A mass spectrometer for the ROSETTA space-mission to a comet

by Prof. Hermann Wollnik (Giessen)

Wednesday 9 Apr 2014, 15:00 → 16:00 Asia/Tokyo

210 (RIBF Building)

A mass spectrometer for the
ROSETTA space mission to a comet
 
Hermann Wollnik
 
Of the nature of a comet little more is known than that it looses a surface layer of about 10m thickness when it passes once around the sun. An attempt to find out more is the European space mission ROSETTA, which is a space craft sent to a comet. This space craft will bring a lander along to this comet and try to set it down on its surface. This lander provides a multiple reflection time-of-flight spectrograph a prototype of what is now used also at RIKEN in the SLOWRI project. This instrument is planned to be used for the investigations of soil samples on the comet surface to find out what material the surface of the comet is made of. It is planned to be used also as mass sensitive detector for the effluent of special gas-chromatographs that can distinguish between molecules of different chiralities hoping that one can find out whether all investigated molecules have a left turn chirality as is the case for all naturally occurring molecules on earth, or whether there are 50% of molecules, which have a left turn chirality and 50%, which have a right turn chirality, as one finds for molecules that have been formed in chemical reactions.