311 Wet Chemistry Automated Sample Processing System (WASP) 

Juancarlos Soto*, James Lasnik*, Shane Roark* and Luther Beegle** 

ABSTRACT   Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation (Ball Aerospace) was commissioned by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to produce a wet chemistry automated soil sample processing mechanism that can be used for planetary wet chemistry sample preparation. Over a three-year period, Ball Aerospace designed, fabricated and performed end-to-end tests to meet JPL’s performance parameters. The final product of this effort is called the Wet-chemistry Sample Processing System (WASP). WASP is an integrated system capable of autonomously accepting 100 mg+ of solid fines within a sample cell, combining the fines with  2 mL+ of solvent, heating and containing the mixture at 200 oC for 1 hour+, and finally filtering/aspirating  the liquid analyte from the processed cell. The WASP carousel with 30 sample cell assemblies currently exhibits a total mass less than 15kg making it field portable in a variety of situations and contexts.    1.0 INTRODUCTION   One of the main goals of NASA in the exploration of the Solar System is to determine if life exists or has existed anywhere beyond planet Earth. In most analytical investigations, there is a need to process complex field samples for the unique detection of analytes, particularly low concentrations of organic molecules that may identify extraterrestrial life. To analyze samples, they can either be carried back to Earth or processed in situ. By automating the processing of samples in situ and using a single integrated system, size, weight, development costs and time all can be minimized. When compared with the time and expense of bringing samples back to Earth from other celestial objects for processing and analysis, in-situ processing of samples should prove a significant cost savings measure.  This paper describes a Wet-chemistry Automated Sample Processing (WASP) system to be used in situ [1-3]. WASP is a simple and robust device that can process up to 30 separate soil samples and send the extracted material to instruments in a fluid form. WASP is capable of capturing and sealing a soil sample, mixing it with up to three different solvents, heating and pressurizing the analyte mixture in the test cell for extended periods, then aspirating/filtering the post-processed liquid analyte for subsequent chemical analysis.   WASP consists of a LabVIEW-enabled laptop computer, support electronics, and four primary mechanical subsystems:  1) sample cell subsystem, 2) carousel/cell-positioning subsystem, 3) capping subsystem, and 4) fluid handling subsystem. All aspects of WASP are programmable and controllable through a LabVIEW software interface. Rigorous subsystem-level testing and comprehensive end-to-end functional testing was performed to optimize performance and enhance reliability. Each of these subsystems is described further in Section 3.0.                                                   * Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, CO  ** Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 

Proceedings of the 41st Aerospace Mechanisms Symposium, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, May 16-18, 2012