Past, present and future characterization of volatile materials in alien worlds with gas chromatography

Séminaire IPAG de Cyril Szopa (LATMOS), jeudi 8 janvier 2015 à 11h00, IPAG seminar room

Detection, identification and quantification of volatile materials present in alien worlds are key measurements to characterize the nature, the origin, and the evolution of these environments, as well as their potential connection to the origin of life in the solar system. These volatiles can exist in various states (gases in atmospheres, condensates in cold worlds, components of inorganic (e.g. rocks) or organic (e.g. organic aerosols) matrixes…) and they can be distributed in a variety places (e.g. dense atmospheres, sub-surfaces) that makes them not systematically measurable with remote sensing techniques. In situ measurements are therefore required and gas chromatography is one among the preferred analytical techniques to have been used for about 40 years for the chemical characterization of alien environments, mainly because of its robustness and its relatively technical simplicity. I will present here a review about these instruments used to explore Mars, Venus, Titan… , the major results they allowed to get from these environments up today, and the perspectives of their use in future space exploration probes.