The Urey instrument, or Urey: Mars Organic and Oxidant Detector was a developmental spacecraft instrument for detecting organic compounds including

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although over 500 amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the 22 α-amino acids incorporated into proteins. Only these 22 a ...

Overview

It was funded by NASA and tested in the

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert () is a desert plateau located on the Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile. Stretching over a strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of , which increases to if the barre ...

in the early 2000s. Urey was selected by NASA for further development in support

ExoMars ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) is an astrobiology programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). The goals of ExoMars are to search for signs of past life on Mars, investigate how the Martian water and geochemical environment varies, investigate ...

or any future Mars mission that could use Urey along with Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or Moma in 2007, funded with 1.5 million USD total (750k each). Urey was a suite of instruments that built on 15 years of research into detecting

organic molecules Some chemical authorities define an organic compound as a chemical compound that contains a carbon–hydrogen or carbon–carbon bond; others consider an organic compound to be any chemical compound that contains carbon. For example, carbon-cont ...

. Urey is a design for

in situ is a Latin phrase meaning 'in place' or 'on site', derived from ' ('in') and ' ( ablative of ''situs'', ). The term typically refers to the examination or occurrence of a process within its original context, without relocation. The term is use ...

biomarker detection, and it was tested in the early 2000s. The device would also study the mysterious oxidants in Mars regolith. Urey was previously included on ExoMars rover, now the ''Rosalind Franklin'' rover, in one of its iterations, and would have searched for organic compounds in Martian rocks and soils as evidence for past life and/or prebiotic chemistry. Starting with a hot water extraction, only soluble compounds are left for further analysis. Sublimation, and

capillary electrophoresis Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a family of electrokinetic separation methods performed in submillimeter diameter capillaries and in micro- and nanofluidic channels. Very often, CE refers to capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE), but other electr ...

makes it possible to identify amino acids. The detection would be by laser-induced

fluorescence Fluorescence is one of two kinds of photoluminescence, the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. When exposed to ultraviolet radiation, many substances will glow (fluoresce) with colore ...

, a highly sensitive technique, capable of parts-per-trillion sensitivity. These measurements would be made at a thousand times greater sensitivity than the Viking GCMS experiment, and would significantly advance our understanding of the organic chemistry of

Martian soil Martian regolith is the fine blanket of unconsolidated, loose, heterogeneous superficial deposits covering the surface of Mars. The term ''Martian soil'' typically refers to the finer fraction of regolith. So far, no samples have been returned to ...

s. Urey would follow up on the Viking results which were inclusive and only sampled the very near surface. Urey had been selected for a time to be on the Pasteur payload of the ''Rosalind Franklin'' rover, however, it was developed for any Mars mission not necessarily ExoMars and was funded independently by NASA. One of the components of Urey was the Mars Oxidant Instrument (MOI) and it was developed by NASA's

Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

. Urey Suite: * Subcritical Water Extractor * Mars Organic Detector * Micro-Capillary Electrophoresis Instrument * Mars Oxidant Instrument

Name

Urey is named after Harold Clayton Urey (1893 – 1981) for his contributions to chemistry and other studies including winning the

Nobel Prize in Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry () is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outst ...

in 1934.

References

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External links

NASA - Sensor Being Developed to Check for Life on Mars 03.02.07
Spacecraft instruments ExoMars

Overview

Name

See also

References

External links