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

• Published in: ChemPlusChem (Weinheim, Germany) Vol. 87; no. 6; pp. e202200116 - n/a
• Main Authors: Leseigneur, Guillaume, Bredehöft, Jan Hendrik, Gautier, Thomas, Giri, Chaitanya, Krüger, Harald, MacDermott, Alexandra J., Meierhenrich, Uwe J., Muñoz Caro, Guillermo M., Raulin, François, Steele, Andrew, Szopa, Cyril, Thiemann, Wolfram, Ulamec, Stephan, Goesmann, Fred
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Wiley 01.06.2022
• Subjects: Analytical chemistry; Astrophysics; Chemical Sciences; comet; Earth and Planetary Astrophysics; gas chromatography; Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysic; mass spectrometry; Philae; Rosetta; Sciences of the Universe; trace analysis; Philae; mass spectrometry; gas chromatography; comet; trace analysis; Rosetta; COSAC Instrument, Chromatography, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Comet
• ISSN: 2192-6506; 2192-6506
• DOI: 10.1002/cplu.202200116

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from Philae's batteries, the COSAC instrument performed a single 18‐minutes gas chromatogram, which has remained unpublished until now due to the lack of identifiable elution.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. ESA's comet rendezvous mission Rosetta investigated the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov‐Gerasimenko to reveal information about the most pristine material preserved in the Solar System. This work reports, for the first time, the only gas chromatogram taken on the comet by the COSAC instrument and puts forward the possibility of a trace detection of ethylene glycol in the data from this historic measurement. Image credit: ESA/AOES Medialab