Chemistry Lab on ExoMars Rover Will Search For Evidence of Life on Mars

An international group of scientists made a tiny chemistry lab for a rover that will drill below the Martian surface, searching for previous or existing life signs. For ExoMars Reconnaissance is a joint venture involving the European Space Agency and the Russian aerospace company Roscosmos. NASA made a significant contribution to MOMA, the laboratory the size of a toaster oven known as the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or MOMA. The rover will be dispatched toward the Red Planet in July of that year.

According to Will Brinckerhoff, MOMA Project Scientist and a member of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the ExoMars Rover’s two-meter deep drill will equip MOMA with unique samples that may possess organic compounds preserved from an ancient period, when life might have started on Mars.

Even though the surface of Mars is inhospitable to known forms of life today, there is indicators that in the distant past, the Martian climate permitted the presence of liquid water, a crucial ingredient for life, at the surface level. This evidence includes attributes that look like dry riverbeds and mineral deposits that only form in the presence of liquid water. NASA has sent out rovers to Mars that have discovered additional indications of past hospitable environments, such as the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers, both presently exploring the Martian terrain.

The MOMA instrument will be able to discover a large variety of natural molecules. Organic compounds are frequently associated with life, although non-biological processes can also produce them. Organic molecules have carbon and hydrogen and can include oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements. To locate these molecules on Mars, the MOMA group had to take instruments that would typically occupy a few workbenches in a chemistry lab and downsize them to about the size of a toaster, so they would be practical to mount on a rover.

Despite the multifaceted nature of the device, MOMA is centered on a single, small mass spectrometer that divides charged atoms and molecules according to mass. It is possible to condense the search for Interplanetary chemical molecules into two stages:: isolate organic molecules from Martian rocks and sediments and provide an electrical charge (ionized), so they can be spotted and identified by the mass spectrometer. MOMA has two methods for differentiating as many organic molecules as possible. The first approach utilizes a stove to heat a sample. This baking process vaporizes the natural molecules and sends them to a slim column that separates combinations of compounds into their individual components. Once the chemicals are introduced one at a time into the mass spectrometer, electrical fields are used to organize them by mass and give them an electric charge. There are a variety of unique mass-to-electric-charge ratios for each type of molecule. This pattern, known as a mass range, is used by the mass spectrometer instrument to identify the atoms.

Some bigger organic molecules are delicate and would disintegrate throughout the high-temperature vaporization in the oven. Hence, MOMA has a second method to locate them: It zaps the sample with a laser. Considering the use of a quick burst of laser light, it vaporizes some types of larger organic molecules without completely breaking them apart. The laser additionally provides these molecules an electrical charge, so they are sent straight from the sample to the mass spectrometer to be sorted and identified.

Some organic molecules have a property that might be used as a critical sign that they were made by life: their handedness or chirality. Some organic molecules utilized by life come in two types that, similarly to our hands, are mirror images of each other. On Earth, life utilizes all left-handed amino acids and all right-handed sugars to construct larger molecules required for life, like proteins from amino acids and DNA from sugars. Life-based on right-handed amino acids (and left-handed sugars) could work; however, a mix of right- and left-handed for either will certainly not. Due to these particles need to come together at the appropriate orientation, like puzzle pieces, to build other molecules permanently required for life to work.

MOMA can detect the chirality of organic molecules. Suppose it discovers an organic molecule is predominantly of the left-hand or right-hand variety (called “homochirality”). In that case, that can be evidence that life generated the molecules, given that non-biological processes often tend to make an equal mix of varieties. This is known as a biosignature.

Mars rovers deal with one more obstacle when seeking evidence of life: Contamination. The planet is filled with life, and scientists must be cautious that the organic product they detect has not been brought with the instrument from Earth. To ensure this, the MOMA group has taken extraordinary measures to ensure that the tool is as free as possible from earthly molecules that are life signatures.

The ExoMars rover will be the first to explore deep below the surface, with a drill with the ability to take samples from as deep as 2 meters (over six feet). This is important because Mars’ thin environment and spotty magnetic field provide insufficient protection from space radiation, slowly destroying organic molecules left revealed on the surface. Nevertheless, Martian sediment is an effective shield, and also the team expects to locate a higher abundance of organic molecules in samples below the surface.

NASA Goddard is developing the mass spectrometer and electronic devices boxes for MOMA, while LATMOS (Laboratory for Atmospheres, Environments, and Space Observations), Guyancourt, France and Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA or Interuniversity Lab of Atmospheric Equipments) Paris, France, produces MOMA’s gas chromatograph, and the Max Plank Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany and also Laser Zentrum Hannover, Hannover, Germany, build the tool’s laser, ovens, and tapping (oven sealing) station.

MOMA recently concluded both ESA and NASA pre-delivery reviews that opened the path for the flight instrument to be sent to the mission. On May 16, the MOMA mass spectrometer team gathered at Goddard to send off their unique science instrument on the first step of its journey to Mars: delivery to Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, where it will be incorporated into the rover’s analytical laboratory cabinet during upcoming mission-level tasks this summer season. After subsequent higher-level rover and spacecraft-level integration activities in 2019, the ExoMars Rover is arranged to launch to Mars in July 2020 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

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