OLYMPIA-LILBID: A New Laboratory Setup to Calibrate Spaceborne Hypervelocity Ice Grain Detectors Using High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

The coupling of an Orbitrap-based mass analyzer to the laserinduced liquid beam ion desorption (LILBID) technique has been investigated, with the aim to reproduce the mass spectra recorded by Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) in the vicinity of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. LILBID setups are usually coupled with time-of-flight (TOF) mass analyzers, with a limited mass resolution (∼800 m/Δm). Thanks to the Orbitrap technology, we developed a unique analytical setup that is able to simulate hypervelocity ice grains' impact in the laboratory (at speeds in the range of 15−18 km/s) with an unprecedented high mass resolution of up to 150 000 m/Δm (at m/z 19 for a 500 ms signal duration). The results will be implemented in the LILBID database and will be useful for the calibration and future data interpretation of the Europa Clipper's SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA), which will characterize the habitability of Jupiter's icy moon Europa.

Discriminating Aromatic Parent Compounds and Their Derivative Isomers in Ice Grains From Enceladus and Europa Using a Laboratory Analogue for Spaceborne Mass Spectrometers

“…Further work into the discrimination of isobaric compounds with LILBID is also recommended as a complementary study—the identification of fragmentation pathways may be beneficial in elucidating the composition of species in ice grains, particularly to those missions encountering a wider range of impact velocities. Furthermore, a mass analyzer with a higher mass resolution, such as an Orbitrap‐based instrument (e.g., Sanderink et al., 2023), would help differentiate between molecules that appear at the same integer mass in our experiments.…”

Selected ice nanoparticle accelerator hypervelocity impact mass spectrometer (SELINA-HIMS): features and impacts of charged particles

“…The Enceladus mission significantly benefited from its on-board Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) [8], although it faced challenges in interpreting data without laboratory analogues. Liquid beam desorption mass spectroscopy has been a successful laboratory technique [4,[12][13][14][17][18][19][20][21], simulating the impact of ice grains in space. This method involves a laser impacting a micron-sized water jet in vacuum, with the desorbed ions analysed in a reflectron time-of-flight (RE-TOF) mass spectrometer [18].…”