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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

In situ pyro-GCMS chemical analysis of Lunar soil with the Gas Analytical Complex experiment of the future Luna-Resurs mission

Résumé

The chemical analysis of lunar samples collected in the regolith or rocks is of primary importance to assess their content in volatile species. These volatiles could reveal, for instance, part of the nature of : materials delivered to Earth from exogenous sources, minerals present in the Lunar regolith and surface rocks, and Lunar indigenous organic material. These are key information to improve our knowledge on the origin and evolution of the Moon, but also on important processes for the prebiotic chemistry that took place on Earth. Even if the accuracy and sensitivity of the analytical instrumentation used in the laboratory are very high to characterise the chemical content of samples brought from the Moon, the journey of these samples in space, as well as their transportation to the Earth environment, could change the nature in the volatile content of the samples (e.g. loss of chemical species, possible chemical reactions or contaminations). For these reasons, in situ chemical analysis, in addition to provide direct information on the chemical composition of the Lunar regolith, could be of precious help for the interpreting the results obtained in the laboratory, and their transposition to the Moon surface environment.This is the reason why our team proposes an instrumentation to characterize in situ the content of volatiles in the lunar soil and rocks. This instrumentation is part of the Luna Resurs payload. This space probe should land near the lunar South pole, thus giving for the first time the opportunity to characterise this region which is thought to be rich in volatiles from remote sensing, whereas the previous lunar missions were all constrained to land near the equator. Our instrumentation is based on pyrolysis coupled with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. It has the capability to: extract volatile materials (either condensed or present in the minerals) from the solid samples; separate the volatile and analyze their structure for identification and quantification; and analyze isotopic ratios in a certain extent. With this aim, the instrument is composed of: i. a pyrolyser capable to heat the samples up to about 1000°C; ii. a gas chromatograph devoted to separate and detect the volatile species released from the samples. The chromatograph includes two analytical channels, one devoted to separate the noble gases and the most volatile molecules, and one devoted to analyse very volatile organic molecules; iii. a time of flight mass spectrometer for the structural identification of the molecules. This instrumentation should allow the identification of inorganic volatile molecules and small organic molecules (up to about benzene). This communication aims at presenting this instrumentation of the Luna Resurs space probe, and results obtained from calibration of individual parts and qualification model that give an overview of the analytical performances of this instrument.
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Dates et versions

insu-04430388 , version 1 (31-01-2024)

Identifiants

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Cyril Szopa, Arnaud Buch, Peter Wurz, Michel Cabane, Marek Tulej, et al.. In situ pyro-GCMS chemical analysis of Lunar soil with the Gas Analytical Complex experiment of the future Luna-Resurs mission. 42nd COSPAR Scientific Assembly, Jul 2018, Pasadena, United States. pp.Abstract id. B3.1-37-18. ⟨insu-04430388⟩
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