Life Detection Beyond Earth: Laser-Based Mass Spectrometry for Organics Detection on Solar System Objects.

The detection and identification of the building blocks of life, from amino acids to more complex molecules such as certain lipids, is a crucial but highly challenging task for current and future space exploration missions in our Solar System. To date, Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry has been the main technology applied. Although it has shown excellent performance in laboratory research, it has not yet been able to provide a conclusive answer regarding the presence or absence of a signature of life, extinct or extant, in space exploration.

Additive manufacturing in space research: hybrid mass analyser for laser ablation ionisation mass spectrometry.

Additive manufacturing has found its way into many industrial and academic areas. In this contribution, we present an additively manufactured reflectron, integrated in a space-prototype mass analyser used in laser ablation ionisation mass spectrometry. Fused deposition modelling technology was applied to produce the reflectron's ion optical system.

A nearly terrestrial D/H for comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Cometary comae are a mixture of gas and ice-covered dust. Processing on the surface and in the coma change the composition of ice on dust grains relative to that of the nucleus. As the ice on dust grains sublimates, the local coma composition changes.