Urey onboard Exomars: Searching for life on Mars
- Paper number
IAC-08.A3.3.A9
- Author
Prof. Pascale Ehrenfreund, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Prof. Jeff Bada, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, United States
- Coauthor
Dr. Frank Grunthaner, Jet Propulsion Laboratory / CalTech, United States
- Coauthor
Prof. Richard Mathies, University of California at Berkeley, United States
- Coauthor
Dr. Aaron Zent, NASA - Ames Research Center, United States
- Coauthor
Dr. Richard Quinn, NASA - Ames Research Center, United States
- Coauthor
Prof. Mark Sephton, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Exomars is currently under development as the flagship mission of ESA’s exploration program Aurora featuring participation of the United States and Russia. The robotic rover Pasteur will be equipped with several instruments that will characterize the surface of Mars. Recent missions to Mars have delivered outstanding data that increased our knowledge on the evolution and composition of surface and atmosphere of Mars as well as the conditions for life. A fundamental challenge ahead for the Exomars mission is to search for extinct and extant life. Urey: Mars Organic and Oxidant Detector has been selected for the Pasteur payload in the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) ExoMars rover mission and is considered a key instrument to achieve the mission’s scientific objectives. Urey can detect organic compounds at unprecedented sensitivity of part-per-trillions in the Martian regolith. The instrument will target several key classes of organic molecules such as amino acids, nucleobases, amines and amino sugars as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocrabon (PAHs) using state-of-the-art analytical methods. The µCE system of Urey is able to discern whether any of these molecules are abiotic or biotic in origin. Chemoresistor oxidant sensors will provide complementary measurements by simultaneously evaluating the survival potential of organic compounds in the environment. We report on progress in instrument development and related field tests in the Atacama desert. The Urey instrument concept has also tremendous future applications in Mars and Moon exploration in the framework of life detection and planetary protection.
Urey Team: http://astrobiology.berkeley.edu/ J. L. Bada, P. Ehrenfreund, F. Grunthaner, R. Mathies, R. Quinn, A. Zent, J.L. Josset, M. Sephton, A. Farrington, R. Amudson, D. Blaney, L. Barron, O. Botta, B. Clark, M. Coleman, D. Glavin, B. Hofmann, P. Rettberg, S. Ride, F. Robert, A. Yen
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-08.A3.3.A9.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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