JAKARTA – The Planetary Research Institute at DLR (German Aerospace Center) has begun construction of a new Sample Analysis Laboratory (SAL) dedicated to studying rock and dust samples from planetary bodies such as asteroids and the Moon.
The first phase will be operational by the end of 2022, coinciding with welcoming the samples collected by the Hayabusa2 mission, and will be fully ready by 2023.
“The SAL facility will allow us to study samples from the macroscopic to nanometric scale and help us answer key questions about the formation and evolution of planetary bodies,” said Dr Enrica Bonato of DLR.
“The return of the sample gives us the “basic truth” about the object visited, verifying and validating the conclusions that can be drawn by remote sensing. SAL will unlock some very interesting science, such as searching for traces of water and organic matter, especially from samples returning from asteroids. These are remnants of “failed” planets, thus providing material that provides insight into the early stages of the Solar System and planetary evolution.”
The establishment of SAL took three years of planning and the facility’s first instruments will be delivered in the summer of 2022. State-of-the-art equipment will allow researchers to image rock samples at extremely high magnification and resolution, and to determine their chemical and mineralogical composition in great detail.
The laboratory will be classified as a “super-clean” facility, with a thousand times fewer particles per cubic meter allowed than in a standard clean room. Personal protective equipment will be worn on everyone who enters to maintain a clean environment, and the SAL will be equipped with a glove box for sample handling and preparation.
All samples will be stored under dry nitrogen and transported between instruments in containers filled with dry nitrogen.
SAL’s first studies will deal with two small carbonaceous asteroids: Ryugu, a sample returned by JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission in late 2020, and Bennu, whose sample will be sent back to Earth via NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023.
“Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx are in many ways sister missions, both in terms of the objects visited, and in the close collaboration of scientists and sponsoring agencies. International collaboration is an important part of the sample return story, and becomes even more important in terms of analysis, ‘ said Bonato.
“We are also looking forward to receiving (and potentially curating) samples from the Martian moon Phobos returned by the JAXA Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission later this decade. We also hope to receive samples at SAL from the Moon in the early decades of China’s Chang’E 5 and 6 missions.” (E-4)
News Source: RRI.
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