Open AccessInvestigation of Venus Cloud Aerosol and Gas Composition Including Potential Biogenic Materials via an Aerosol-Sampling Instrument Package
Author(s) -
K. H. Baines,
D. Nikolić,
J. A. Cutts,
M. L. Delitsky,
JeanBaptiste Renard,
S. Madzunkov,
Laura M. Barge,
Olivier Mousis,
Colin Wilson,
S. S. Limaye,
Nicolas Verdier
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
astrobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.234
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1531-1074
pISSN - 1557-8070
DOI - 10.1089/ast.2021.0001
Subject(s) - aerosol , nephelometer , venus , mass spectrometry , environmental science , trace gas , spectrometer , astrobiology , atmospheric sciences , chemistry , meteorology , physics , light scattering , scattering , quantum mechanics , chromatography , optics
A lightweight, low-power instrument package to measure, in situ, both (1) the local gaseous environment and (2) the composition and microphysical properties of attendant venusian aerosols is presented. This Aerosol-Sampling Instrument Package (ASIP) would be used to explore cloud chemical and possibly biotic processes on future aerial missions such as multiweek balloon missions and on short-duration (<1 h) probes on Venus and potentially on other cloudy worlds such as Titan, the Ice Giants, and Saturn. A quadrupole ion-trap mass spectrometer (QITMS; Madzunkov and Nikolić, J Am Soc Mass Spectrom 25:1841-1852, 2014) fed alternately by (1) an aerosol separator that injects only aerosols into a vaporizer and mass spectrometer and (2) the pure aerosol-filtered atmosphere, achieves the compositional measurements. Aerosols vaporized <600°C are measured over atomic mass ranges from 2 to 300 AMU at <0.02 AMU resolution, sufficient to measure trace materials, their isotopic ratios, and potential biogenic materials embedded within H 2 SO 4 aerosols, to better than 20% in <300 s for H 2 SO 4 -relative abundances of 2 × 10 -9 . An integrated lightweight, compact nephelometer/particle-counter determines the number density and particle sizes of the sampled aerosols.