Space station — the new frontier

The exciting challenge of building a permanent space station has been taken up by the USA, and participation in its development has been offered to the USA's allies. European countries are faced with the dilemma of whether to cooperate or to try to develop an autonomous approach. This article discusses the opportunities for Europe in participating closely in the US project — particularly in providing pressurized modules based on the Columbus programme — and argues that it is an opportunity not to be missed.     

The Grain Impact Analyser and Dust Accumulator (GIADA) Experiment for the Rosetta Mission: Design, Performances and First Results

The Grain Impact Analyser and Dust Accumulator (GIADA) onboard the ROSETTA mission to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is devoted to study the cometary dust environment. Thanks to the rendezvous configuration of the mission, GIADA will be plunged in the dust environment of the coma and will be able to explore dust flux evolution and grain dynamic properties with position and time. This will represent a unique opportunity to perform measurements on key parameters that no ground-based observation or fly-by mission is able to obtain and that no tail or coma model elaborated so far has been able to properly simulate. The coma and nucleus properties shall be, then, clarified with consequent improvement of models describing inner and outer coma evolution, but also of models about nucleus emission during different phases of its evolution. GIADA shall be capable to measure mass/size of single particles larger than about 15 μm together with momentum in the range 6.5 × 10⁻¹⁰ ÷ 4.0 × 10⁻⁴ kg m s⁻¹ for velocities up to about 300 m s⁻¹. For micron/submicron particles the cumulative mass shall be detected with sensitivity 10⁻¹⁰ g. These performances are suitable to provide a statistically relevant set of data about dust physical and dynamic properties in the dust environment expected for the target comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Pre-flight measurements and post-launch checkouts demonstrate that GIADA is behaving as expected according to the design specifications. The International GIADA Consortium (I, E, UK, F, D, USA).     

Thermo-mechanical design and testing of a microbalance for space applications

This work focuses on the thermo-mechanical design of the microbalance used for the VISTA (Volatile In Situ Thermogravimetry Analyzer) sensor. VISTA has been designed to operate in situ in different space environments (asteroids, Mars, icy satellites). In this paper we focus on its application on Mars, where the expected environmental conditions are the most challenging for the thermo-mechanical design.     

Development of a micro-balance system for dust and water vapour detection in the Mars atmosphere

Quartz crystal piezoelectric sensors are suitable for deposition analyses that need very high sensitivity. Due to the wide working ranges and high performances, micro-balances can measure the mass settling in average Mars conditions during a period of months before saturation is reached. This ensures a proper use for short and long term water and dust deposition monitoring. Micro-balances have been studied, calibrated and used for the GIADA (grain impact analyser and dust accumulator) experiment for the ESA-Rosetta space mission. Experience on micro-balance performance study by dust deposition has been acquired and water vapour deposition studies are in progress in a Martian atmosphere simulation chamber. Preliminary results show that micro-balances are capable to detect up to partial pressure values corresponding to parts per billion of the typical Martian atmosphere.     

The MAGO experiment for dust environment monitoring on the Martian surface

Among the main directions identified for future Martian exploration, the study of the properties of dust dispersed in the atmosphere, its cycle and the impact on climate are considered of primary relevance. Dust storms, dust devils and the dust “cycle” have been identified and studied by past remote and in situ experiments, but little quantitative information is available on these processes, so far. The airborne dust contributes to the determination of the dynamic and thermodynamic evolution of the atmosphere, including the large-scale circulation processes and its impact on the climate of Mars. Moreover, aeolian erosion, redistribution of dust on the surface and weathering processes are mostly known only qualitatively. In order to improve our knowledge of the airborne dust evolution and other atmospheric processes, it is mandatory to measure the amount, mass-size distribution and dynamical properties of solid particles in the Martian atmosphere as a function of time. In this context, there is clearly a need for the implementation of experiments dedicated to study directly atmospheric dust. The Martian atmospheric grain observer (MAGO) experiment is aimed at providing direct quantitative measurements of mass and size distributions of dust particles, a goal that has never been fully achieved so far. The instrument design combines three types of sensors to monitor in situ the dust mass flux (micro balance system, MBS) and single grain properties (grain detection system, GDS + impact sensor, IS). Technical solutions and science capabilities are discussed in this paper.     

Origin of informational polymers and the search for non-terran life: protection of the polymeric state of DNA by phosphate minerals

An in-depth analysis of the effects exerted on the DNA backbone by 25 crystal phosphate minerals is reported. Degradation of DNA oligomers was performed with two different reactions: Hydrolysis following Nucleophilic Degradation (HND), initiated by the nucleophilic addition of formamide on both purine and pyrimidine nucleobases, and Hydrolysis following Nucleophilic Substitution (HNS) carried on by water and starting with the removal of a nondegraded base. A complete panel of effects on the phosphoester bonds, from protection to enhanced instability to absence of interference, is described. These effects differ in the different degradation pathways and in different physical-chemical conditions. The relationship between the hardness of the mineral and its protective ability is discussed. In addition to its interest per se, this study was prompted by the observed catalytic abilities of soluble and mineral phosphates (Saladino et al., 2006c) on the synthetic reactions by formamide. The relevance of these observations in the search for nonterran life is discussed.     

Data storage and real time observations at the Mexican Array Radio Telescope

The tracking of large-scale interplanetary (IP) disturbances traveling from the Sun to the Earth is a key issue in space weather studies. The Mexican Array Radio Telescope (MEXART) applies the Interplanetary Scintillation (IPS) technique to detect these solar wind disturbances and it will participate in a global warning network of space weather forecasting. We describe the data storage and computational processes carried out to manage the instrument’s real time data. These procedures are important for the MEXART calibration, operation and the scientific data reduction.     

In Situ Collection of Refractory Dust in the Upper Stratosphere: The DUSTER Facility

DUSTER (Dust from the Upper Stratosphere Tracking Experiment and Retrieval) is an instrument designed to collect nanometer to micrometer scale solid aerosol particles in the upper stratosphere on board balloons. With three DUSTER flights we have demonstrated that: (1) the instrument’s performance was within the design parameters of environmental specifications (?80 ^°C; 3–10?mbar); (2) inertial impact collection of aerosols ～500?nm to 24 microns on holey-carbon thin films mounted on Transmission Electron Microscope mesh grids was achieved; (3) the design of an active collector exposed to the air flux and an identical collector “blank”, not exposed to the air flux, to monitor possible contamination permits unambiguous identification of collected particles; (4) save storage of collected samples and subsequent retrieval in the laboratory was achieved with no measurable contamination; (5)?reduced sample manipulation allowed the chemical and structural characterization of collected dust particles by Field-emission scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-Ray analyses, and infrared and Raman micro-spectroscopy. The main and most ambitious goal is the collection and characterization of solid aerosol particles smaller than 3 microns of solar system debris that are currently not sampled on a routine basis by other instruments in the upper stratosphere. DUSTER will provide a record of the amount of solid aerosols, their size, shapes and chemical properties in the upper stratosphere, including particles less than 3 microns in size. The DUSTER program identified 25 particles as collected during the 2008 flight with sizes in the range of 0.4 to 24 microns.