In particular, it has been recognized that limited sand supply (which may just be a manifestation of higher cohesion limiting transport) can lead to a dune alignment (Courrech du Pont et al., 2014) that is quite different from the traditional one for a...

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“…It can be used for the analysis of samples with low concentrations of the analyte, which are often encountered in extraterrestrial material. Landers and rovers already using or planning to use LDMS include the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA) suite on the Rosalind Franklin rover, set to launch in 2022 (Goesmann et al 2017), and the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer on board the Dragonfly mission (Grubisic et al 2021). Both instruments have a demonstrated ability to detect PAHs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Detecting Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons on Planetary Objects with ORIGIN

et al. 2022

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Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are found on various planetary surfaces in the solar system. They are proposed to play a role in the emergence of life, as molecules that are important for biological processes could be derived from them. In this work, four PAHs (pyrene, perylene, anthracene, and coronene) were measured using the ORganics Information Gathering INstrument system (ORIGIN), a lightweight laser desorption ionization-mass spectrometer designed for space exploration missions. In this contribution, we demonstrate the current measurement capabilities of ORIGIN in detecting PAHs at different concentrations and applied laser pulse energies. Furthermore, we show that chemical processing of the PAHs during measurement is limited and that the parent mass can be detected in the majority of cases. The instrument achieves a 3σ detection limit in the order of femtomol mm−2 for all four PAHs, with the possibility of further increasing this sensitivity. This work illustrates the potential of ORIGIN as an instrument for the detection of molecules important for the emergence or presence of life, especially when viewed in combination with previous results by the instrument, such as the identification of amino acids. ORIGIN could be used on a lander or rover platform for future in situ missions to targets in the solar system, such as the icy moons of Jupiter or Saturn.

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Laser Desorption Mass Spectrometry at Saturn’s moon Titan

Cited by 31 publications

References 22 publications

Correlation Network Analysis for Amino Acid Identification in Soil Samples With the ORIGIN Space-Prototype Instrument

Correlation Network Analysis for Amino Acid Identification in Soil Samples With the ORIGIN Space-Prototype Instrument

Sand Transport on Titan: A Sticky Problem

Toward Detecting Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons on Planetary Objects with ORIGIN

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