A chamber for studying planetary environments and its applications to astrobiology

Abstract

We have built a versatile environmental simulation chamber capable of reproducing atmospheric compositions and surface temperatures for most of the planetary objects. It has been especially developed to make feasible in situ irradiation and characterization of the sample under study. The total pressure in the chamber can range from 5 to 5 × 10−9 mbar. The required atmospheric composition is regulated via a residual gas analyser with ca ppm precision. Temperatures can be set from 4 K to 325 K. The sample under study can be irradiated with ion and electron sources, a deuterium ultraviolet (UV) lamp and a noble-gas discharge UV lamp. One of the main technological challenges of this device is to provide the user the possibility of performing ion and electron irradiation at a total pressure of 0.5 mbar. This is attained by means of an efficient differential pumping system. The in situ analysis techniques implemented are UV spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy (IR). This machine is especially suitable for following the chemical changes induced in a particular sample by irradiation in a controlled environment. Therefore, it can be used in different disciplines such as planetary geology, astrobiology, environmental chemistry, materials science and for instrumentation testing.