COSAC's Only Gas Chromatogram Taken on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Guillaume Leseigneur; Jan Hendrik Bredehöft; Thomas Gautier; Chaitanya Giri; Harald Krüger; Alexandra J MacDermott; Uwe J Meierhenrich; Guillermo M Muñoz Caro; François Raulin; Andrew Steele; Cyril Szopa; Wolfram Thiemann; Stephan Ulamec; Fred Goesmann

doi:10.1002/cplu.202200116

COSAC's Only Gas Chromatogram Taken on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Chempluschem. 2022 Jun;87(6):e202200116. doi: 10.1002/cplu.202200116. Epub 2022 May 24.

Authors

Guillaume Leseigneur¹, Jan Hendrik Bredehöft², Thomas Gautier^{3

4}, Chaitanya Giri^{5

6}, Harald Krüger⁷, Alexandra J MacDermott⁸, Uwe J Meierhenrich¹, Guillermo M Muñoz Caro⁹, François Raulin¹⁰, Andrew Steele¹¹, Cyril Szopa³, Wolfram Thiemann¹², Stephan Ulamec¹³, Fred Goesmann⁷

Affiliations

¹ Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS UMR 7272, Institut de Chimie de Nice, 28 Avenue Valrose, 06108, Nice, France.
² University of Bremen, Department 02 Biology/Chemistry, Institute for Applied and Physical Chemistry, Leobener Str.5, 28359, Bremen, Germany.
³ Laboratoire Atmosphère, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), LATMOS/IPSL, UVSQ Université Paris-Saclay, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, 11 Bd d'Alembert, 78280, Guyancourt, France.
⁴ LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92195, Meudon, France.
⁵ Research and Information System for Developing Countries, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi, 110 003, India.
⁶ Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1-IE-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8550, Japan.
⁷ Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Justus von Liebig Weg 3, 37077, Göttingen, Germany.
⁸ University of Houston-Clear Lake, 2700 Bay Area Boulevard, Houston, TX, 77058, USA.
⁹ Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA), Ctra. de Ajalvir, km 4, Torrejón de Ardoz, 28850, Madrid, Spain.
¹⁰ Univ Paris Est Créteil and Université de Paris, CNRS LISA, 94010, Créteil, France.
¹¹ Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie, Institution of Washington, Washington, DC, USA.
¹² Institute for Applied and Physical Chemistry, University of Bremen, Leobener Strasse NW2, 28359, Bremen, Germany.
¹³ German Aerospace Center (DLR), Space Operations and Astronaut Training, Linder Höhe, 51147, Cologne, Germany.

PMID: 35608832
DOI: 10.1002/cplu.202200116

Abstract

The Philae lander of the Rosetta space mission made a non-nominal landing on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12, 2014. Shortly after, using the limited power available from Philae's batteries, the COSAC instrument performed a single 18-minutes gas chromatogram, which has remained unpublished until now due to the lack of identifiable elution. This work shows that, despite the unsuccessful drilling of the comet and deposition of surface material in the SD2 ovens, the measurements from the COSAC instrument were executed nominally. We describe an automated search for extremely small deviations from noise and discuss the possibility of a signal from ethylene glycol at m/z 31. Arguments for and against this detection are listed, but the results remain inconclusive. Still, the successful operations of an analytical chemistry laboratory on a cometary nucleus gives great hope for the future of space exploration.

Keywords: Philae; Rosetta; comet; gas chromatography; mass spectrometry; trace analysis.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Abstract

Publication types

Grants and funding